» Papers/presentations

Weblogs are, in fact, mini content management systems

staci baird — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:23:58 +0000

Blogs as a Student Content Management System was presented by Professor Rick Musser (University of Kansas) and I at the Media Convergence: Cooperation, Collisions, and Change conference at Brigham Young University in fall 2005. It was published in the The Journal of Electronic Publishing Fall 2007 edition.

Although some of the technical information is outdated, the message still rings true… blogs are excellent content management systems for managing student work with little or no technical skills needed by students or faculty.

Trapper Keeper

staci baird — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:20:30 +0000

I’m giving a “lecture” on content management to Professor Stovall’s web journalism class at UT Tuesday.

Last Wednesday, over half-price burgers at Cumberlands, I told Jay I thought it might be “cute” to start the lecture by talking about Trapper Keepers. You know, the original content management systems. So then Jay asked if I had ever seen the South Park Trapper Keeper episode.

No.

But of course, I bought it from iTunes today. I still haven’t watched the whole thing, but damn, it was funny. The basic jist – Cartman’s Trapper Keeper tries to take over the world.

Anyway, Jay thought it might be fun to play a little of the episode in class… we’ll see… maybe a clip or two.

Once I win the auction on eBay, this Trapper Keeper will be mine.

I must have got Jay to thinkin’ about content management because today he sent me a couple of relevant blog articles… Boxes posted by Greg Storey on Airbags and Redefining content management posted by D. Keith Robinson on Vitamin.

I’ve decided to jump into the conversation and lay down my two cents.

You see, I agree with Robinson, content management is not the same as content management systems. Which kinda leads back to my Trapper Keeper analogy. Just because you have a system, doesn’t mean you’re managing your content. You can store notes, handouts, homework, even pencils, pens and erasers in your Trapper Keeper. It’s your personal content management system. Content comes in and content goes out. But, unlike Cartman’s high-tech Trapper Keeper, it’s up to you to organize it, as little or as much as you like…

Is your system pretty?
Is your system efficient?
What would make your system more useful?

Hmmm…perhaps actually managing your content.

Content management systems (CMS) are great. Especially for the anal retentive organizers, such as myself. A CMS can manage workflow and processes, organize content, provide pre-production services, indexes and archives.

I define a CMS like this:
CMS = People + Processes + Data

People are reporters, editors, photographers, designers and/or developers.

Processes include reporting, editing, approving and publishing.

Data, and I really mean meta data (data that describes other data like headlines, bylines, datelines, categories, which all describe a story) is what journalists should be concerned about.

You see, the power of computers and the internet lie in the ability to organize, sort and search. That’s where a CMS comes in handy. Well, a CMS that utilizes databases and dynamic, searchable content. This could get oh-so-technical oh-so-fast, but I don’t want it to.

What I want is to educate journalists about their role in content management and online journalism. Most of them ain’t developers, and ain’t ever gonna be. They don’t know C++ from PHP from CSS. So I have to agree with Doc Searls Newspapers 2.0 “your job is journalism, not container cargo.”

Let’s go back to the Trapper Keeper. You’re a journalist, how would you organize it? Would you care who was going to use it? What if you were going to let your classmate borrow your Trapper Keeper because he got the mumps and missed class for two weeks? You’d want to provide him with a neat, well-organized Trapper Keeper with easy-to-find information. You’d at least want him to appreciate all the hard work you put into taking notes, right? All the pretty high-lighting in yellow, pink and lavender.

You see, I want my CMS but I want my freedom too.

I want neatly organized and searchable data, but I also want the freedom to choose how I tell a story – maybe with pictures and graphs and charts and audio and video. Or maybe not. And maybe I want to be able to design the layout of the story. Oh no! I said it. Design. Well, what do I know about design? Not the first thing really. But I hate cookie cutters. And, I think I know how to tell a story, so I would like to use my journalism skills to do that. Is that so wrong? I’m not talking about completely redesigning a news page with some hideous color scheme and background music ala MySpace. I’m talking about having the freedom to decide where to drop a pull quote, where to break up the text with a sub head and where to drop an ordered list. Cut and paste if you must, but give your online journalists an opportunity to move things around, drop in some basic HTML and CSS, and once in a while, consider producing a special web-only report that plays to the strength of the medium. (See chicagocrime.org).

Here is where we, as journalists need to be able to talk the talk, walk the walk and have a conversation with our developers. Why oh why can’t we work hand in hand on the next wave of CMS? As part of a journalism education, we should be discussing data mining, search engines, keywords, etc. It’s not so scary. Personally, I think we need more people like me. (Not to toot my own horn or anything but…) We need journalists who aren’t afraid of technology and thinking about technology and things like databases and content management systems.

Our job is journalism. So, what is journalism? Maybe we need to think about how journalism applies to the internet.

As a journalism educator, my goal would be to educate journalists about how to apply good writing skills to new media. Reporting and writing really aren’t as easy as some people believe. There is an art to really good writing – tight, concise writing – and it’s more important than ever for today’s new media. I think we should be training journalists how to think about writing headlines for RSS, title tags for links that boost searches and web-standard HTML and CSS. If you want to be an online journalist you better know something about your medium. It’s different. But it’s not all technical. I don’t believe it’s for every one, but neither is newspaper reporting or anchoring the 10 o’clock news. Some people, like my former students, Meagan and Natalie, will take the challenge and run with it…

GIS in journalism

staci baird — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 17:26:31 +0000

News as it is traditionally understood is currently undergoing a profound change. The customary elements of newsworthiness—conflict, impact, timeliness and uniqueness—are being superseded by a demand for hyper-local news. Audiences now demand both more content and customized content. The clarion call in the words of one media consumer is, “I want what I want when I want it.” Customers are no longer satisfied with their parents’ newspapers and network newscasts.

