The Daily Tar Heel switched to Drupal, Sara Gregory says, because is more compatible with paper’s existing structure, size and content. She’s making online publication simpler by eliminating copy editors and desk editors from the process. Now only one desk level and one management editor read each online story before publication. Thanks to the redesign, readers can now subscribe to two different newsletters (regular and breaking news) and choose from numerous RSS feed options. The paper’s staff also added a new Community Manager position that is responsible for both of the paper’s regular and breaking news Twitter accounts as well as its Facebook account. Gregory’s upcoming projects include incorporating major linking within stories.

Will Davis made the transition to WordPress MU because he wanted The Maine Campus to have a variety of plug-ins and the potential to build a blog community. He set up custom-user permissions so writers post drafts to the Web site as well as a plug-in that emails staff when a draft is posted, cutting down the workflow to just two steps. The site also has a RSS feed for the entire site and newsletter for subscribers. Davis is in the works of launching “Campus Currents,” a user-generated wiki-based community site, and a user-generated restaurant guide. He hopes to integrate more multimedia production and interactivity online in the near future.

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• It’s the season of new sites. On Wednesday, we helped Brian Manzullo take the new CM Life live. He has since written a thoughtful post to the community, as well as a more detailed post about the new features of the site. Late last night, a new, more Drupally Daily Tar Heel went online. Andrew Dunn, Sara Gregory, and other staffers give a short introduction and talk about their plans for the upcoming year.
• Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better When It Comes To Online Ad Formats – “The study, which was based on 2,390 online display campaigns running over the past three years, found that so-called “half banners” (those measuring 234 x 60) and rectangles (180 x 150) were more effective than ads that frame the page such as high profile leaderboards and skyscrapers.” (tks Joey Baker)
• Will Davis deserves significant props for the amount of work he’s been doing to improve the wiki. The focus of what he’s doing is configuring Semantic MediaWiki to make all of the semi-structured data on a newspaper profile available in aggregate form. We now have over 120 newspapers listed in the directory; if you see that yours is missing detailed information, please add to it!
• Max Cutler would like to see a “feature matrix with links for college news sites.” I’d like to see that, as well as a page on the wiki dedicated to just brainstorming and listing out new ideas. For instance, in the forum, Brian asked about a “breaking news” box that could occasionally appear on the home page, as well as ideas for sweet author pages. It would be great if we could capture these on the wiki in such a fashion that, if I wanted to get some inspiration for author pages regardless of CMS, I could go to that page to see what other people have done.

Help us out with the curation process by joining the CoPress Newsgroup.

• Facebook news application source code open to college news sites – NewsCloud has open sourced a Facebook application specifically for student news organizations. The application reportedly incentivizes activity around the news org’s content through a point system and rewards.
• TWiT 197: Steal This Diploma – Jeff Jarvis joins Leo Leporte for a discussion on newspaper collusion, Google Wave, and education.
• How the Web and the Weblog have changed Writing – Detailed, enlightening essay on how the web has changed writing formats.
• The Daily Tar Heel’s new social media policy – Sara Gregory, incoming Managing Editor for Online, lays out the DTH’s remarkably open and earnest social media policies for the coming year.

Around the network

Conversation on the forum was light this week with Daniel asking about different styles of navigation. Joey quickly replied with:

My point: think about nav bars from the user’s perspective. I’d propose http://newser.com as a good example of a newsorg nav bar.

• It’s dynamic: content changes based on what the top stories are.
• It links off to topic pages. Only the most timely and relevant topic pages are easily accessible.
• You can still get to the traditional sections if you really want to navigate that way.

Max Cutler also offered his opinion,

In my experience/opinion, the reality is that that most college news orgs publish about the same limited set of topics repeatedly, and that’s why the section model can make some sense. That’s not to say that tags shouldn’t be used; they definitely should, and virtually all college news sites could do a better job of integrating tags into their navigation and exploration flow.

On the wiki this week, Daniel edited the Edit Flow Page with the latest info on the project.

Finding the balance

Ideally, an online editor will have both the tech-smarts and the journalism abilities to present news content in web-friendly way. You can teach someone how to embed a video from YouTube or add a new article to a CMS, but teaching someone how to write a lead can’t be done through an hour-long training session. 

Splitting the job

Increasingly, the responsiblity of maintaining the website is more than a one-man show.

As Andrew Spittle suggested in the CoPress forum, the best way to balance the job is to split the web position into a web developer and web editorial position.  Editing articles in addition to training the staff for multimedia year-round leaves little time to focus on developing new features. 

As Andrew said in the forum:

The web editor will be attending story meetings and will be functioning in a similar fashion to a section editor. This position is not requiring web skills. Knowledge is a bonus, but not a requirement.

