January 23, 2013 in blogging, innovation, online software, software, Tech Talk
In this week’s podcast, I mentioned a new liveblogging platform that just released to public beta – LiveBlogPro. Here I’m experimenting with the platform, and will discuss some of its features and limitations in the liveblog below.
December 18, 2012 in General Media, social media
UPDATE (5 pm CST 12-18-12): Instagram has posted a blog post declaring that they are going to be revising the revised TOS. “Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.”
Yesterday, Instagram announced some new terms of service, and the social media/journalism commentariat is abuzz with some of the changes. Among the changes that should trouble student media outlets is this one which has professional photographers and privacy rights activists alike worried:
“You agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you,”
This even applies to minors:
If you are under the age of eighteen (18), or under any other applicable age of majority, you represent that at least one of your parents or legal guardians has also agreed to this provision (and the use of your name, likeness, username, and/or photos (along with any associated metadata)) on your behalf.
Seriously, every 14-year-old’s parents reads the TOS on every app on his/her iPod Touch. /eyeroll.
I am not a lawyer, but I don’t think anyone should be comfortable with signing over a blanket personal model release to a company to sell your image or personal photographs. Wil Wheaton outlined some of the troubling aspects of this in a blog post: regarding instagram’s new Terms of Service.
Here’s what I’m wondering: if Kaley Cuoco uses Instagram to share a photo of her and Melissa Rauch doing something silly, does that mean that Instagram can take that photo and use it to advertise for something silly without compensating them for what becomes a use of their likeness for commercial purposes? I can see that being a pretty serious shitstorm if it happens. I’m not a big enough celebrity for it to personally affect me, but I know a lot of people who are. If someone Instagrams a photo of Seth Green walking through an Urban Outfitters, does that mean Urban Outfitters can take that image and use it to create an implied endorsement by Seth? What if the picture is taken by a complete stranger? Who gets final say in how the image is used? The subject, the photographer, or Instagram?
For college media outlets, the problem is different. Your photographers are out covering events, taking photographs that are important to your news operation and your brand. Do you want some company using your photographs without permission or payment to promote their products? I don’t.
In the past, I’ve recommended that college media outlets get on the social network of Instagram to share breaking news photos and other images within the network (I’ve recommended similar things about Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc.), but I’m reconsidering that recommendation until more and better information about this change is forthcoming.
I’m not sure how this will play out. Facebook (who owns Instagram) has a history of trying stupid stuff with their privacy policies only to walk them back when users pushed back. Maybe that will be the case with Instagram as well. For now, the new TOS go into effect Jan. 16, 2013. If you use the service after that, you’re agreeing to those terms.
For those who are concerned about this, here’s a post at Wired about how to download your photos from Instagram and cancel your account. Also, I’d suggest taking another look at Flickr. They just released a new iOS app with filters that are pretty comparable to Instagram’s, and more importantly, they give you a way to control how your content is used. Here’s a post from 2011 where the company (owned by Yahoo!) reiterated their policy: At Flickr, your photos are always yours.
See below for some of the media coverage of this change.
December 17, 2012 in College Media, ideas, innovation, online software, social media
Editor’s Note: We are happy to welcome Allison Bennett Dyche, Assistant Director of Student Media at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Ga., as a new contributor to the blog.
If you’re still waiting for new CDs to arrive via postal mail, either for use at your radio station or to review for your newspaper or magazine’s A&E section, it’s time to get with the program.
Spotify came to the United States during the summer of 2011. If you’ve never heard of it before, or aren’t sure how to make best use of it, now’s the time to check it out.
You may remember the wonder of Napster when it first debuted in the late 1990s (and the following depression when old Napster officially went under in the early 2000s). Apple’s iTunes, launched in the early 2000s, has been the go-to for years now, allowing users to input their own existing music libraries and purchase new music, one song or album at a time.
