You may have noticed something a little bit different about your Valley Post this week.

We're still loaded with plenty of local news, photographs, advertisements, activities and commentary about the South County, especially the communities of Anderson, Cottonwood and Happy Valley. However, we are sporting some fresh looks thanks to a new front-end system, MediaDesk, created by Advanced Technical Solutions, Inc.

Their front-end system is a highly evolved software package that uses the latest in database technology to provide a seamless flow of information between our advertising, news, finance and production departments.

Although we are changing the process that we use to put our stories, photographs, headlines, photo cutlines and advertisements on the page, we are trying very hard not to change the content or its placement inside the newspaper at this time.

MediaDesk replaces a 10-year-old product called Harris that functioned similarly, but without the simplicity and elegance that MediaDesk offers. Therefore, as we gain more experience with the software and its capabilities, we do hope to make minor changes to the newspaper that will make things easier to find and use for all of our readers.

As they often say in the business of mass communications, the only thing that remains constant in this industry is the rate of change.

Designed for high-speed page layout and parallel editing, MediaDesk allows multiple editors to work on different stories, on the same page, at the same time. Each can hyphenate and justify against their story's page layout without interrupting the other's work flow.

For example, a layout editor can design a page -- either before or during the writing and editing process -- by creating layouts or dragging stored layouts from a template library on to the empty page. Geometry and styles can be assigned to the headline and body text from which a layout file is created. When this file is opened in a word processing application, the geometry and styles are in place. This allows writers and editors to write-to-fit and/or copy-fit with a high degree of precision. Hyphenation and justification is performed against the story's precise layout on the page, which then returns true line breaks and column turns viewed in the word processor. Once the story is ready, a single command places the story directly on the page.

In addition, layout editors can either edit stories in WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) view on the page or move the text off the page into a word processor for additional edits. Upon completion, the story can be placed back on the page, maintaining edits, geometry and style. Any further changes to geometry and style assignments can be dynamically made as needed. In both cases, all edits are saved to the MediaDesk database regardless of whether they were made using the editor or in-page layout.

Monday was a real struggle for all of us. Not only were we trouble-shooting the system install, we were also learning the finer points of design and style formatting while under the gun of a 5 p.m. deadline.

My deepest thanks go out to all of the Editorial staff here at the Valley Post, as well as the wonderful technical assistance we received from Record Searchlight Manager Editor Carole Ferguson and Information Services Director Victor Wong, also of the Record Searchlight. Without them we would not have made our deadline.

Since it may take us two or three issues before we have all of the necessary elements and/or skills in place to duplicate what we had been able to achieve with the previous front-end system, we are asking for your patience during this time of transition and learning.

Be assured, however, that the Valley Post will continue to stay true to its 126-year legacy of providing comprehensive coverage of the news, events, activities and happenings throughout the South County area to keep you, the reader, informed and entertained, educated and engaged so that we may all be thinking and creating a better world for all of us.