An ode to CoPress… and a look ahead
It was a little more than a year ago when, as online editor at Central Michigan Life, I was tasked with reconstructing cm-life.com from the ground up.
Since we were one of dozens of student newspapers that used College Publisher, we first considered upgrading from 4.0 to 5.0, which would effectively redesign the site and give it a fresh look. But because of several limitations with this move and other opportunities out there, we put that on hold, rode out the rest of the spring semester and used the summer to explore our options.
That was when I came in contact with CoPress, a group dedicated to building student newspaper Web sites, for the first time.
We first heard about CoPress when CMU colleague of mine, David Veselenak, met Greg Linch at a Society of Professional Journalists engagement in Indiana earlier in the year. Once David told me about it, we examined their offerings and, to put it simply, we were excited. I remember looking at sites such as the Miami Hurricane and imagining the possibilities for Central Michigan Life — having full control of our content and where it is played to best serve our audience.
One summer later, we were able to make that a reality. Our site was redesigned in time for Back-to-School launch. The impact was staggering; Web advertising jumped 300 percent, traffic jumped about 10-15 percent (particularly on our non-production days since we publish thrice weekly) and we introduced live chats, livestreaming, extensive multimedia projects and much more to our site.
None of this could have been done without the help of Daniel Bachhuber and the rest of CoPress.
The end of an era… or is it?
On Feb. 16, CoPress, comprised of a team of young and extremely intelligent journalists and innovators, announced it was closing down operations.
In a word, I was shocked. As a young journalist and five-year veteran of a student newspaper, I take pride in college-level work and realize the importance of the education one can receive in a student newsroom. That is where journalists are born, where young minds are cultivated and where the curious grow hungrier. We all start there and, in some way or another, it impacts the way we view journalism and how much passion we have for it.
People rarely look at journalism these days with optimism. On paper, it’s for good reason. But it means we, as young journalists, have another job to do. With work in this field growing thin, buyouts numbering and news organizations closing, even, never has it been more integral for these student newsrooms to move forward and embrace a life off the printed pages. And it all starts with their Web presentation and their multimedia and social media efforts online.
This, for Central Michigan Life and for dozens of other student newspapers, was where CoPress came in. While I’d like to think that I, along with the help of several other journalists at Life, were instrumental in putting together cm-life.com, I remember asking dozens of questions to Daniel, to the CoPress forums and trying to get feedback from everybody I could during the summer when developing the new site.
It is impossible for me to imagine where the site would be without the answers I received.
One thing that CoPress did that I always appreciated: It built a network around itself with other student journalists willing to take the next step. When you had a question, were looking for input or had an issue to discuss, you could talk to dozens of people with your passion rather than just two or three. Participation is essential in journalism, and it’s especially essential if you want to become better at serving your community. CoPress made that easier. It wasn’t afraid to extend the discussion elsewhere and take ideas from other student journalists.
Where we can go from here
Now that CoPress is closing down, I feel that it’s all the more important that student newsrooms and journalists committed to moving forward and transitioning to modern-day news-gathering stay connected, network, help each other and set an example for the rest of the industry.
So many student newspapers have made incredible strides over the past year with their Web presence. For example, I love what the Minnesota Daily has done with its Facebook application and the Mustang Daily with its hot topic pages. Student editors, reporters and programmers alike should come together regularly and discuss these ideas. Show off your latest project(s) and idea(s), critique others and discuss important issues and questions.
Of course, this is already being done to some degree in several places. On Twitter alone, Monday’s #journchat, Wednesday’s #wjchat and especially Sunday’s #collegejourn chat are great starts. My hope, however, is more student journalists get involved with these and engage with others. I’m particularly encouraged by the student journalists nearby at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Mich. Two of them are running a Web site, College Newsroom, that seeks to talk with other journalists on issues. I saw several others in Monday’s #journchat. That’s the type of involvement we need more of.
To those at CoPress: Thank you for everything you’ve done for Central Michigan Life and dozens of other college newsrooms, and good luck. I’m really looking forward to interacting with you guys and working with you as we try to make journalism better.
