By Erica Perel, newsroom adviser, The Daily Tar Heel

President Obama visited the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus Tuesday afternoon to give a policy speech on student loans and “slow-jam the news” on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

The big events happened early in the traditional  daily news cycle: students lined up to get into Obama’s speech starting at 5 a.m. before filing through security. The policy speech happened about 1 p.m., with the Jimmy Fallon taping immediately after. The presidential motorcade left Chapel Hill by late afternoon. Because of the timing — and because political junkies and the vast UNC alumni network would be following events from afar — the student editors at The Daily Tar Heel, the independent student newspaper, knew this story had to be covered online in real time.

Staff posted stories, videos, photographs and blog posts to present the sites and sounds of the day. They used the social networking aggregator Storify to present what people were tweeting. And then used Facebook and Twitter to promote our work and help drive up traffic to about double normal levels.

And it all happened on the last production day of the school year.

Here are lessons from the day. Not everyone will get a chance to cover a presidential visit, though if your school is in swing state, this could be your year. Even so, these lessons apply to almost any big news.

Make a plan, then plan some more

Big stories don’t always give notice. But elections, big sporting events and protests usually do. For the Obama visit, the editors started planning for the day’s online coverage at least two days ahead. There was a staffer in charge of writing blog posts. Someone in charge of getting press credentials. Someone to monitor social media. Etc. The night before, photo editors held a meeting with photographers to make sure they knew exactly what was expected of them in terms of sending photos. Photo Editor Allison Russell said her instructions were simple: She told them their photo coverage had to be the best thing they had ever shot. No pressure.

Make sure someone is back at the office coordinating the effort

We’ve made the mistake before of creating an online coverage plan and expecting it to just happen. But it won’t without one or two people in charge of corralling that effort and taking care of details. That job includes:

• Communicating with folks in the field.
• Making sure all content is tagged and weighted correctly so the home page displays well.
• Editing stories for content and accuracy.
• Editing pictures.
• Using social media to promote new content. Twitter is great, of course, but don’t forget Facebook. In the analytics screenshot below, see that much more traffic comes from Facebook.

 Use as many different storytelling avenues as possible, but remember that they have to go up quickly

Stories and photos are easy to post, but videos often lag behind because of the lengthy editing process. In a big news situation, the video needs to go up fast.

On Tuesday, for this video, Multimedia Editor Zach Evans posted what he had early, then re-edited and reposted when another videographer’s footage from Air Force One was ready.

Online Editor Sarah Glen has played around with Storify for big-story coverage before, so she was in a great position to post what was the definitive collection of tweets from Obama’s speech with lightning speed. Sarah worked to collect the tweets through the speech, so it was able to go live immediately. Other lessons from Sarah’s Storify:

• Search the official hashtag for the event, but do other searches to make sure you aren’t missing good tweets from people who aren’t using it.
• Include as many picture tweets from people using Instagram or other photo apps as you can.
• Include a mix of student journalists’ more serious tweets and tweets from non-journalists. Look for people using funny hashtags or otherwise tweeting with personality.

Promote your work and pay attention to analytics to learn what works

Use the obvious avenues to promote content — Twitter, Facebook, email blasts and Google-optimized headlines — as well as any non-obvious tools. But make sure to pay attention to analytics to see how they’re working and pay attention to where traffic is coming from.

At the DTH, staffers use Google analytics as well as Chartbeat Publishing real-time analytics. The real-time analytics are more valuable in this situation, because they can watch traffic go up or down based on the promotional work they’re doing.

The DTH has had Chartbeat, and then the more advanced Chartbeat Publishing, for about 13 months, and have found it to be a tremendous teaching tool. Watching the numbers go up and down helps students understand what drives online traffic. It also encourages them to post more frequently online when they can see how many people are reading it.

Here are Chartbeat screenshots from this morning – a more typical weekday, and from Tuesday afternoon.

According to Google analytics, the site had 51,474 page views Tuesday. The previous Tuesday, there were 27,014.

Have fun

Journalists live for these days. Enjoy the ride.

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In college media, moving a website can mean actually moving what computer runs your website or changing what content management system (CMS) you use to run your site.  Sometimes, it is both.  In either case, moving a website is NEVER easy or simple.  It can be frustrating and technically challenging as a college media organization while also crucial to your presence.  Add a dollop of poor customer support or lack of student know-how and you may wish for the old letter press days.

Related articles

• Web options for college publications, 2012 edition (collegemediainnovation.org)
• Thinking of Changing Your CMS? Consider These Tips First (contentmarketinginstitute.com)
• CMS Basics and Advanced HTML Editor 3 (dmxzone.com)

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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.

Hosted Options

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.

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.

Host Your Own

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.

Other

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

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13. Breaking News

Recognizes excellence in digital coverage throughout a 72-hour period of an unplanned breaking-news event or development. Judges will weigh evidence of exceptional journalism under deadline pressure within the 72-hour period following the original event. They will also weigh clear presentation through user interface, interactivity, use of social tools and creative use of the medium. An entry will consist of a single piece, series or package on the same event or development.

14. Multimedia Feature Presentation

Recognizes excellence in telling a story to an online audience using multimedia techniques, including interactive graphics, Flash, photography, audio and video. In addition to the quality of the journalism and creative use of the medium, emphasis will be placed on the artful blending of multiple media into a single user interface.

15. Interactive Advertising and Media

This category recognizes outstanding Interactive Advertising & Media. Entries in this category may include media buys and placements in two different media types, one of which must be online; creative use of a website or associated online tools in a media/marketing strategy; or innovative use of online social media within an advertising or marketing campaign.

16. Mobile Apps / Plug-ins

Best use of a mobile app or website plug-in. This category will evaluate the use or creation of a mobile app or website plug-in. These may be commercially available (paid or free) apps or plug-ins, however special consideration will be given to student created apps/plug-ins.

17. Audio Slideshow

Recognizes excellence in combining photographic images with audio to create an enhanced story. Judges will look for strong imagery and strong audio storytelling that integrate well together. Audio must include elements of the story and not just be a musical soundtrack.

18. Best Web Presence

Recognizes excellence in overall design, content delivery, multimedia, special projects, cross-platform integration and interactivity for a student media Web site.

Details about the other categories, and how to enter, can be found at the CMA website.

Deadline is June 1, 2012

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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 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.

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