Over a period of almost two years, the prestigious Colombian newspaper has designed a journalistic project that has concluded with the creation of an “intelligent, entertaining, enriched and visual” website, designed for the consumption and reading of journalistic information online. The results have been welcomed not just by readers, but also by advertisers and the newspapers’ own journalists who, through the new CMS ITER Web, have been able to speed up its work and carry it out in a convergent manner for all output channels.

Of particular importance are the new journalistic formats–such as backgrounds, section notes, associated infographics or videos with own audio – which allow the reader to understand the news item in more depth. The newspaper has also organised the contents better and improved their hierarchy to create the emotion of a “news product”, which is offered in “layers” according to the degree of interest and the time available.

In addition to the traditional comments section, El Colombiano has also increased readers’ participation with new options, for example by allowing them to complete different news items with their own contributions, supervised by the newsroom, and to offer linguistic corrections.

For the project to be a success, a key factor was the choice of a technological platform that would facilitate the work of journalists to enable them to have more time to provide the added value that was sought. According to Jaime Jaramillo, the newspaper’s Technology Manager, “We looked at the international systems used by large newspapers that could enrich editorial content. The platform implemented for the new .com - Protecmedia’s ITER Web – puts us among the best news portals in the world.”

For his part, Diego Agudelo, the Digital Macro Editor, considers that through the new tool it has been possible to “optimise and enrich the newsroom’s work,” thus responding to “what users want and the market trends in digital contents.”

** To see the new El Colombiano, visit http://www.elcolombiano.com