Then a body was found. And like clockwork, the traffic spiked.

Was the Mustang Daily prepared? Strategically, yes. They had five editors on the scene of the incident. Technically? Perhaps not. Their site went down for a few minutes (and was quickly fixed when CoPress received the notification). Here are a few steps the editors could have taken to prepare. (Full disclosure: one of the authors of this post, Lauren Rabaino, is a former editor of the Mustang Daily.)

1. Keep your site delivering the story

When you’re about to break major news, you will need to prepare your Web site for the upcoming onslaught of traffic. If you’re using WordPress, that will mean making your site as static as possible. WP Super Cache contains a feature known as Lock Down that allows you to make your site completely static — in other words, posts will be saved as flat HTML files, dramatically decreasing server load and dramatically increasing the chance that when someone visits your Web site, they’ll be served something other than an error. There are two drawbacks to using Lock Down that you should know about up front:

• Comments will not show up until the page is refreshed, either manually or by turning off Lock Down.
• Updates to stories will not be pushed without dumping the cache manually.

These, however, are small prices to pay for making sure visitors can read the article at all.

If you don’t have WP Super Cache installed already, you should — it smoothes over spikes in traffic and reduces server load even when it isn’t in Lock Down mode.

To enable Lock Down mode, go to Settings -> WP Super Cache.

Near the bottom of the page, you will see a button to enable Lock Down mode.

At the top of the page, you will see an option to Delete Expired and Delete Cache. If you update one of your articles or want newer comments to show on the page, you will have to hit Delete Cache.

If you are a CoPress client and you expect a huge spike in traffic, let us know ahead of time and we’ll be around to actively monitor your site and keep it delivering pageviews.

2. Make sure your article gets read

Google News is a great way to gain traffic, especially when big news breaks. If your site isn’t already on Google News, or if your site is incompatible with Google News, fixing any problems and submitting your site for review should be the first step of optimizing your Web site.

When updating the story, the decision about whether to do a write-thru or post a new story goes a long way toward driving traffic to your site. Google News will not re-index a news story after it has been published, even if you use a sitemap generator like Google XML Sitemaps. Therefore, if there is any sort of a major development in the story, and certainly if there is one big enough to warrant a change of headline, it is imperative the article is put into a new post for SEO.

Targeting your regular readership is also important. Plugins like SMS Text Message and Courier allow you to quickly and easily notify your readers when news breaks or when there are updates.   Be sure to use keywords in your tweets so anyone going to search.twitter.com can find your updates. For developing news, create a new #hashtag related to the topic for readers to follow throughout your coverage for example (#missingstudent or #polydeath).

Twitter can be an easy way to notify readers, but by far the best social networking site for you to focus on is Facebook. If there is a Facebook page or group concerning the news, post a link to your Web site. Have your reporters post links on their walls and Twitter accounts. Together, these two mediums can drive hundreds or thousands of visitors to your Web site. For example, the day news broke about the student suicide at Cal Poly, more than half of the Mustang Daily’s pageviews for the day were referred from Facebook (56.6 percent, to be exact).

All these strategies should be deployed within minutes of the article’s post. If you are one of the first media organizations to report on the news, you need to hook as many readers as possible and convince them that your newspaper is the ultimate source on this subject. This is only possible if they learn about it first from you.

When you update the article — which you should do, frequently — or when a big update comes in that warrants a new article — which should happen, though with less frequency — be sure to let your readers know. Don’t spam your readers, but find a point right before they start feeling harassed when they’ll be grateful for keeping you informed.

Finally, if you are expecting you might create a new story when a big enough update comes in, link your homepage on Facebook and in e-mails instead of the story itself, so when readers visit the site they see the newest news first. Also, when you create a new story, it is a good idea to link to it at the top of the old one.

3. Develop an editorial strategy

The best way to break news is to have a game plan in place so you’re not scrounging for reporters and photographers at the last minute. Here are a few steps you might want to try:

• Designate a breaking news “leader.” This person can be in charge of delegating responsibilities to reporters and photographers when news breaks and posting Twitter and Facebook updates throughout the day.
• Have a breaking news emergency kit. The worst thing that can happen when news breaks is that the video camera is checked out or the batteries are dead. If you have the resources to do so, keep a spare camera, tripod and batteries in the newsroom solely for breaking news purposes
• Know the workflow. You don’t have to have a multi-sourced, 500-word article before posting updates to your site and Twitter. Break news as it happens and get your staff into the mindset of posting breaking news nuggets as it happens. Updates can always come later.
• Listen to your readers. Breaking news is perhaps one of the best opportunities to use reader feedback while reporting. Let your readers submit their questions and tips via social media so you can integrate it into the reporting process. If the breaking news event is a scene (fire, protest, etc.), seek user-submitted photos and video.