Tip sheet for aspiring journalists, Twitter page and other things I’ve been working on
It’s been awhile since I updated this, so I thought I’d write up a snapshot of what exactly I’ve been up to the past month or so.
On the online front, we have an online editor at Central Michigan Life — Dave Veselenak, who was managing editor last fall. This makes it a lot easier on me to focus on playing the editor in chief role — managing the staff and making sure the paper looks good and has good journalistic content. But it also helps to have another mind thinking Web an how we can use it to our advantage.
One thing we’ve done to begin the semester is built a Twitter page. Now, when you click on the Twitter icon on the right side of the CM Life site, it takes you to cm-life.com/twitter, a page that 1) shows a feed of the Twitter list “@cmlife/staff” and 2) centralizes all accounts for CM Life and its current editorial staff. I realize the “What we’re saying” box is obnoxiously big, but we haven’t quite figured out how to code the widget to float it right just yet. (If you know, tell me!) But the main goal, obviously, is to promote Twitter like we promote Facebook with the Fan Box — make it noticeable, and make sure people have a convenient outlet to engage with you.
Other things we’re covering, or will cover very soon:
- We’re using a new landing page: University Budget, which covers all stories this semester relating to CMU’s budget, which is expected to be cut anywhere between 3 to 9 percent within each cost center.
- We’re increasing use of the Digital Roundtable, our live chat series. At 8 p.m. Thursday, we’re bringing in CMU’s Police Chief, Bill Yeagley, to speak with us and with readers who wish to log in. We’re hoping to bring in interim President Kathy Wilbur, President-designate George Ross, Athletic Director Dave Heeke and more as the semester goes on. The more public officials, the more discussion, the better!
- Hopefully, we’ll finally get e-mail editions going again. This was popular with our readers when we ran College Publisher 4.0 and one of our biggest caveats when switching to WordPress. But it looks like we can move forward with that.
- We’ve had the Text Alert feature on our site since it launched, but I’m hoping to promote that a bit more and using it a bit more often than we do right now.
- Coming soon: A Central Michigan Life iPhone app? Time will tell on that one; Some of us at CMU are looking into the possibility. We do have a mobile version of the site, but not an effective one.
- I’m still working on the CM Life Online Handbook. The goal is to have it done and printed before I graduate. It’s basically going to be a comprehensive guide on using WordPress and the CM Life site, strategies and how to work with it in conjunction with multimedia and social media. About 10 pages of it are done, quite a few more to go.
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Another thing I did, particularly Monday, is write up a quick tip sheet for aspiring journalists in CMU’s journalism program (mainly new CM Life reporters). It’s important for us in particular to build up young talent because we have a lot of senior graduating in May (including me). So I wanted to come up with some general tips on how to move ahead, how to get better and what should lead to internships and jobs. I didn’t get too much into the meat of being a journalist (such as investigative work and things like that), mainly because that instinct should come over time with class work and experience. I just figure these are things journalism students can work on right away in building a brand, staying ahead on the field and such.
I will update again pretty soon on some other things. I have to catch up on Google Reader one of these days, anyway!
Eight things your college newsroom needs to change (if it hasn’t already)
I spent a lot of today thinking about my college career and how the times have changed. In particular, Central Michigan Life has changed a lot in the 4.5 years I have spent there as a young journalist. Philosophies are different, mentalities are progressing and new trends are taking form while old ones are dying.
This year has been a real transition year for CM Life, and it’s going to continue into the spring. It got me thinking about what college newsrooms need to be doing and, in particular, what old mentalities need to be brushed aside. I know I’ve probably forgotten quite a few things here, but these are the eight main points that came to mind (will update with more if need be):
1. Requiring those employed in your newsroom to be journalism majors (or even minors).
My hope is no college newsroom in the country is doing this. Some of CM Life’s better writers and editors over the years were not journalism majors. And these days, it is best for young journalists to focus their class concentration in other areas (political science, philosophy, psychology, English to name a few) than to spend valuable class time on journalism. Your real journalism education comes from working at your student newspaper, not by taking a class on the upside-down pyramid of writing a news story. And chances are, your professors could still be living in the old, traditional journalism world that will not prepare you for when you graduate.
