It’s not the CMS – it’s the journalism, period
May 17, 2007 in Learn, Websites
I’ll probably offend a lot of design geeks with this post, but hear me out. I don’t think it matters so much what content management system you are using for your online news site. #
Design is important. I’ve taught design and I admire designers who do good work on the web. I’ve seen good web site design in College Publisher, WordPress, Joomla, and Expression Engine – just to name a few. But for a college news site, the design is secondary to getting students to think in a web-first mindset. #
What does that mean? #
Web-first means thinking about alternate ways to tell stories. To think about video, to think about audio, to think about maps, to think about alternate ways to illustrate information to grab people’s attention. It means to think about how to create a community around your web site. To eschew traditional journalistic “journalism as lecture” mindset and think about “news as conversation”. #
If nothing else, get your students to check out this checklist of things they could be doing online (for free!). If they aren’t doing those things, what difference is a different content management system going to make? #
Honestly, I don’t see a lot of students getting jobs in the private sector redesigning content management systems. Most of the jobs – as far as I can tell – will go to students who can tell stories in a variety of formats, students who are at ease gathering source material for a variety of formats. Try to help your students focus on this building block. It’s crucial. #
I think I see your point about focusing on thinking about the Web. Lack of a CMS or of super-coders is not an excuse for not ignoring the Web.
However, design is important, because design is based on function. New designs may lead to new methods of storytelling, and vice versa. Students should be pushing the limits of creativity while they have the freedom in school to do so.
Danny,
great point. I see them as a chicken and egg dilemma. if i had to choose, however, I'd choose storytelling over design as the starting point. don't neglect the design forever, but focus on storytelling first. pushing the limits creatively will begin with the storytelling and naturally extend itself to design. perhaps i'm naive in that expectiation.
I see what you mean when referencing design, but a good CMS can aid the storytelling. I think a student would be wise to know what role the CMS plays in delivering content and maybe even learn one to get a feel for what it is like to manage content.
But as someone who has dealt with bloated and awkward CMSs a good CMS is like a good car: not essential for the journey but it certainly helps.
Again, I'm making a couple of assumptions here:
1. You *need* some kind of CMS, that's a given.
2. Once the CMS is set up, the content becomes all important. The entire news staff *should* be familiar with the CMS (and why a CMS is important) – but tweaking it and the web design are specialized jobs that most writers and visual journalists won't be involved in day-to-day. Tell us some great stories. Get with the web-first mindset.
Design issues aside, a really crappy CMS can cripple a site if it's not able to handle all of the multimedia and interactive features that the site needs. I know about this first hand!
We need to think of "design" not just as visual communication, but as "information design", the use of different modes to relay information. Different CMS are just better than others in facilitating this. While checklist are a good reference, they cause more damage than good if students don't learn when and why they should use a mode, such as sound slides or maps. Too often it seems that a lot of stuff is being created because it has a high wow factor, but low information factor.
Kevin,
thanks for the comment, and I agree with you. Information design is a key aspect of any online effort. I disagree that checklists do more damage than good. I have always advocated the appropriate use of a tool depending on the story situation. Sure, people can create stuff because of the "wow" factor, but that's a common problem (how many people use too many fonts in a design project, for instance?). The important thing – I think – is that they *think* about using these tools. A checklist at least points them in the right direction. That's my intent, anyway.