Enter European digital streaming music service Spotify. The application allows users to input their own libraries of music, and also listen to a massive catalogue of music (reportedly more than 20 million songs) available at their fingertips. The biggest differences between iTunes and Spotify are the cost and the social media aspect. Spotify is available for free (with commercials) or for a small monthly subscription fee (with no commercials and availability on additional platforms, rather than paying by song or album).
And unlike Pandora, rather than just typing in the name of a couple of artists that you like and letting the site’s Music Genome Project algorithm handle the rest, you can build your own playlists, and share them with your social networks and the Spotify community. Making your playlists public will also allow for others to subscribe to your playlists, allowing you to share your music tastes with friends and strangers alike. But Spotify also offers an algorithm-based music suggestion feed through Spotify Radio. Listeners can choose a song they enjoy, and the application will choose and play similar music and artists.
For college radio station DJs, having a paid subscription to Spotify is a good way to not only build playlists for shows without having to fumble with CDs and vinyl, but also to be able to share it with the audience after the show is over. Sharing playlists on social media allows for a broader listening base to get a taste of the music played on your station during your shows, and allows those from outside your listening area to also support your station.
New albums and singles are available under the New Releases section under the “What’s New” tab, so your student media operation can start playing or reviewing new music it as soon as it drops.
Barack Obama's campaign playlist
• CBS This Morning songs from the shows
• Victoria’s Secret store playlist
• Snoop Dogg’s mixtape
So how can your student media operation get started with Spotify? Start off easy by building some playlists.
• Create playlists documenting their top songs of 2012, their top songs of fall semester, etc.
• Create playlists that include a sampling of the kind of music listeners can hear on your college radio station.
• With students traveling home, create an ultimate road trip mix, or have students put together a playlist of songs representing the cities/states where they’ll spend their breaks.
• Create an anti-holiday music playlist for when you just cannot take another rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
Some playlists related to college:
The Daily Emerald at the University of Oregon started building and sharing weekly playlists on their site during fall semester.
Seventeen magazine shared an ultimate list of music to cram for college finals.
With more than 20 million songs at your fingertips and the ability to create and share as many playlists as you want, there are endless possibilities for how to incorporate Spotify into student media.
Stay tuned for a follow-up post in 2013 about new features Spotify is launching, and examples of how national and international media outlets are using Spotify apps.
Allison Bennett Dyche is the Assistant Director of Student Media at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Ga. She advises the online news organization District, the literary arts journal Port City Review and the SCAD chapter of the Society for Collegiate Journalists, and DJs a weekly show on SCAD Radio.
September 28, 2012 in College Media, Content Management Systems, Media Companies - College Related
It’s time for another trip through the fields of college media hosting options. There have been some changes over the summer, and some new providers who’ve come to our attention. As always, a disclaimer: This is not a “critical review” of the different options. Each option has its pros and cons, and every college media outlet has different needs and resources. If you want to know more about a particular option, contact the companies listed. I’d also encourage you to ask around at other college media outlets who are using these options.
I want to start off with the hosted options. All of these will cost money, usually a set-up fee (for training, design and database transfer) and then a monthly subscription fee (for maintenance, tech support and other costs of maintaining a server). The content management system (CMS) is hosted on server space provided by the company. The other side of that coin is that they do not necessarily exercise any control over the ad spaces on the site, or the ad revenue.
College Publisher: College Publisher just announced a new version of CP5 called CollegePublisher Pro. Since the last round-up, College Media Network changed ownership and updated its revenue sharing model for advertising. They will charge if you don’t have a certain amount of traffic to your web site. And they also offer a server option where you can park your WordPress install.
GetSNWorks: This is the home of the Gryphon CMS, and is run out of the offices of the State News at Michigan State, where the CMS was originally developed. The web site is sparse at the moment, but there is an e-mail address to contact them for more information. SEE THIS POST for some of the backstory about this “new” entrant into the field. There is a monthly subscription, and a start-up cost.