2. Not encouraging young journalists to get experience in other areas.
Your college newsroom should encourage every young journalist to get experience in any platform, whether it is a reporter wanting a crack at photography/videography or a videographer looking to work with Web site management. Remember that one of your goals as a student newspaper is to train young journalists in ways classrooms could never do. Don’t be afraid of inevitable mistakes. Give everyone a shot at experience they could use in the real world — a jack-of-all-trades journalist is the journalist that will get the internships and jobs.
3. Having one person — your online editor — post all content and conduct all management of your publication’s Web site.
The days of the Web being an afterthought in your college newsroom are over. You should have a Web-first mentality and work flow across your entire newsroom — for starters, have your news editors post news stories, your sports editors post sports stories and so on. And all of them need to be thinking about SEO’d headlines, keywords, tags and excerpts. They could use that Web experience for their resume, anyway. As for your online editor, keep him or her and have them focus on other tasks such as community building via social media, aggregating stories and multimedia together and conducting live chats and discussion.
4. Maintaining a strict policy on reporters and editors participating in the online comments section.
Wondering why your comments section is turning into a ghetto of spam, personal attacks and other statements and accusations that provide little toward an intelligent discussion? Much of it may have to do with that ban you’re placing on your young journalists posting in the comments section. A few things happen when you allow employees the freedom to post: More questions are answered, more statements are clarified and, more importantly, your loyal readers are given more incentive to participate in the discussion. Knowing other people are passionate about the discussion and are reading what you have to say is the ultimate incentive to participation on key issues and stories.
5. Using social media (Twitter/Facebook) as nothing more than a regurgitation of your online stories.
These are your community platforms — especially in college, where every student and their mother is using Facebook. Don’t use these tools to “stay hip” and just link to your stories. Incite discussion. Answer questions. Clarify statements. Provide quick updates on developing stories. Encourage readers to post content, photos, etc. on your Facebook fan page. One great way to encourage these uses is by using your print publication to promote (i.e. select several tweets to print for “Tweet of the Week,” something we’ve done at CM Life every Wednesday publication). After all, chances are, your print product is your best promotional tool for your online product.
6. Waiting to post time-relevant stories until the next morning to coincide with print publication.
In this fast information age, I don’t want to wait until Wednesday morning to find out what happened at a 2 p.m. Tuesday event. I don’t care if you’re planning on the coverage making your front page — your story needs to go up when it is relevant, and that means when it is done and edited, not scheduled for the following morning. If you are that worried about your print publication being “spoiled” by your online presentation, find other ways to keep your print publication relevant. (In the case of the event, have the reporter write a second-day perspective piece… or put something more relevant on your front.)
7. Refusing to aggregate and link to outside sources in your stories online.
Pretending there is no outside world on your Web site is not a way to go about making your online product successful. Give your readers a chance to learn more from other sources and to take in other perspective on the story at hand because, for one thing, it’s safe to assume they have a broad interest in what they are reading. Watch NYU’s Jay Rosen’s explanation on the ethic of the link for more on this. One easy solution? Require your reporters to include two links with every story they write, in addition to quoted sources. Your goal should be to give your readers everything they could possibly ask for. Every unanswered question/clarification is a failure for a journalist.
8. Looking at a “finished” project and saying, “It’s good enough.”
Here’s a general one for you. If you find yourself saying “It’s good enough,” it’s probably not good enough. Always look for ways to make your college newsroom better, internally or externally. You are in a field of study that practically requires people to adapt and change on a consistent basis. What works now may not work three months from now. Stay on top of that, look for new ways to make progress and, most of all, get better at informing the public by whatever means possible.
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This is by no means a comprehensive list. There are a lot of little things college newsrooms could change, if they haven’t already. Have ideas? Please leave me a comment, or tweet it at me. I’ll be glad to add any other submissions you have.
Central Michigan Life’s five Web goals revisited
Earlier this semester (on Sept. 16), I wrote a blog post detailing five major goals I had for Central Michigan Life’s new Web site and its integration into our newsroom.
For those new to my blog, we launched a redesigned cm-life.com on Aug. 20, switching from College Publisher to WordPress’s content management system, with the help of CoPress. Since launching the new Web site, we have been working as a staff to take advantage of what we can do online and how we can build community using today’s technologies rather than putting too much focus on our print product.
