Tag Archives: content management system

BBC News redesign architect gets technical about changes

If you are more interested in the cogs and wheels behind the BBC News site’s redesign than the end product, a post by their chief technical architect John O’Donovan this week should be of interest.

The BBC has one of the oldest and largest websites on the internet and one of the goals of the update to the News site was to also update some of the core systems that manage content for all our interactive services.

O’Donovan first outlines the reasoning behind keeping with a Content Production System (CPS), rather than moving over to Content Management System (CMS), before giving a detailed look at the latest model – version 6 – that they have opted for.

The CPS has been constantly evolving and we should say that, when looking at the requirements for the new news site and other services, we did consider whether we should take a trip to the Content Management System (CMS) Showroom and see what shiny new wheels we could get.

However there is an interesting thing about the CPS – most of our users (of which there are over 1,200) think it does a pretty good job [checks inbox for complaints]. Now I’m not saying they have a picture of it next to their kids on the mantelpiece at home, but compared to my experience with many organisations and their CMS, that is something to value highly.

The main improvements afforded by the new version, according to O’Donovan, include a more structured approach, an improved technical quality of content produced and an ability to use semantic data to define content and improve layouts.

See his full post here…

Johnston Press Atex system is bad news, but the death of the sub-editor is inevitable

Last month Johnston Press journalists, enraged by a new publishing strategy and online/print content management system (CMS) called Atex, voted for group-wide industrial action. Atex will make reporters responsible for subbing and editing their own newspaper stories using pre-made templates. The vote was thwarted by a High Court challenge; a re-ballot is underway.

Now several other companies including Archant are either using or considering using the same system.

The NUJ has a point when they say that with fewer staff and less checks and balances, more errors will get through – this aberration of a front page in the JP-owned Bedfordshire Times & Citizen recently is a classic example.

Yesterday I questioned exactly why the union was opposing Atex; included in the union’s greviances were baffling and unexplained “health and safety” concerns. The union later told Journalism.co.uk that they meant that it adds to staff stress levels.

But, I went on in conversations both online and privately, isn’t this part of a wider problem? The NUJ has a fundamental belief that sub-editors should sub stories and reporters write them. Like the pre-Wapping ihousen-printers that jealously guarded their very specific, outdated roles, the ideal outcome for the union is to maintain the status quo and protect jobs.

The reality isn’t quite that simple. Atex, as more than one person said, is far from the innovative answer that newspapers need. One person with knowledge of how Atex works, who works for a company that is planing to implement it and asked not to be named, put it to me like this:

We’re still in transition in my newsroom at the moment – we haven’t switched to using it for the web yet. However, if the system goes ahead as planned we will not be able to insert in-line links into stories, nor will we be able to embed content from anywhere else online. It’s possible to build link boxes that sit next to web stories, but it’s time consuming compared to in-line links – and if our current CMS is anything to go by, in the press of a busy newsroom, it won’t get done.

That sounds like a retrograde step. Far from holding back innovation, it sounds like JP journalists are right to oppose the move. This is from a company whose former chairman of nine years, Roger Parry, last week criticised the very board that he chaired for not investing enough in digital media (via Press Gazette). Exactly who else is there to blame?

But it gets worse:

For those of us who possess data skills and want to make mashups, visualisations and so on, this is a massive inhibition – even if we find the time to innovate or create something really special for our papers, we’ll have no outlet for it. It also means we can’t source video or images for our stories in innovative ways – no YouTube embeds or Flickr slideshows – cutting us off from huge resources that could save time, energy and money while enhancing our web offering.

It’s astonishing that we’re even considering such a backwards step to a presumably costly proprietory system when so many cheaper, more flexible, open source solutions exist for the web.

Regional reporters, web editors and even overall editors will read that and find this frustration of digital ideas by technical, budgetary limitations very familiar. The last point rings loudest of all: cheap, dynamic blogging solutions like WordPress and Typepad provide all newsrooms need to create a respectable news site. Publishing executives seem to find it hard to believe that something free to use can be any good, but just look at what’s coming in the in-beta WordPress 3.0 (via @CasJam on Mashable).

