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11:02 am
February 9, 2009 |
Daniel Bachhuber
| | | | | Admin | posts 102 |
| | A question originally asked by Greg: what elements do you need to have in order to have a successful, engaging, and sustainable online college news organization? (You can still have a print product too…) To kick things off, I'd like to stress the importance of an open source content management system. Only with open source (a la WordPress, Drupal, Django, etc.) can you truly innovate with how journalism is done. I think the CMS is certainly one component. | |
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12:33 pm
February 9, 2009 |
Andrew Spittle
| | Walla Walla, WA | | | Moderator | posts 49 |
| | I think that the open source element is important for building a sustainable online presence, and I think a lot of what makes the site successful and engaging is built of an open source CMS. For us, as a weekly paper, it's important to keep the website relevant for the entire week and not just the day the print edition comes out. This means that we need to get students and community members engaged on the site on a daily basis. We're working at this through redesigning comments, potentially adding forums, and adding a campus calendar. By working with WordPress it makes it so much easier to accomplish these things because it allows for us to look at the work that others have put into figuring out what works. We're not boxed into one method of forums or one type of site design, etc. Instead we can do what works for us. | Andrew – andrew@copress.org – CoPress Hosting Director – http://www.andrewspittle.net |
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3:28 pm
February 9, 2009 |
laurenmichell
| | San Luis Obispo, Calif. | | | Member | posts 21 |
| | You have to offer something that print doesn't offer (photo galleries, video, interaction, conversation) and that other online news publications don't offer (student perspective, localization). If you don't do something unique, what incentive do your readers have for coming to your site amidst the millions? | |
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2:11 pm
February 14, 2009 |
jowe
| | Millersville, PA | | | Member | posts 9 |
| | I agree with Lauren… It's all about adding value. Right now, our site offers a weekly poll, comments, and an easy way to submit news tips, in addition to maybe an extra photo or two. The problem (for me at least) is connecting the paper paper (haha) to the web, and getting the page editors to add things, and more so than just a little ad for the site to fill space. For instance, for a sports event we got really good pictures of, I'd love for a box in the article or next to the photos to say something like, see many more photos online. For me, even getting the weekly poll results printed can be an issue… for instance, the poll software (WP-Polls) automaticlly bolds YOUR choice (not the most popular). Problem is, if the opinion people vote to view the results (instead of just clicking view results) they see a choice that is bold, which they make bold in the paper (thinking that's the winner). It's easy to do in a rush, I suppose. And the whole workflow thing… I don't know where to start with that. I just want to hear what everyone has to say about that! | Webmaster
TheSnapper.com
Running on WordPress 2.7 |
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9:59 pm
February 22, 2009 |
SAlbers
| | Waverly, IA | | | New Member | posts 1 |
| | I think the best way to engage students in an online enviroment is offering them something they can't get anywhere else. I know we have all heard that before but we have found a few ways to do that. We have become the "exclusive home" for different events around campus. We hosted all the student body election results… they had to come to our site to get that information. We host mini-sites for campus organizations. The members of that group have to come to our site to get that information… when they get there they then hopefully go somewhere else. Its about exclusivity and in a campus enviroment you need to be able to offer an easy way to connect with students about things they care about. I think it is going to become increasingly important for news website to become campus experts. News is great but we need to offer more. Please check us out at http://www.wartburgcircuit.org. We are not running wordpress (I would love to be) but we run DotNetNuke with a few modules in it. I would love to find a more interactive design that looks really sharp. I am excited about CoPress and what this community can do! |
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3:19 am
February 23, 2009 |
Diego Remus
| | São Paulo/Brazil | | | Member | posts 3 |
| | "Here comes everybody: organizing without organizations"  | Diego Remus,
a freemium networkaholic wikinomist
at http://migre.me/33. |
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