TownNews: TownNews is the content management system company that runs the online sites for newspapers in the Lee Enterprises newspaper chain. The CMS itself is called Blox. It is a hosted solution. There is a one-time setup fee, and a monthly subscription. The subscription fee varies based on the size of the news outlet.
School Newspapers Online: SNO started out as a solution for scholastic (aka high school) newspaper sites, and has expanded into the college market rapidly since last I wrote about this topic. They now list 58 college newspapers as clients. They offer a hosted WordPress solution. The costs are spelled out on their site: $600 for first year (including set-up) and $300/year after that.
Ellington CMS: The Ellington CMS, originally created for the Lawrence Journal-World’s web offerings, is another hosted service. Its college media penetration is not sizable. The system is built on top of the Django web framework. Update: This summer, Ellington was sold to ePublishing. You can read about the change here and here.
From the comments on the previous post, here are a couple of other options. I have no personal interaction with these systems. The information provided is from their web sites:
Metro Publisher: “Metro Publisher comes with a suite of tools designed to empower any publisher or media company, regardless of size, to build a credible website and online business. By tapping into Metro Publisher’s intuitive software, you will gain a wider audience and your online revenue will grow exponentially!”
Block Electronic News Network: “The Block Electronic News Network (BENN) provides Smaller Market Newspapers with a no cost state-of-the-art online infrastructure designed specifically for local community websites, and to create non-print centric revenue. We share the revenue we bring to you, and you keep the revenue you generate.”
Creative Circle Media Solutions: “We are a unique consulting firm, drawing much of our talent from top working media professionals. We can put together a team of specialists to help you with a wide range of design, content, workflow, management, production, advertising or technical needs. The result is guaranteed – top quality training, management and design services.
Uncertain:
When I wrote about this topic in 2010, Alloy, an advertising and marketing company that aims at the college market, had started providing a hosting solution similar to what CoPress provided. The set-up was much like what you would find on any commercial hosting service, except they hoped to offer some added benefits to college media in the future (like an ad network, for instance). The basic cost was $250/mo. plus a set-up fee. I am not certain that they are still providing this service, and my e-mail asking for further information has received no response yet. I will update as information is available. That about covers the hosted solutions that are out there in the college media market. I know of a few college media outlets that have partnered with a local professional newspaper to host their sites. But that situation varies so widely that it’s probably not an option for the majority of news sites.
The other option is to host your own content management system, whether using an off-campus server host, or an on-campus server. There are literally hundreds of hosting services out there, so I won’t even pretend to make a recommendation in that area. Most of them have a one-click install system for installing a variety of open-source software, for the less technically inclined. The most commonly used open-source (i.e., free) CMS’s are: 
WordPress: This seems to be the most popular open source platform for college media outlets. It’s highly extendable, relatively easy to use admin area with lots of options, and a number of premium themes which break the traditional blog-style format. It’s based in php and (normally) MySQL database. There is an extensive community of developers to help out if you need technical support.
Drupal: My impression is that Drupal has more popularity among professional news outlets. It’s also based in PHP and an SQL database, but has a steeper learning curve than WordPress. One of the things that makes this system popular is its emphasis on community site engagement, which it had long before WordPress incorporated those features. It also has a very active development community. The site has a list of case studies of web sites built on the platform.
Joomla!: Joomla! is a robust CMS that comes at site management from a different perspective than WordPress or Drupal, and it seems to have heavier adoption in other commercial arenas. At one time, the CMA web site ran on Mambo, the previous version of Joomla! and it was relatively easy to run the basic admin templates.
Finally, there is Django, which is a web framework and not specifically a CMS. Repeat, it’s not a CMS. It’s built on the Python programming language, and it is the framework that undergirds the Ellington CMS, for one. The framework is used to power a pretty impressive list of database-driven sites. It’s open source, but you’ll need a server space to host it
September 7, 2012 in General Media, social media
Sometimes it takes humor to get a point across. Here, Stephen Colbert skewers the talk about how many Tweets were flying during First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention.
