College Publisher’s response
May 1, 2009 in College Media, College Publisher
Editor’s note: This week, CICM intern Lauren Rabaino wrote about the Mustang Daily’s recent switch from College Publisher to WordPress. The following is a response submitted by Rusty Lewis of College Media Network. #
CICM typically presents well-argued discussions of the technology angle of college media and so it seemed appropriate to present both sides of the Content Management System conversation occurring here. #
For context, College Media Network [CMN] has been in this market for 10 years and over 600 college news organizations use our College Publisher software. Working with thousands of newspaper webmasters over the last decade has afforded us a unique perspective and understanding of this segment of college media. #
Choice in CMS seems to be an endless debate for college students. The desire to reinvent the digital platform is always attractive to student innovators. #
However, rather than building a CMS, we often wonder why innovators do not focus their energies on building up traffic with content and multi-media packages to raise the profile of college journalism. In the end, college newspapers are in the news business, not the web business.
Let’s address some of the concerns as outlined by Lauren: #
Freedom of ad positions: #
While it may be frustrating to not control certain ad positions, the alternative is to create sales resources in your organization that are responsible for monetizing online ad positions in a market where advertising dollars are shrinking and the banner ad method of advertising is becoming less attractive. #
Unfortunately, most newspapers do not individually have the traffic to sustain ad campaigns and the quotes of impressions that advertisers are looking for. When combined with the fact that the Mustang Daily’s traffic took a dive after the switch to CoPress seems to exacerbate that problem. #
With CMN, you can still sell ads above the fold and you will never see a bill from us; and most importantly, CMN frees up your innovators to discover and build components to supplement the online edition’s offering that may yield a return on investment (such as listings and guides). #
More intuitive user-interface: #
Over 10 years, our software, support and services have become a constant in the market. While some newspapers have shown themselves capable of adequately training incoming staff on CP tools, many lean on our resources to get staff up to speed (semester to semester). This training is provided at no cost. #
CP4 was a heavily templated CMS, and we recognize that progressive newspapers wanted more freedom in design. That was the impetus for the upgrade to the new version of College Publisher with CP5.
Rather than customizing a blog platform or open source software, this new version is a customized instance of a CMS that is used by the largest software provider to the media industry in the world, Atex. (meaning, students who learn it in college will likely see it again at any of the 800+ clients of Atex). #
Sites look alike: #
This is somewhat an ironic criticism of the College Publisher CMS as the adage “form follows function†governs how all newspapers design themselves. However, CP4 and CP5 alike provide the tools for our partner sites to be customized independently. We empower the student staff with full editorial control of the site, so the burden to individualize the look and feel of a site is on the newspaper staff (notwithstanding, we offer free design services upon request).
The results speak for themselves… #
CMN sites:
www.lsureveille.com
www.tuftsdaily.com
www.dailytexanonline.com
www.gwhatchet.com
www.dennews.com #
CoPress/WordPress designed sites:
www.mustangdaily.net
www.thewhitonline.com
www.themiamihurricane.com #
New doesn’t always mean different. #
Quick and Easy Publishing: #
Any GUI has a learning curve. The idea that blog software is easier to pick up than a CMS is a logical suggestion to make because a CMS has more capacities to render and manage content than a blog. Please feel free to call CMN for a demonstration (866.733.9231). #
Our aim is to provide the best tools for digital publishing as possible – to raise the profile of college journalism as well as prepare student journalists for the commercial market. Our tools are developed with the direct feedback of college newsrooms. #
In our newest software, XML and image bulk imports save time and automated publishing features allow for convenience in layout. Drag and drop design tools are available to create new layouts on the fly. The design capabilities are flexible to those who exercise the desire. Above everything else, these changes can be made in CP5 with little-to-no HTML/CSS knowledge. #
However, hosting, maintenance and support are items often under-valued in the college market as most college innovators neglect the importance of security in web site management. There are parties (SPAMers, PHISHers, etc) that attempt to infiltrate sites all the time – and the applications deployed are more and more sophisticated each semester. Fighting this battle is an unsung service CMN provides. #
We are always willing to discuss the merits and challenges of our product; and specifically, the ways to optimize your newspapers processes. You only need to reach out and speak with any member of our team and we can share strategies employed by newspapers all over the country. #
Hey Bryan,A quick question about going Web-first at a college weekly. A couple years back, you made a comment (http://tinyurl.com/dxrlkm) about audiences, saying that the online readership is not the print readership. But if the goal is increasing the role of Web-first coverage, wouldn't you want students to become online readers? And wouldn't your audiences then start to merge? For a weekly like ours, that would still end in us preempting our print content with the same Web content. Any thoughts? Finally, you pointed to surveys suggesting the online audience was not the same as the print audience, but the link seems to be broken. Help! (And thanks.)
