CoPress

A few days back, Max Cutler posted a hefty spec for the administration side of Courant News, code named “Nando.” I’ve finally had the time to start reading through it and boy am I impressed. Most notable thus far are: the pitch system, a genuine workflow based around statuses and user roles, and a heavily customizable dashboard for all of this activity. All of these are features I think most people would find useful if they had access to them; Courant will be in a good position to deploy and then refine usability based on feedback.

Speaking of feedback, Max is still very interested in getting other’s opinions for a few more days. I’d encourage anyone interested in seeing this develop to read through the conceptual section and send him feedback via the Google Group. I’m still working through my notes and will be sending them later tonight.

Also related, Mo is making significant progress on the Edit Flow Project; there should be a working prototype of stage one in the next couple of days.

Lauren Rabaino published a constructive blog post a couple days ago on how the Mustang Daily is adjusting to a web-first workflow. From the looks of it, they’re asking and answering a number of questions that other news organizations will behaving further along the line:

Who copy edits when? Does the section editor look at the article first or last? Can an article be posted to the Web without the section editor’s approval? These are the questions we’ve asked ourselves these past few days. Section editors (news, arts, sports) have a huge problem with articles being posted to the Web without their approval. Gradually, we’re figuring it out.

Related to this, several of us had a conference call this morning to discuss ways in which the WordPress admin could be enhanced for editorial workflow (and address many of the technical issues organizations like the Mustang Daily are facing). For instance, I think it would be useful if editors could receive an email when a post is ready for their reading, as well as different types of statuses if, for instance, the editor needed to send the post back to the reporter for a rewrite.

When copy editors tell me how they feel lost in the Web-first world, I know how they feel.

When section editors tell me they don’t think their copy desk is ready for Web duties, I know how they feel, too. I know because I’ve felt the same way at one point or another in the past couple years. My background is primarily in copy editing, and I’ve made the move to the online side of our paper only in the past year. In that time, we shifted our Web uploading duties to our copy desk. It’s not a perfect system, but I think it’s a start.

The old system vs. the new one

We used to have one person come in late at night and upload the entire issue shovelware-style: no links, no related stories attached, no Web-first mindset.

Now, copy editors upload stories one at a time after they’ve been edited.

It’s not a perfect system and it’s not necessarily built to accommodate a 24-hour news cycle, but it’s an improvement. When most of your staff is in class during the day, it’s tough to keep the site fresh during the day, but we’re working toward that goal.

Read more →

This was the question facing my paper last year, when we were developing a new Django based CMS.

Some background: We (The Daily Gazette) are a small online-only daily news organization. We assign stories at a weekly dinner meeting when editors present story ideas and then our writers volunteer to cover them.

We had gotten really used to using email. The Editor-in-Chief would mail out the list of stories with all the assignments on it to the staff list. This wasn’t a great solution though. Stories got lost or forgotten easily. And since the status of stories constantly changed (a new reporter assigned, a different kind of multimedia attached, the deadline altered), the system was clearly failing us.

When we started our new site, moving from WordPress to Django, we resolved to do it better. Read more →

Check out this post on our wiki.

Since launching our new site in late August, The Miami Hurricane has not only used WordPress for our online content management but also to revamp our story workflow process.

It didn’t happen overnight but, by late September, all story editing was being done in the CMS. It’s a process I conceptualized with Editor in Chief Matthew Bunch and Webmaster Brian Schlansky (I advise The Hurricane as editor at large for online and multimedia).

What follows is a breakdown of our system. Enjoy!

Read more →

Welcome to the first podcast from CoPress. Each week, we’re going to be talking with student journalists, professional journalists, and others about technology, innovation, college media, and the way forward.

In the first podcast, we talk with Miles Skorpen, editor of the Swarthmore Daily Gazette and Cody Brown of NYULocal about running online-only news organizations. The Daily Gazette is built on Django, and NYULocal runs on WordPress. Enjoy! Please leave feedback in the comments. The iTunes subscription link will come shortly.

Up Next: Albert Sun talks about the Daily Pennsylvanian’s new entertainment site 34st.com in all its Drupal-based glory.

Standard Podcast [ 51:26 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1120)