This is something I’d call the “Wordle Effect.” Wordle makes pretty word clouds based on how often a word is used in a text. The most used words are not placed in any sort of order, or their relevance to other words noted. The graphic has no greater meaning than that, really. The same could be said for statistics about how many Tweets (or Facebook posts) were flying during a political speech. It’s interesting trivia, but nothing more.
July 27, 2012 in Content Management Systems, Gryphon, industry news, Media Companies - College Related, Websites
UPDATED AT 10:41 AM (CDT) WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Detroit Softworks, provider of the Gryphon CMS and hosted news platform, has shut down. The message above is all that remains of their website. They had approximately 15 client college news outlets for the hosted platform. However, the demise of DSW doesn’t mean the end of the Gryphon CMS. In fact, Gryphon is poised to be something of a phoenix this fall.
Omar Sofradzija, editorial adviser/permissions manager of The State News at Michigan State said Friday that the State News would be launching a new marketing effort for Gryphon in the next few weeks. The State News originally developed the CMS and licensed its use through DWS.
“With the end of Detroit Softworks, we feel like we have a product worth sharing with our peers,” he said. “We are looking this fall to offer (Gryphon) to additional clients.”
Sofradzija said the new home for the Gryphon CMS will be called SNworks. There’s no web site (or logo) at the moment, but you can follow them on Twitter, or check their Facebook Page for updates. Anyone interested in the platform can also contact Sofradzija at omars@getsnworks.com.
The company plans to have booths at ACP/CMA, CNBAM and WAUPM conferences coming up this fall.
In the meantime, this changes the calculus for CMS providers for college newspapers, and I’ll be updating my list soon.
July 20, 2012 in General Media, Mobile, software, Tech Talk, video
The UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism has released a mobile reporting guidebook with reviews and ratings for a variety of software and hardware. It’s available as a PDF and as an iBook. The iBook features sample clips and screencast videos from various software and some of the capture hardware. This is similar in some ways to the Mobile Reporting Tools Pocket Guide Will Sullivan and crew produced at the Reynolds Journalism Institute a while back.
The iBook version also showcases some of the things you can do with the interactive book format.
As Lauren Rabaino notes at 10,000 Words, it’s iPhone-specific. So if you have an Android, not so much, although some of the hardware and software is not device-specific. Students helped produce the guidebook.
This guidebook was the result of a mobile reporting class at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and is the work of Casey Capachi, Evan Wagstaff, Matt Sarnecki along with instructors Richard Koci Hernandez and Jeremy Rue.
April 16, 2012 in College Media, Content Management Systems, Tech Talk, Websites
UPDATE JULY 2012: Detroit Softworks is no longer in business.
It’s been two years since I did a round-up of hosting options for college news sites. In the wake of the recent discussion of the Online Pacemaker Finalists, I figured it was time to take another trip around the field to see what’s out there.
And, a disclaimer: This is not a “critical review” of the different options. Each option has its pros and cons, and every college media outlet has different needs and resources. If you want to know more about a particular option, contact the companies listed. I’d also encourage you to ask around at other college media outlets who are using these options.
I want to start off with the hosted options. All of these will cost money, usually a set-up fee (for training, design and database transfer) and then a monthly subscription fee (for maintenance, tech support and other costs of maintaining a server). The content management system (CMS) is hosted on server space provided by the company. The other side of that coin is that they do not necessarily exercise any control over the ad spaces on the site, or the ad revenue.
College Publisher: College Publisher just announced a new version of CP5 called CollegePublisher Pro. Since the last round-up, College Media Network changed ownership and updated its revenue sharing model for advertising. They will charge if you don’t have a certain amount of traffic to your web site. And they also offer a server option where you can park your WordPress install.
