Cox to roll out database building software throughout 17 daily papers

Cox Newspapers Inc. will deploy Caspio Inc.’s database building software across its 17 daily papers.

The move comes after a two-year evaluation of the software at flagship Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

All of Cox Newspapers’ editorial teams now have access to the Caspio Bridge service to publish their various databases. Caspio Bridge’s multi-user administrative interface can manage access privileges so that each paper only views its own data and applications.

“Our entire newspaper group has been monitoring the success of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in creating interactive Web database applications with Caspio Bridge,” said Sue Cleere, special projects manager at CoxNet, the strategic and operational online group for Cox Newspapers’ shared print and online activities.

The Journal-Constitution has been using Caspio Bridge to publish databases on the Web and create Web database applications. Other papers to roll out the app include the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman, Dayton (Ohio) Daily News and Palm Beach (Fla.) Post.

Caspio’s Director of Marketing Valaine Anderson said that the ajc.com Web site often requires at least two distinct Web database applications per month, some at a moment’s notice.

“One example was during Hurricane Katrina when ajc.com, within 20 minutes, posted an application to help people find loved ones,” she said.

Anderson said newspaper customers most commonly use the database applications for publishing and managing local community information.

“An online editor can import data into Caspio Bridge and use its wizards to create a Web application interface for displaying, sorting and searching the data online,” she said.

Some examples of its use include sports scores, election results, school test scores and housing statistics.

While financial terms for the deal were not announced, Caspio said the fees for using the Caspio Bridge service are based on the number of database applications. Fees start at $40 per month for up to five Web applications and scale up appropriately.