[I just wrote this long comment in Google Reader ( you can find it on FriendFeed here: http://ff.im/2uYki ) and then realized it belongs here on CICM post.]I'm glad to see CICM giving College Publisher a chance to respond to criticism, but frankly, my opinion (having developed, designed, and managed content with CP, WordPress, and other systems) is that while a hosted solution like College Publisher is fine if your students are content to simply produce content, in order to learn anything about Web development or design in student media, you need to have your hands deep in the guts of an open source system with a community that can support your exploration. College Publisher isn't that. It's a proprietary publishing system, not an educational tool. — Ryan Sholin[Full disclosure: I'm on the board of directors at CoPress.]
First off, it's my prerogative to say this is one of the most wrong, idiotic, and misleading posts I've ever read, and you've done the community a tremendous disservice by writing it. In interest of full disclosure, I'm the Executive Director of CoPress, a project I started because College Publisher was so painful and inhibiting to use. I'll be writing a longer post in response to this, but have several other things to do today so I'm not sure when I'll be able to get to it. To address your first point in which you claim that "rather than building a CMS", student innovators should build up traffic with content and "multi-media packages," I'm not quite sure where you got the notion that we were advocating for building a CMS. There are many upon many open source CMS options out there that will do the job. In fact, the Knight Foundation has funded one and my friend Max has built another one. What's missing in this equation is that most, if not nearly all, student newspapers don't have the capacity to deploy and maintain these CMSes. I'm not going to name blame for the past, but this is largely due to the mindset of "we don't want our web product to devalue the print product, so we aren't going to put any resources towards it." A print analogy: your web tech talent is now as important, if not more, than your production staff. When companies like College Media Network make statements like "college newspapers are in the news business, not the web business", you're doing a disservice to the entire sector.Yet you go on to argue that student news organizations shouldn't control their top advertising slots because they might have to hire additional staff to sell those ads. Again, this smokescreen is a disservice to the community. You then say that newspapers, to reclaim this lost revenue, should "build components to supplement the online edition’s offering" which, to me, sounds like a lot more effort than just managing your CMS.I'd like to suggest an alternative for College Publisher. Instead of using monopolistic weight to force student newspapers into using crappy, closed software, why not provide them with open source software and teach them how to truly innovate?
While I think that it's important that CP gets a chance to respond I find the claims made above to be frankly nothing more than propaganda.Not only is it strange that out of 600+ sites CP was only able to list 5 that have somewhat different designs it is a gross mischaracterization of the situation to say that the same happens with WordPress sites. This misses the key point which is that while WordPress sites certainly can look similar they have the potential to innovate and create something truly unique. This is simply untrue of CP sites.Furthermore, while CP may characterize the reliance upon them for tech support and development as a good thing it isn't. With CP one is relying upon them to continue their service, continue to develop, and continue to innovate. WordPress is different. It takes that reliance upon one small group of people and transforms it into a reliance upon the crowd. Instead of relying upon one company to innovate you can rely upon the thousands and thousands of people who develop themes, plugins, and code for WordPress.Ultimately CP allows for schools to publish online and that's great if their only goal is to get content online, but it's an utter failing if the school wants to actually adapt to and take advantage of new forms of journalism. The reality is that the future of journalism will be very closely tied to what types of online innovation happen. If college journalists want to have any part of that they will need to have experience working with open systems in which they have the freedom to experiment and innovate, otherwise they will just fall further and further behind.