Detroit Softworks: Detroit Softworks hosts the Gryphon CMS, and has 15 client newspapers, according to a list on their website. There is a monthly subscription and a set-up fee for the service. It is a hosted solution, meaning the content is stored on DS servers. SEE THIS POST FOR UPDATED INFORMATION ABOUT GRYPHON CMS.
TownNews: TownNews is the content management system company that runs the online sites for newspapers in the Lee Enterprises newspaper chain. The CMS itself is called Blox. It is a hosted solution. There is a one-time setup fee, and a monthly subscription. The subscription fee varies based on the size of the news outlet.
School Newspapers Online: SNO started out as a solution for scholastic (aka high school) newspaper sites, and has expanded into the college market rapidly since last I wrote about this topic. They now list 58 college newspapers as clients. They offer a hosted WordPress solution. The costs are spelled out on their site: $600 for first year (including set-up) and $300/year after that.
Ellington CMS: The Ellington CMS, originally created for the Lawrence Journal-World’s web offerings, is another hosted service. Its college media penetration is not sizable. The system is built on top of the Django web framework.
Uncertain:
When I wrote about this topic in 2010, Alloy, an advertising and marketing company that aims at the college market, had started providing a hosting solution similar to what CoPress provided. The set-up was much like what you would find on any commercial hosting service, except they hoped to offer some added benefits to college media in the future (like an ad network, for instance). The basic cost was $250/mo. plus a set-up fee. I am not certain that they are still providing this service, and my e-mail asking for further information has received no response yet. I will update as information is available.
That about covers the hosted solutions that are out there in the college media market. I know of a few college media outlets that have partnered with a local professional newspaper to host their sites. But that situation varies so widely that it’s probably not an option for the majority of news sites.
The other option is to host your own content management system, whether using an off-campus server host, or an on-campus server. There are literally hundreds of hosting services out there, so I won’t even pretend to make a recommendation in that area. Most of them have a one-click install system for installing a variety of open-source software, for the less technically inclined.
The most commonly used open-source (i.e., free) CMS’s are:
WordPress: This seems to be the most popular open source platform for college media outlets. It’s highly extendable, relatively easy to use admin area with lots of options, and a number of premium themes which break the traditional blog-style format. It’s based in php and (normally) MySQL database. There is an extensive community of developers to help out if you need technical support.
Drupal: My impression is that Drupal has more popularity among professional news outlets. It’s also based in PHP and an SQL database, but has a steeper learning curve than WordPress. One of the things that makes this system popular is its emphasis on community site engagement, which it had long before WordPress incorporated those features. It also has a very active development community. The site has a list of case studies of web sites built on the platform.
Joomla!: Joomla! is a robust CMS that comes at site management from a different perspective than WordPress or Drupal, and it seems to have heavier adoption in other commercial arenas. At one time, the CMA web site ran on Mambo, the previous version of Joomla! and it was relatively easy to run the basic admin templates.
Finally, there is Django, which is a web framework and not specifically a CMS. Repeat, it’s not a CMS. It’s built on the Python programming language, and it is the framework that undergirds the Ellington CMS, for one. The framework is used to power a pretty impressive list of database-driven sites. It’s open source, but you’ll need a server space to host it
April 10, 2012 in Content Management Systems, contests, Websites
The Associated Collegiate Press announced their list of 2012 online Pacemaker finalists yesterday. There are 55 finalists, and lots of familiar names. Congratulations to all the nominees.
Beyond that, I’m always interested in what’s going on under the hood, in the “CMS Wars!” So, I went through the entire list, looked at lots of source code and page footers to find clues, and identified all but four of the sites’ CMS’s. Previously, we looked at these numbers from 2008 and 2009. In 2010, I commented on the CMS’s used by the winners.
