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Ask Slashdot: How Do News Organizations Keep Track of So Much Information?

Posted by BeauHD on from the too-much-to-handle dept.

dryriver writes: Major news organizations from CNN, BBC, ABC to TIME magazine, the New York Times and the Economist publish a tremendous amount of information, especially now that almost everybody runs a 24/7 updated website alongside their TV channel, magazine or newspaper. Question: How do news organizations actually keep track of what must be 1000s of pieces of incoming information that are processed into news stories every day? If they are using software to manage all this info -- which makes a lot of sense -- is it off-the-shelf software that anybody can buy, or do major news organizations typically commission IT/software contractors to build them a custom "Information Management System" or similar? If there is good off-the-shelf software for managing a lot of information, who makes it and what is it called?

2 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. I know this space well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I know this space well. My consulting/integration company works with many, many media companies including the majors on this exact area. AMA? I've been doing this for 13 years, and literally work with many of the largest media companies on the planet.

    There are two layers to the answer to this question. The first is storage and networking infrastructure, which is evolving very quickly for many reasons. Object storage, cloud (public/private/hybrid) -- all of these trends are having a massive impact on how the industry does things, but media is 5-10 years behind many other industries in adopting IT to solve particular challenges (our data needs are very, very high). So the move to object and cloud storage, taking advantage of 10GigE much less 40 and 100, seeing where fibre channel goes (SANs are used very extensively), the changing cost environment for all this stuff -- all these things are hitting int he media space big time.

    The next layer is the software management layer. We call this "MAM" for Media Asset Management. It's a bit of a catch-all term, and sort of folds up to DAM, or Digital Asset Management, and contains within it PAM, or Production Asset Management. It is sort of a shorthand term that refers to:

      Getting your media and other data behind a database

      Utilize software automation and integration technologies to orchestrate all sorts of interesting workflows

    MAM too is taking more and more advantage of the cloud and hybrid deployments. There are dozens of MAM vendors, with a handful of leaders. For instance Avid has PAM and MAM platforms they brand as "Interplay" (it's two different things). There are dozens of others, and I know many of them quite well. Again, my company does major MAM and workflow deployments for top-tier global M&E companies (among others). If I can answer questions, shoot 'em over.

  2. Re:If it's the left, just a narrative will do. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    How about "Seth Rich Murder" on CNN, Politico, MSNBC, Salon, NYT, and WaPo? You are a fucking tool...