MediaWiki

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This is perhaps the most well-known wiki software, especially because of its use by Wikipedia. It’s the open source software that is used on the CoPress wiki.

For your readers, this might be the functionality they’re most familiar with on the front end, but the complexity of the back end could intimidate and deter people from contributing.

If you put a helpful guide showing users how to edit the wiki and use the system’s formatting, they might be more likely to contribute. You have to be able to set up a MySQL database for your wiki, but it’s easily done. Setup is straight forward process that only takes a few minutes.

• Price: Free
• Open source
• Requires installation
• Requires database setup
• Anyone can login to edit
• Customizable skins using CSS
• Must learn MediaWiki markup

Download MediaWiki

WordPress Wiki

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If you want the wiki to match the brand of your site rather than the typical wiki look, you can use the WordPress wiki plugin (assuming, of course, that you’re running WordPress).

Editing is straight forward because you edit the pages just like posts, and simply mark the “wiki page” option to designate wiki status.

The catch, though, is that for users to edit a page, an administrator must create a “Wiki Editor” user who has access to the backend of your site. That user is only allowed to edit pages designated as editable by an administrator, but the notion of having many users access the admin end of your site may make you uncomfortable.

• Price: Free
• Upload and activate the plugin
• Does not require database set up
• Only designated users can edit pages
• Minimally customizable
• Updates are easy once a system is established
• May be hard to organize once you start accumulating many pages
• Users can’t create new pages, only edit existing pages

If you do decide to go with this software, it would probably be best to create one account called “WikiEditor” and post the username and password at the bottom of each editable page. Create a separate page or category under which all wiki posts can fall.

Download WP-Wiki plugin

WikiSpaces

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If this is all too complicated, there is a free service that does the hosting for you. WikiSpaces is a simple solution to your wiki woes. All you have to do is sign up for an account.

• Price: Free
• Doesn’t require installation
• Does not require database set up
• Anyone can make an account and edit pages
• Can change colors; must pay to change CSS
• Free version has advertisements

This is the ideal option if you have no idea how to set up a new database or if you want something that feels more intuitive for your users to update. WikiSpaces doesn’t require users to learn complicated formatting language; it uses a clean WYSIWYG editor. The downside is that if you want full control over the look and feel and ads, you have to pay for a pro version.

Sign up for WikiSpaces

Other options

These are by no means the only wiki software out there. These are just the systems with which I have experience. Wikipedia has a full list of wiki software too. If you have any suggestions or experiences, please share.

• Owned? Legal terms of video hosting services compared – Joey Baker: Video sharing sites treat your copyright differently. Summary: the best sites are the most restrictive.
• 4 productive summer projects for j-students – Daniel Bachhuber: Proactive summer J project ideas from @laurenmichell. It would be sweet to see experimentation with the news wiki.
• 10 Ideas I Want to Try at the Newspaper Where I Work – Daniel Bachhuber: I dig the ideas Will has for community relationship management, as well as using data and APIs well.
• Steve Ballmer, Microsoft – The Future of Microsoft, The Future of Technology – Daniel Bachhuber: Steve Balmer makes a case for entrepreneurship in the economic downturn.

The most notable news of the week, however, is that Greg taught me the stylistic considerations of headlines and subheads.

Activity around the network

In the forum this week, Joey asked the crowd about their editorial workflows within WordPress. Lauren Rabaino left the lengthiest answer, explaining in detail how the Mustang Daily is currently operating their web-first workflow. Writers upload their documents into WordPress, and then the editing happens within the CMS. The information about these interactions is managed in a Google Spreadsheet.

The wiki is where the real party was happening this week. Related to the Mustang Daily’s workflow, a few of us have been sketching out a spec to build functionality into WordPress to enhance editorial workflows, and enable newspapers like the Mustang Daily to conduct their entire operation within the CMS instead of having to add a Google Spreadsheet on top. These ideas have materialized in the form of the Edit Flow Project. Look for a more detail post on the project’s goals next week.