[...] II: here is College Publisher’s response – [...]
Brian, here's the link: http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2006…. I don't necessarily “want” student readership to become online readership, but I think it's an inevitability. I don't necessarily think you should preempt print content with web content, but make web content complement print content. Break news online, and then you can expand it in the print edition.
Right now, it's a balancing act for college media, since it's a “bubble” audience, but part of the goal is training students for the real world of journalism, where web-first is going to be the norm going forward.
hope that answers your questions.
As a former college EIC with two years experience working with both CP4 and CP5 platforms, I fully agree with this comment. It's one thing to defend a content management system with propaganda when people wrongly take shots at it and get frustrated quickly. It's a completely different scenario when said software simply does not work most of the time.Good luck to all college papers (and CoPress and other startups) that are freeing themselves from sticking with software that seems to work against efficiency, ease in management and a pleasant reading experience.
Student innovators should build up traffic with content and “multi-media packages,” I'm not quite sure where you got the notion that we were advocating for building a CMS. There are many upon many open source CMS options out there that will do the job. In fact, the Knight Foundation has funded one and my friend Max has built another one. What's missing
in this equation is that most, if not nearly all, student newspapers don't have the capacity to deploy and maintain these CMS….
I am the web editor at my school paper.
I've been researching CP for weeks and this post is the only thing good I've heard about CP outside of their own wordpress-hosted “College media network blog,” and gee whiz, it's written by Collge Publisher PR…
They say that CP has thousands of programmers that have contributed to their software. Well isn't that nice.
Drupal has 10s of thousands, and wordpress 100s of thousands that have contributed to their greatness as flexible content management systems.
They are growing and growing, college publisher is dying, even their award winning dailyillini.com left them because of their flaws.
They give this example as a great CP site,
http://www.dennews.com/
but check out their multimedia section… WORDPRESS!
This is because CP's showcase of archived content is non-existent. Tthose that choose to showcase older content have to manually drop each story onto the page.
If you don't spend hours developing your own scripts to organize your showcase, you are left with too much scrolling and spacial inefficiency.
In the real world, organizing content is far easier than their outdated system offers. Even their CP 5 shares this and many other flaws, though admittedly a slight upgrade.
But in the following year that it takes them to update to CP 6, Drupal and WordPress will have expanded exponentially.
Open source systems are the quintessential “wave of the future” in web development, to say that students of journalism are in the “news business” and not the “web business” is like saying students of photojournalism are in the “picture business” and not the “digital photography business.”
You go to college to learn the tools of the industry, you are not doing that with College Publisher.
CP says they have 800+ customers using Atex systems…
But just stop and think about that number, 800+.
How many is 800 in an exponential market of content management systems?
Drupal and WordPress have millions of “customers,” but they don't have to pay for their service, nor fork over adspace to some outside service.
Look at the state of online journalism… bloggers are taking over as big newpaper corporations fail in creating profitable online presence… You can graduate with the knowledge of a 10-year-old archaic system that touts 800+ failing customers, or you can study the trends of today, and start teaching your students how to be web savvy with open source management.
Which do you think a rising newspaper would like to hear from a prospective student.
“I can use atex, a 10-year-old service you have to pay for and give up ad revenue”
or
“I can use a highly adaptable and constantly growing technology that is supported by 10s of thousands of skilled professionals. oh and its free”
hmm….
but then again. we aren't in the “web business” — why should journalists need to know anything more than dying systems and failing business models?
Mr. Lewis touts the abilities of CP to fight spammers and phishers, but shortly before we switched our site from CP to WordPress our site started getting attacked with spam comments. Though CP said they were working on the problem they were only able to reduce the number from 10 per day to one or two per day. Since switching to WP we've had no spam comments get through the filters. Even the spam generated by hand (such as people plugging their product on our site) gets blocked.
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