CoPress

After a few weeks of drafting, CoPress now has a pretty stellar application together that really synthesizes where were at. Unfortunately, as I’ve just learned, there are character limits on each question we have to answer. I thought I might publish what we have already for the reader’s delight, and then get on to cutting large chunks out of it. Once we can actually fit it into an application, we would love your feedback in the form of comments and (preferably) 5 star ratings.

Description (1800 characters) – Verdict: We’re golden, answer is within limit.

CoPress is a holistic, non-profit, open-source, and community-driven initiative to provide student news organizations with the technical ecosystem they need to thrive during the evolution to digital information gathering and distribution.

We want to reinforce the tremendous value which comes from passionate learners working together on common problems. At the moment, CoPress includes three parts: the software, the community, and the knowledge. CoPress will support popular CMS options with continuing code development, plugins, tuning to create workflows that fit our sector, and fee-for-service hosting/management (similar to the WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org experience). Through this process, CoPress will connect student newspaper online editors, webmasters, and developers with their peers through a variety of means, including a social network that plugs into the backend of CMS options, regular regional work sessions, and an actively updated directory of contact information and current projects. Finally, CoPress is an open model where all knowledge is recorded, indexed, and available. Our hub will provide members with the intellectual resources (tutorials, documentation, videos, podcasts, webinars, etc.) they need to improve their digital distribution platform. Members will be able to edit, contribute and improve the resource for their peers.

How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities? (750 characters) – Verdict: only the first paragraph fits. Whoops.

With the near ubiquity of the web comes a tremendous potential for student news organizations to be far more engaged with their audience, and vice versa. CoPress is the network where online editors, webmasters and developers can come together with ideas and collaborate to make those ideas reality. At the moment, there is no such network for student news organizations. Those who have done innovative things with their online presence to date largely do so because of a unique level of talent at their organization. We believe it’s important for every student news organization to be creating a more engaged campus. A campus powered by increased digital access to information through functionality which shouldn’t be hindered the platform.

Thanks to the creativity of those involved with CoPress, we’ve got more than plenty of ideas to build levels of engagement, including:

• Geo-specific mobile delivery
• Voting functionality which lets the community decide which stories make the front page, much like Digg or Reddit
• Ability to track comment discussion by RSS, email, or Facebook and other means
• A newswire in the dashboard which automatically pulls links from other student news organizations based on your position. For instance, the links for a sports editor/reporter would be weighted differently then those for a news editor/reporter

Fortunately, the way that we’re approaching the CMS constraints, and overall digital distribution issues, allow us to divide and conquer on the ideas we’d like implemented. We’re structured with sustainable future growth in mind. CoPress is about building the open, inclusive community needed for student media to thrive in this crazy new age of technology.

Currently, CoPress is already connecting student news organizations at schools including the University of Oregon, the University of Miami, UCLA, Syracuse University, Swarthmore, Wake Forest, East Conneticut State, Temple University, University of Florida, University of Pennsylvania, and others. Not only that, but the network is growing rapidly thanks to the viral strength of Twitter and other social communication tools. CoPress is about structuring the network so that it is efficient and effective in achieving these common goals.

How is your idea innovative? (New or different from what already exists.) (750 characters) – Verdict: A paragraph and a half fits.

At the moment, there is no talented, diverse, and distributed body of student developers and technologists working together around improving a community platform for their specific needs. The people are there, but they need to be connected and coordinated because we face similar problems and can be far more powerful when we work together.

CoPress is not a content management system (CMS). We have no intention to invent yet another CMS. Our goal is to reinvent the options already out there, and tune them so that students can be more informed closer collaboration on platform development amongst student news organizations. Last year, the Knight Foundation funded the Populous Project at UCLA. The team behind Populous hopes to build a kick-ass CMS that provides real neat functionality. CoPress has been talking with Populous over the past few months and can’t wait for the time when we get to help them add to and improve the product.

We think student news organizations need to be involved in a collaborative process. For instance, say Daniel wants to implement shortlinks for his URLs, so that the links can be included in the print edition and students can tear out the URLs for the articles they want to comment on. Joey has already done this with his website, so Daniel gets help from Joey in setting this up. That’s the 1.0 collaboration model. 2.0 happens when Daniel and Joey work in connection over the internet, screen-capturing the process so that Betsy, Billy, and John can follow along too and implement the same feature at their news organization. Even more powerful is the 3.0 model, where the system automatically suggests features you should install based on what you’ve installed before and what your peers are installing. If we’re working on a common platform, and are connected in a network, then we can collaborate and innovate together, allowing us to build off the successes of everyone’s collective efforts.

CoPress aspires to be the synthesis for all of these connections.

What experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project? (1800 characters) – Verdict: Our response almost makes it, but not quite.

We’re bringing together the best and the brightest to ensure long-term success of the network. We gather experience from everywhere we can, and our open, distributed, model allows us to assign tasks based on skill set, workload and need. We’ve gathering experienced folks in the right positions from across the country to support our vision, and will continue to do so as we scale. Honestly, it’s surprising just how many like-minded individuals think CoPress is a network worth building.

The CoPress team is a conglomeration of development, design, editing, and management talent from all across the nation, including Daniel Bachhuber from the Oregon Daily Emerald, Greg Linch from the Miami Hurricane, Kevin Koehler from the Old Gold & Black, Adam Hemphill, Joey Baker from The Daily Orange, Albert Sun from the Daily Pennsylvanian, Miles Skorpen of the Swarthmore Daily, Jared Silfies from the Temple News, Rick Martinez of FIU Student Media, and Ken Schwencke from the Independent Florida Alligator, among others. These are innovators who are actively leading the charge at their student news organizations, innovating on their own with platforms such as WordPress, Expression Engine, Drupal, Ruby on Rails, and Django.

Additionally, we’ve received feedback on CoPress’ evolution from Knight Challenge grantees including Anthony and Dharmishta of the Populous Project, Ryan Sholin of ReportingOn, Pat Thornton of BeatBlogging.net, JD Lasica, and David Cohn of SpotUs. CoPress is also supported by Bryan Murley of the Center for Innovation in College Media, Drew Geraets of the CUNY J School, Major Highfield, and Patrick Beeson.

Most importantly, everyone we’ve spoken to is enthusiastic about the potentials of collaborating through these means. We are quite confident that, if student news organization are going to survive the change from print to digital, working with CoPress is one of the few ways they can do so successfully.