Overall, it’s been a successful semester in terms of getting everybody used to the new Web-first mindset. We’ve had much more real-time stories and breaking news posted and, to some extense, an expanded multimedia presence. We’re also making strides in the use of social media, although we are addressing a few shortcomings in that area with the addition of an online editor next semester. But more on that later.
Here are each of the goals I set in September, and their progress:
1) Building a Facebook following and taking advantage of it.
The first part of this goal was the easiest. We began the semester (mid-August) with a little more than 100 fans on our Facebook site. When I posted my five goals in mid-September, we had 463. As of writing this post Sunday night, we have 2,014.
Our staff (including our advertising side) made a decent effort into getting people to fan our Facebook page and trying to reach goals of 1,000 and 1,500 earlier this semester. But what really worked was having the Facebook Fan Box on the Web site, in decent view (see the photo). Part of building a new branch of your Web operation is making sure people know about it, and this definitely put it in prominent view for many of our Web viewers.
Where we will continue to work on next semester is in the second part of the goal — taking advantage of Facebook. While we made sure to update the page regularly with stories and discussions, it wasn’t as consistent as it could have been, and I’d like to see more interaction among users in terms of not only conversation, but also posting links/photos/etc. Part of that is going to come from giving our readers incentive to interact with us on Facebook, so we have to tap into what they want to see and talk about.
2) Start bi-weekly CoverItLive discussions featuring public officials and/or student representatives
While we never got the ball rolling on the bi-weekly part of this goal, we did begin using CoverItLive on the news side, calling it the Digital Roundtable. We held one discussion Oct. 5 with our Student Government Association President and Vice President, and we held another two weeks later with three administrators — our Dean of Students, our Director of Student Life and our Director of Academic Advising and Assistance.
Both discussions went fairly well, despite being late in promoting both prominently in our newspaper. There were some big issues to discuss in both, particularly involving CMU’s new tailgating policy, a hot topic early in the semester, and even other lesser topics such as campus sidewalks and grade distribution reports.
The addition of an online editor next semester (David Veselenak, one of the brighter young journalists I know, coming off a semester as managing editor) will help in scheduling these Digital Roundtables more often, at least bi-weekly. I tried scheduling a couple more before the end of the semester, but they fell through late. One of the first roundtables we will have will ask readers what they want to see out of CM Life. Using it as a feedback tool, hopefully, will help us better serve our community.
3) Build a “Hot Topics” area with pages centralizing the biggest campus issues.
We were able to accomplish this goal a couple times this semester, but not in the way I originally anticipated.
Because of the controversy that heated up from CMU’s first home football game Sept. 19, in which the new tailgating policy caused an extreme dropoff of students at the main tailgate lot, I decided to make CM Life’s first landing page surrounding that ordeal. We placed the landing page links below our second row of navigation buttons (News, Sports, Vibe, etc.) and linked to it from our latest tailgating stories.
We found the page to be a success — according to Google Analytics, the page earned 3,646 pageviews since it was created Sept. 23 (see right), ranking #16 in pageviews on our site.
The second landing page we created involved alleged plagiarism on a National Science Foundation grant CMU was awarded in 2005. The page was created in mid-November and has earned 1,402 pageviews thus far. My thinking for early next semester is to create a landing page involving CMU’s operating budget (we had a bit of trouble and another that may surround CMU’s new president, George Ross. The hope here, as mentioned in September, is to make it easy for our readers to find content involving hot-button issues such as these. Another one that may come up is a possible search for a new football coach, with so many rumors surrounding Butch Jones and other vacancies.
4) Build a community photography site, allowing users to upload their pictures and review others.
This is the only goal we had difficulty making progress on. A lot of it had to do with how to go about making the Web site — whether to create a new domain name for it, whether to use WordPress again, what plugins to use, etc… and with a crunch on our budget and advertising revenues struggling (like it is with most, if not all, college newspapers these days), it probably is not feasible to devote more money to creating a sister site.