Max Cutler has a similar take:

In my mind, the Online Editor should be someone with editorial and multimedia experience, who can direct editorial initiatives and help produce good multimedia content for the website. It’s my job as the developer to build out any infrastructure and code to support the Online Editor’s plans. Of course, that process is a give-and-take one, but it certainly helps to have that division of responsibilities.

By splitting the job into a distinct content-based position and a developer position, both aspects can flourish together. The editor can train reporters and editors in multimedia skills and help produce multimedia and web content. The developer can work on long-term features and site functionality. Together, the two can produce long-term, multimedia-based projects. 

Requirements for the web editor position:

• Copy editing experience
• Reporting experince (especially on a deadline for breaking news situations)
• Multimedia: video, audio slideshows, basic Flash, podcasting
• Basic HTML
• Writing for the web (links, keywords)
• Familiarity with Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc.

Requirements for the web developer position:

• Experience with your respective CMS (and the related language)
• HTML/CSS
• Video/audio editing
• Flash
• A portfolio of Web sites to prove he/she has all these skills

Additional skills that would be preffered but certainly not required (since they’re easily learned) are:  live streaming, blogging, Google maps, and live chats.

Going beyond basic skills

Both the Web Editor and Developer should have a vision for the future of the site and an understanding of a newspaper’s needs during a time of immense change in the journalism industry.

Staying on top of trends in the journalism world will mean reading blogs, following innovators online, going to conferences, actively browsing through news sites — and then using all that information to brainstorm new ideas.

A few questions to put on the application to gague the potential editor on the aforementioned topics would be:

• What would you improve on the current Web site?
• What are your thoughts on the use of social media in a news organization?
• Which new media blogs do you read regularly?
• What’s your vision for the Web site?
• How does your background prepare you for a job as online editor/developer?
• What are three projects you could start working on immediately? (via Daniel Bachhuber)
• What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the newspaper & how do you plan to address it? (via Andrew Spittle)

An online editor needs to be patient and open-minded above all else. Even at the college level, there is still a lot of resistance to the web. Your team of webbies needs to be able to combat the nay-sayers in the newsroom with optimimism. 

Training reporters will also require a large dose of patience. Despite the supposed tech-savviness of Generation Y, I’ve learned that just because you’re born after 1982 doesn’t mean you’re programmed with Final Cut skills. Repetition, hands-on learning and positive encouragement will keep everyone else on their toes. 

The ability to learn and teach is also important; most of what the online editor teaches other reporters and editors will be self-learned. Thus, teamwork is a must.

The next steps

If  your news organization already has a functioning web editor/developer team, or a solid balance between well-trained reporters and a talented web producer, then this is all old news for you. It’s time to consider expanding your web team.

Web Advertising Manager - This person’s job would be solely dedicated to finding ways to generate revenue online. This position would be highly experimental and, again, based on keeping up with trends, reading a lot of blog posts and generating new ideas. This person would not merely post regurgitated print ads onto the site.

Community Manager - This person could promote content and connection with your readers over social media. Andrew Dunn from the Daily Tar Heel has already implemented this idea by hiring a community manager (see the application).

A concept I like from the Tar Heel’s job description is an aggregated news source:

He or she (the community manager) will maintain a site hosted on dailytarheel.com that aggregates and highlights local online content, from blogs, Twitter feeds and other news sites.

More responsibilities could include: responding to all at-replies on Twitter, keeping the Twitter conversation relevant and fresh, promoting content on Facebook by linking to articles with the newspaper’s Facebook Page, posting albums to Flickr and encouraging user-generated photo groups, and looking for new online outlets to reach out to the community.

Later: Sara informs me that Switchback is also helping with the website design.

Guests: Andrew Dunn, the incoming Editor in Chief of UNC’s The Daily Tar Heel (with appearances by Adam Hemphill, Bryan Murley, and Albert Sun)

Summary: Greg and Emily discuss with Andrew The Daily Tar Heel’s upcoming CMS, training staff, and video/audio equipment. In addition, Adam, Bryan and Albert weigh in on college newspapers’ commitment to the web.

Related: Weekly Forum Discussion – Changes Coming to Student Media

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Guests: Brad Arendt, Boise State Arbiter; Kevin Schwartz, Daily Tar Heel; Max Cutler, Yale Daily News; Joey Baker, Daily Orange

Summary: A comprehensive introduction to the current state of online newspaper monetization. Most student newspapers make less than 10% of their overall revenue from online, and the limitations seem to be a lack of infrastructure and inventory. The Daily Tar Heel has had success with Heels Housing, an interactive student housing guide, and Max Cutler recommends Google Ad Manager over OpenX because of its relative ease of use.

Related: Forum discussing strategies for monetizing online

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