Swedish content management vendor Polopoly has been selected as the supplier of the new content management platform for the Cumbria-based publishers CN Group. CN Group, which publishes seven local newspapers including The Cumberland News, News & Star and North West Evening Mail, is confident that Polopoly holds the key to increasing the online audience of its titles.

Stuart Cooke, CN Group Digital Development Director, says: “One of the reasons Polopoly was selected is that the system is already proven to reliably deliver stable services at far higher traffic levels than we currently experience. This will remove the traffic bottlenecks our customers experience when accessing our sites at peak times."

Cooke continues: “Polopoly will also put the online publishing tools in the hands of our editorial teams rather than editors having to refer to IT or New Media every time a small change is required to a page. The Polopoly system will also make it easier to edit and manage the sites and share content, such as sports results, between titles. It will be used by CN Group to provide localized editions of newspapers websites.”

Other features will include instant user metrics, improved communication with readers, and web 2.0 features such as tagging of articles and comments on articles. The first website to be re-launched will be the Times & Star, to be followed by rest of the CN Group titles.

CN Group's Publishing Division is responsible for the Group's newspaper publishing and associated activities in Cumbria, Northumberland, northern Lancashire and Scotland. The main publishing centers are based at Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness and Hexham, with other offices in the principal towns of the region. The Division publishes two daily evening newspapers, five paid-for weeklies, and a range of free newspapers, directories, magazines and niche publications. It also has a thriving new media business, and each of the papers has their own website.


For further information, please contact:
Gustaf Sahlman, CEO Polopoly, +46 8 506 782 99, +46 70 447 8299, gustaf.sahlman@polopoly.com
Stuart Cooke, Digital Development Director CN Group, stuart.cooke@cngroup.co.uk


Polopoly is participating at IfraExpo 2007 with a completely new show-case “cultivating the information garden” demonstrating our products. A total of 365 exhibitors from 33 countries have booked more than 15,000 m² stand space in the new exhibition halls of Reed Messe Wien. Solutions for newspaper and media production – on both print and digital platforms – will be shown in Vienna, where some 10,000 media managers from about 80 countries worldwide are expected. Please come and see Polopoly at stand A215.

Polopoly is a leading technology player in regards to supplying content management technology to demanding media players. Our content management technology covers all media types: text, images and streaming media. It provides an integrated management of both editorially produced content and user generated content. Our headquarters are located in Sweden, but we serve customers worldwide. Today, our technology is used by a host of the world's most demanding media players. Among the customers are national media broadcasters across Europe.

CN Group is an independent local media business based in Carlisle. The Group operates with three Divisions; publishing, radio and print. The Publishing Division publish daily and weekly newspapers in Cumbria, Northumberland and south west Scotland, as well as a county magazine, business monthly newspaper and local directories. Reader holidays, market research and door-to-door distribution are further services available from the Division. All titles have linked websites and all aspects of electronic publishing are handled by the Division.