The results for the finalists this year are below, and somewhat astounding:
By CMS
| WordPress | 29 | 53% | |
| College Publisher | 2 | 4% | |
| TownNews (Blox) | 3 | 5% | |
| Detroit Softworks | 4 | 7% | |
| dotnetnuke | 1 | 2% | |
| Surreal | 1 | 2% | |
| Ellington | 3 | 5% | |
| HTML (handcoded) | 2 | 4% | |
| Django/Custom | 5 | 9% | |
| Unknown | 4 | 7% |
WordPress powers 53 percent of the finalists, far more than any other CMS. Meanwhile, College Media Network, once the largest player in college media site hosting, is only powering two of the finalists.
There are obvious qualifiers in this data: it’s highly selective, non-representative of the broader college media web environment, and, as I’ve said before, the best CMS won’t put lipstick on bad journalism.
Also, WordPress is an open-source CMS that you host on your own server location, as is Joomla and dotnetnuke. TownNews (Blox) and Detroit SoftWorks (Gryphon) have hosted, proprietary CMS’s and cost significantly more. Ellington is also a pricey system. Surreal CMS is a hybrid, cloud-based CMS that costs a small amount per month. And django is a web framework, not a CMS.
This is not a knock on any of the systems, either. I’m from the “whatever works best for you” CMS school. They all have pros and cons.
BUT, here’s an interesting bit I did discern from this small sample of college journalism outlets’ web sites.
Smaller outlets are more invested in WordPress.
Since the CMS is “free” (you still have to pay for or arrange hosting and tech support), it’s more financially feasible for small sites. As you can see from the chart below, the larger the enrollment, the more likely the outlet was to have another system beside WordPress.
Larger sites are more likely to spend on a hosted solution or a custom framework.
Notice how the penetration of WordPress goes down at the larger newpapers? Detroit Softworks shows up only among schools with over 20,000 enrollment, TownNews only above 10,000. (Disclaimer: The Daily Eastern News online site runs on TownNews’ system). These schools are more likely to attract programmer/journalists, and also more likely to have the funds to invest in one of the hosted suppliers.
Now, this is little more than a thing of interest, and something to peek at a population to see what’s going on. It would be good to have a look at all the CMS’s of the news outlets that submitted entries. I’ve reached out to Logan Aimone at ACP, and although I can’t look at which schools entered, he’s going to see about getting me the data on CMS use. I’ll keep you posted about that.
And one final note about this: Whether you are a Pacemaker finalist or not, how about giving your site visitors a way to find out what system you’re using? Even just a note in the meta of the source code. It is frustrating to have to peck through playing Sherlock Homepage when your coders rename the wp-content folders, or you take out the metadata that indicates you’re using a CMS (the hosted systems are more easy to detect). The best site for this was the Maneater at the University of Missouri, which had an actual colophon! If you’ve done your own system, maybe put it on the “About” page, with the name of the developers who worked on it.
Here’s a spreadsheet of all the finalists and the CMS they use, where available.
February 29, 2012 in career talk, social media
I know you’ve probably heard it here plenty of times, but the drumbeat for online journalism skills continues to grow louder from every professional journalist I’ve spoken to or listened to at a conference or workshop this year.
When I was at the Mid-America Press Institute’s “Managing Change” workshop recently, one quote brought this back to mind. It was from Alan Herzberger, digital managing editor of The Oklahoman.
Here’s what I tweeted at the time:
Herzberger said the Oklahoman expects new hires to be active on Facebook and Twitter, and to have some followers (for more on the Oklahoman’s social media strategy, read the story at mpinews.org, along with others from the workshop).
That dovetails with something Steve Yelvington wrote recently that I though deserved some attention: The new baseline skill set, which includes this skill:
Be prepared to use social networking to further your job goals. This includes listening, engaging and promoting your work.
There are a lot of web sites out there that will give you advice about how to achieve success in social media these days. My only advice is this: Get to it!
If you’re not using social media to connect with other journalists, with potential readers, with industry sources, you’re flailing at your journalistic responsibility.
When we started this blog, one of the things we talked about early on was that news is now a conversation (that’s not my terminology, but it describes the way news has evolved). It’s more true now than ever.