Also on the wiki, Lauren Rabaino has been doing a stellar job adding more student news organizations to the Network directory. Late last night I had an “aha!” moment when I figured out you could apply meta data of a sort to these directory pages. The result? Sorting by CMS, location, or type of publication. As we add more information to the system, hopefully with your help, this will become an increasingly useful database of what student news organizations across the nation are doing with their web technology. If your organization is missing, please feel free to add it by following the criteria at the top of the Network page.

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.

Guests: Lauren Rabaino, Web Editor and Marlize van Romburgh, Editor in Chief of The Mustang Daily

Summary: Lauren Rabaino and Marlize Van Romburgh swap stories with Greg and Emily as the four discuss each of their college newspapers transitions to WordPress.

Subscribe: iTunes | RSS

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.

Website Design

We went with the Gazette Edition from WooThemes because it gave us all the basic capabilities we were looking for:

• Prominent ads
• Wigetized sidebar
• Slick, rotating slideshow
• Auto-generated thumbnails

Advertising

During a time when revenue is falling, having full control over priority ad space is a must. We have a top banner (468 x 60 pixels), a sidebar ad (300 x 250 pixels) and up to four square ads on the lower sidebar (125 x 125 pixels).

We installed a WordPress plugin that allows for a “page peel” style advertisement in the top corner of the site. Although probably annoying to some, people like playing with it.

Plugins Used

The following plugins give us functionality that College Publisher would never allow for (or at least not easily).

Twitter Tools lets us easily post new articles and tweets straight from the admin end of WordPress. Why this is great: We don’t have to give every reporter the Twitter password and it streamlines the process of tweeting a new article. Posting links to articles is acceptable in moderation and when it’s supplemented with plenty of converstaion.

WP-Touch generates a mobile version of our site. If you don’t have a smart phone, you might not care, but this fall at Cal Poly, six hundred students on campus used iPhones — 500 more than in the spring, according to Ryan Matteson, the university’s technical security officer. My point: mobile is on the rise.

Another mobile plugin we’re excited about is for the non-smart phone users who want to get SMS updates. SMS Text Message is a plug we’re excited about, but have yet to use. It allows users to subscribe for text message alerts and lets us send out those alerts from the dashboard.

We’re using the Add to Any plugin for users to share our content over any social network. Although Share This is more widely recognizing for sharing, I chose Add to Any because it lets us customize the look of the button.

Structural Changes to the Daily

On a CICM post, I briefly mentioned the structural changes that came with the switch. To elaborate, this is how our workflow will function from here on out:

• Reporters save their articles as a WordPress draft (instead of e-mailing articles to editors)
• The reporter contacts copy editors when the article is in the CMS, copy editors will edit from the newroom or home (wherever they happen to be)
• We’ve hired an additional copy editor and switched up the shifts so there is always a copy editor on-call during the day
• There is an ongoing Google Spreadsheet of most recent articles posted. After editing the article, the copy editor signs off on the article on the spreadsheet
• The third editor to read over the story pushes “publish” if they think it’s ready. If it still needs work, it can go through the process again
• In the evening, designers pull already-edited articles from WordPress for page layout

The delay time between when a reporter writes the article and the editor posts it is about four hours. Right now, it’s not to efficient because our reporters are new (and therefore their articles need much editing) and the workflow is still slow. It will only get better from here.

The Back End

The hierarchy is broken down as such:

• Three administrators (not including CoPress) who have full access to all features
• About ten editors who can publish articles
• Ten contributors (reporters) who can save drafts, but not publish

New Features

Although we certainly didn’t need WordPress to implement the following new features to our website, having WordPress has made it way easier to execute these ideas we’ve had:

• Crime map: WordPress pages make adding new, easily-accessible features very easy. Within a few minutes, we were able to throw together a Google Map of the police log that we plan to update daily.
• Hot topics: We’ve always wanted to re-ignite an old feature called “What’s the Buzz?” but creating and maintaining pages was always a headache. Again, within minutes we were able to generate pages around controversial issues on our campus. Eventually, we’ll have a wiki to supplement each topic.

What’s Next?

Now that the process of posting is more streamlined (or, it’s getting there), the goal is to produce better multimedia. My efforts can be focused on training reporters one-on-one instead of copying and pasting articles at the end of the night.