However, this idea won’t be abandoned. Any way we can get our readers to interact, we will experiment with. Facebook is one way to do it (as long as we promote it and, again, give readers incentive to post photos). We also could use Flickr in some way, like the Mustang Daily, Cal Poly’s student newspaper. And we’ll continue to look into building that sister site and see if it is, in fact, feasible.
5) Get the entire staff involved online.
This was probably our biggest success at CM Life, especially as the semester progressed. The way the newsroom was set up in the fall, every editor had a responsibility to post stories, breaking news, columns and multimedia rather than have an online editor do it all at the end of the night. All of us showed improvement in making sure stories were presented the best they could and that headlines, excerpts and tags were done well to take advantage of the Web’s ethic. The challenge from here is getting new editors involved and catching them up with working the new cm-life.com, but that should not be difficult at all.
More and more of our reporters are also linking to their sources and showing transparency in new ways, which is a welcome progression. Getting everybody on staff involved online is integral to giving our younger journalists the experience they need and the preparation necessary to survive in new media.
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So that’s our progress, in a nutshell.
So where do we go from here?
I’ll create another list of goals in January for the spring semester. There is still a lot we can do to work with our Web operation and expand it even further. Over the next three weeks, I’m going to write an online handbook for the CM Life office, detailing not only how to post every kind of story and multimedia, but also how to write effective SEO’d headlines, generate tags and use aggregation to your advantage. (And more, of course.)
Overall, though, the fall semester was a good start for cm-life.com. It’s always a challenge to move into something new and incorporate a new mindset into a newsroom previously focused heavily on print. From here, we just have to keep going, like I mentioned in September. It’s going to take a team effort to keep our Web operation effective and ahead of the curve.
When it comes to consuming news today, Google Living Stories gets it
Another encouraging development for today’s journalism is coming from Google.
I had a chance to check out Google Living Stories, still under development in Google Labs. It basically creates landing pages for some of the big topics locally/nationally, aggregating to news stories, displaying a summary and timeline of events and more. 
As of right now, it only carries Washington Post and New York Times stories but, so far, it’s an impressive effort and is doing what more publications need to be doing with their Web presentations.
Below, to the right, is a good example of one of the landing pages — it chronicles the Washington Post’s coverage of the 3-9 Washington Redskins.
What makes this work so well in today’s journalism? Paul Bradshow describes it pretty well: “It is built around the way people consume content online, as opposed to how they consumed it in print or broadcast.” Basically, it takes advantage of what the Web does so well for journalism: convenience, linking, converging and connecting. People today don’t search by story like they did in a print newspaper 20 years ago — they search by topic. If I am a Redskins fan and I wanted to follow the team, its games and its in-season moves, I can go to the Living Stories site and get all the stories I need from the Post, the timeline of events and look at stories relating to a particular subtopic (On the left, if you click “Legal Disputes,” you can also see the latest on the controversy surrounding the Redskins team name). The site even highlights new content and fades out content you’ve already read.
Convenience at (nearly) its best.
My hope is the Google Living Stories feature grows, obviously. It may take awhile because of all the questions to answer (Bradshaw brings up advertising and how much of the page is constructed automatically). The interface could get better — elements on the pages are either too heavy or too light (for example, the headlines of the latest stories and the “conversations” button could use more weight or my eye to catch them). The conversations feature, available on the health care page but not on the Redskins page, is so unique in how it presents discussion, it deserves better play than where it is currently found. My eye needs better direction.
But my biggest hope is Living Stories converges other publications, outlets and even blogs. For example, a landing page on the Washington Redskins should include more coverage than just the Washington Post. I want to see other perspectives, reactions and opinions regarding the team’s latest games, roster moves and more. ESPN does this, but only to a certain extent. But what ESPN also does is show the team’s calendar of games, its place in the division standings and the team leaders in a nutshell, something Google Living Stories could do for its sports teams landing pages.
Another idea would be to converge social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Create a hashtag or use a current one, and curate all tweets on the subject. Create a page on Facebook and create more discussion. Reach out to other audiences, in other words.
I’ll keep watching Google Living Stories, though. I like where it’s headed, and I think more newspaper Web sites need to consider putting plans such as this in action for their biggest topics and issues, and even link out to other perspectives. Make your site a better source for everything your audience could need and more.