If audience needs are to be served, location becomes the key factor in hyper-local news. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) represent an important way to categorize, organize, and disseminate data into news content for an increasingly demanding audience.

Blog is a four-letter word

staci baird — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 17:07:24 +0000

Published in the Winter 2005-06 edition of J-Links.

It’s amazing the kind of reaction you can get from a journalism professor with the mere mention of the word “blog.” It sends shivers down their spine; you can just tell. But what is it about blogs and blogging that makes journalism professors recoil? Is it the free-wheeling whimsical style? The use of slang and informal writing?

Here at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications in the Multimedia Newsroom, we’ve been using blogs to manage multimedia reporting projects since Fall 2004. Blogs are fairly harmless when you call them — and use them as —content management systems. However, Multimedia Newsroom Director Rick Musser and I also felt that giving online producers the opportunity to blog – for real and in all its opinionated glory – would give students valuable experience in writing and communicating online. The online producers have to blog after their news shift as part of class requirements. Their posts provide us with valuable insight into the day-to-day triumphs and tribulations in the multimedia newsroom. Blogging also gives students a chance to celebrate and vent. But there also is a more serious side to class blogging. Each week, the online producers must write essays to post on the class blog (http://ehub.journalism.ku.edu)as well as their own personal blogs. These blog postings explore some of the current trends in the media and, in particular, online journalism.

The online producers learn what makes a good blog entry: a strong point of view, timeliness, humor, still images or video, and links. Lots and lots of links. This semester, the class spent time discussing how they could bring more eyeballs to their blogs. Next semester, we are considering requiring the online producers not only to read other blogs but actually subscribe to their feeds and comment on those blogs. One of the most important lessons these students can learn from blogging is how to drive traffic and build an audience. They may not be considered A-List bloggers, but these budding journalists are learning what it takes to get noticed online.

What Defines Convergence?

staci baird — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 17:13:27 +0000

Published in the Dec. 8, 2005 edition of The Convergence Newsletter from Newsplex at the University of South Carolina.

Integrating multimedia – text, graphics, audio and video – means converging traditional media for a mass audience. However, convergence means more than throwing together a smorgasbord of broadcast and print elements on the Web and declaring them a finished product. Convergence means approaching a story from different angles. Reporters and editors must be able to gather and disseminate information for a variety of platforms, and tomorrow’s journalists must be willing and able to work with all forms of media. The key to successful convergence is not focusing on a specific product, but focusing instead on the process.

Established media companies, as well as university journalism schools, struggle to implement convergence. It’s not easy to facilitate collaboration between broadcast and print journalists. At the University of Kansas William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, the Stan and Madeline Stauffer Multimedia Newsroom serves as the conduit for collaboration. The newsroom was designed as a classroom, news center and training lab with one goal in mind – to create an environment that involves all of the school’s converged curriculum.

Our Multimedia Newsroom provides the mindset necessary to make convergence work. At the KU School of Journalism we have an independent, student-run newspaper, the University Daily Kansan and a weekly magazine, Jayplay. We also have KJHK radio news and KUJH-TV News. To some degree, these media organizations work together in the Multimedia Newsroom. For example, the Kansan often shoots, edits and posts its own video to Kansan.com. And, KUJH-TV posts text stories and graphics alongside audio and video on the tv.ku.edu Web site.

The convergence-centered curriculum emphasizes an education in all aspects of multimedia. We want our graduates to have the skills necessary to work in all media – print, broadcast and online. We strive to prepare every news student in the basic skills of text, video and online reporting before they move on to advanced media classes. The faculty believe our students will have to work with a variety of platforms, no matter what medium they choose as their primary emphasis. Students also need to be prepared to traverse between different media.

However, reality does not always deliver on expectations and opportunities.

Journalists should look at convergence as an opportunity wrapped in challenge. That is, convergence promises the opportunity to unshackle multi-media from traditional constraints and reach new audiences. Nevertheless, in order to utilize a converged medium, it is essential for journalists to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the various media.

Our students take multimedia reporting to learn the basic skills of journalism. In addition, they practice editing video and posting stories to the Web. Beyond basic skills, it is necessary to know how to best tell the story. Some news is better explained in print, some needs video in order to show the story, and some needs the interactivity of an online story. The Multimedia Newsroom provides a facility for students to interact and choose the best platform for telling their news story.

Many academics will argue that teaching convergence “waters down” the curriculum and fails to teach the basics of writing and reporting. However, I have seen many students graduate with a better appreciation for different kinds of news. Flexibility and the ability to accommodate change are prerequisites to survival in today’s changing mediascape. As technology evolves, so must budding journalists in order to thrive in the news and information business of the future.

Today journalists must weed out bad information, organize the good and package content for presentation to a variety of audiences on a variety of platforms. This is the future job for which journalists should be prepared.

The KU Journalism School will continue to progress in response to changes in digital platforms and new content models. Convergence is a fact of life at the William Allen White School of Journalism.

To see our program in action, visit the eHub newsroom blog, found online at http://ehub.journalism.ku.edu. This blog takes a look at some of the challenges facing journalists today and documents daily life in the Stauffer Multimedia Newsroom.

Read more from The Convergence Newsletter>>>