Newspaper Digital Asset Management Customer: Rick Wiley

This week I had a chance to talk with Rick Wiley, Visual Team Leader/Photography, of the Arizona Daily Star. The Arizona Daily Star is a Tucson, AZ area paper with local and national news, sports, opinion, food, home, and travel. Rick agreed to talk with me about his experience using the MerlinOne digital asset management system.

Rande Simpson: Hi Rick, how long has Arizona Daily Star had the Merlin digital asset management system?
Rick Wiley: We’ve had the Merlin for about 10 years, I’ve been using it for about 7 years.

Rande Simpson: What kind of assets do you store in your Merlin?
Rick Wiley: We store a number of digital assets including JPEG photographs, vector graphics and some PDFs.

Rande Simpson: How do you use the Merlin system?
Rick Wiley: We use it at the primary choke-point for all images that we intend to publish. It’s also a warehouse for all of our informational graphics. Photographers FTP JPEG images directly into Merlin. We then move edited images to project folders setup within Merlin for all sections of the newspaper. Page designers access approved images from those folders and export to the pre-press system for print and place them on the page using QuarkXPress.

Rande Simpson: How has the Merlin digital asset management system helped your organization?
Rick Wiley: The Merlin is efficient, logical and dependable. It enables us to manage thousands of images from a variety of sources with a small editing staff.

Rande Simpson: How does the system help you save time and/or money?
Rick Wiley: Because of the system’s speed and dependability, we are able to quickly evaluate and move images with just one photo editor (me).

Rande Simpson: Is your digital asset management system hosted or managed by internal IT staffs?
Rick Wiley: We have the hosted digital asset management system.

Rande Simpson: How many users access your digital asset management system?
Rick Wiley: We have about 20 seats for the client application, but the entire newsroom uses the system through the web application (about 120 people).

Rande Simpson: Is the Merlin system used only internally, or do you allow access outside of your organization?
Rick Wiley: We allow access outside the newsroom for some newsroom staffers and also allow limited access for two photographers working at a smaller newspaper in a different city that is part of our regional newspaper group.

Rande Simpson: If you allow access outside of your organization, what kinds of users are they, and how much access do they have to assets and media in the system?
Rick Wiley: We allow no access for outside organizations.

Posted by Rande Simpson
Photos by Kelly Presnell