Max, a developer, breaks down why the news industry needs developers, and why College Publisher represents 80% thinking. In part, Max is calls for more developers in the news business (yes please!), and in part he examines why opensource solutions are so desperately needed in this industry.
A round-up of the student news organizations running WordPress in April 2009.
The Temple News Relaunched in Spring2008
Web Editor’s Name: Dave Isaac
How Often Do You Publish (Online): Daily
How Often Do You Publish (Print): Weekly
What is the most interesting feature on your Web site? We have unique section pages
Size of Staff: 24
Size of Audience Your Site Reaches: International
What is your community’s interact with your site consist of? Comments, e-mails
What’s the best way to reach your community? E-mail edition
Contact info of Web Editor: isaac@temple.edu
Average Number of Weekly Hits: 19,355
Hosting Company: MediaTemple
What are you hoping to do with your site to improve it/take it to the next level during the next school year? Further implement our 2-d barcode initiative.
Read more →
10000 Words gives us a list of top college newsorg sites, more from the perspective of what content they offer than the design, but its good to see what some of the best are doing.
Ideas: lots of infographics, blogs, and user interactivity.
Host: Greg Linch and Emily Kostic
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
Max Cutler says that Courant News should be out by BarCamp NewsInnovation Philly, however:
Courant will not really be ready for actual use or consumption upon its open-source-ing. The core set of functionality is essentially complete, which means you can build a news website which functions well for the visitors. However, we still haven’t had time to implement our vision for the admin interface, which is really the whole point of doing a specialized “news CMS.” It’s currently just a more-or-less stock Django admin, which, while functional, is far from ideal and really only marginally better than using Drupal with CCK or similar options.
As I’ve said publicly and privately in the past few days, the acronym “CMS” stands for Content Management System. That implies that the purpose of the system is actual management of content, which for a website would be through an admin interface. So I claim that the most important part of a CMS is the admin interface, and thus I can’t consider Courant ready for an actual site until we’ve taken at least our first pass at a news administrative interface.
Needless to say, we’ve very excited to see a nearly final product of what Max and company have been working on for 9+ months. There should be a spec out for community review later this week.
This week held big news for conference go-ers who wondered how they would be able to attend two big conferences taking place later this month. Luckily for all, the SPJ regional conference will be attending BarCamp NewsInnovation in the Annenberg building in Center City Philadelphia along with the rest of us. Meanwhile on the technology front, the big news seemed to be that Skype would now be coming to the iPhone, quite possibly bringing the ease of use associated with doing interviews with Skype to mobile.
Discussion in the forum was light this week, with Greg posting the question on everyone’s minds:
How will student media (in general or on your campus) change in the coming academic year?
While Jared Silifes and Daniel Bachhuber discussed the most productive ways to implement QR Codes, Ben Leis said he wanted to see different college media outlets “all come together into one well orchestrated online narrative.” He said he wanted to see more community involvement, stating:
I think that while investigative journalism is surely something to be valued and featured in the media, different groups on campus should be approached to provide content in short form. I think that this approach will get more people across campus introduced to new ideas and new perspectives and it will bring new audiences to interact both online and off. The short form will allow for content providers to easily make deadlines and not have the sense of feeling overwhelmed with the obligation.
On the blog, Greg’s post on Revenue Two Point Zero generated a lot of buzz. Among them were several inspired college journalists who hope to bring this sort of unique innovation to their own campus publications.
As far as the wiki goes, Miles Skorpen and Joey Baker updated the WordPress Guide and Themes pages.
Remember: your contributions are always valued! Share some love (or at least some knowledge)!
Last but not least, here are some links from the past week that you should check out this weekend (via the CoPress Publish2 Newsgroup):
The Center for College Media is hosting a student media online journalism contest. This contest leaves no stone unturned as it is likely the most extensive contest for online student journalists and college media.
The entry fee is $30 per college media (TV, Radio, Online-only, Newspaper — you’re all welcome to enter!) The fee covers two entries per category per outlet. (It even includes one freebie.)
Of the contest Bryan Murley, an Assistant Professor of New and Emerging Media at Eastern Illinois University, said via email, “This is the only contest that recognizes specific efforts by college media outlets. It’s not some ‘general’ online award, but an award that recognizes specific things that each college media outlet has done. No ‘student’ awards for class projects. Only real efforts for college media outlets are applicable. It’s not only a contest to recognize what’s been achieved, but what college media should aspire to.”
Among the unique categories students can enter are Web Editor of the Year, Best Use of Data, Best Online Workflow, Best Community Engagement, and Best Mashup.
Interested news organizations can apply online by May 16, and winners will be announced in the fall.
Host: Greg Linch
Guest: Whitney Rhodes
Summary: This week’s episode is an interview with Whitney Rhodes (@wrhodes), former director of Connect2Mason, a convergence news site Rhodes started last year at George Mason University. Rhodes discusses how the site came about and how it operated. She also offers advice to student news organizations, encouraging them to emphasize breaking news, multimedia and social media to succeed online. Rhodes now works as assistant new media editor at the Courier-Post in New Jersey.
Related: Weekly Forum Discussion – Restructuring your organization
We enable student newsrooms to hack the future of journalism by connecting college technologists across the globe, curating extensive educational resources and supporting innovative efforts with a reliable safety net. At heart of this movement for change is a firm belief in open source software, strong community, and radical transparency.
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