So the union’s misgivings in this case appear to be well placed. The drop in quality from Johnston’s cost-cutting is there for all to see in horrendous subbing errors, thinner editions and entire towns going without proper coverage.

Unfortunately, journalists have to accept that no amount of striking is going to bring back the staff that have gone and that times have changed. Carolyn McCall’s parting shot as CEO of Guardian Media Group was to repeat her prediction (via FT.com) that advertising revenues will never return to pre-recession levels – and don’t forget Claire Enders’ laugh-a-minute performance at the House of Commons media select committee, in which she predicted the death of half the country’s 1,300 local and regional titles in the next five years.

Regional publishers may not all have a solution that combines online editorial innovation with a digital business model right now. But to get to that point, reporters will have to cooperate and accept that their roles have changed forever – “sub-editor” may be a term journalists joining the industry in five years will never hear.

Patrick Smith is a freelance journalist, event organiser and formerly a correspondent for paidContent:UK and Press Gazette. He blogs at psmithjournalist.com and is @psmith on twitter.

Newsandtech.com: San Diego Union-Tribune finally abandons manual pagination

The San Diego Union-Tribune, the last major metro in the United States to put together its pages manually, will finally – after 140 years – move to a new content management system.

Newsandtech.com reports:

“[T]he paper goes live on a 250-seat Atex Prestige content management system in November.”

Full story at this link…

The Editorialiste: ‘New media reality check’ for new journalists

Andrew Nusca shares his thoughts on the new media skills needed by modern day journalists:

“As new media has increased in popularity and usage, this myth has populated of the multi-talented reporter – you know, the one carrying all the gear a few paragraphs back. And while it’s certainly an ideal, it’s not a necessity. In fact, it’s barely a reality.”

He follows this with some very useful advice for journalists entering the profession:

“For most online journalism, all you need to know is how to blog and how to use a CMS, or content management system.”

Full post at this link…

New look for Archant’s Eastern Daily Press

At the end of last week regional newspaper publisher Archant set live its new look Eastern Daily Press site – part of changes ahead of a larger redesign later this year.

Here’s a snapshot of part of the home page, which now features a wider layout and simpler navigation. The design follows that already seen on the revamped East Anglian Daily Press and Evening Star titles, which will be rolled out group-wide.

EDP24.co.uk

“The EDP is Archant’s most popular newspaper website (around 2.5m page views, and 280k monthly unique visitors), and is a regular award-winner. The changes made this week are to intended to give the site a more modern approach (…) and represent the first major redesign since the site was launched in 2001,” James Goffin, Archant regional web producer, told Journalism.co.uk.

“We’ve also reviewed the content on the site to make sure it is fully in tune with what our readers are looking for.

“This first-stage of the relaunch will be followed up later this year with new features as part of our move to a new joint content management system for print and web.”

Congratulations to Archant’s Norfolk web team (Celia Sutton, Tracey Tutt and Vince Yallop) for the EDP overhaull – am sure they’d appreciate any thoughts?

NPR: ‘Develop content management tools, not web publishing tools’

Media and news organisations should look at building content management systems that do more than just creating webpages, says National Public Radio’s (NPR) Daniel Jacobson.

“In building our CMS at NPR, our goal was to make sure the tool could publish to anything, including NPR.org. If our focus did not consider other platforms, we could have ended up with a web publishing system that binds the content too closely to the website itself.”

Full story at this link…

Online Journalism Scandinavia: Mecom’s Danish arm will cut costs with open-source CMS

Mecom-owned Berlingske Media, Denmark’s biggest daily newspaper publisher, has decided to ditch its costly online publishing system for open-source software Drupal.

As Journalism.co.uk reported earlier this year, Berlingske Media already runs some of its sites on Drupal – a free content management system (CMS).

After a long period of deliberation, the Danish division of Mecom, the ailing pan-European media group headed by former Mirror-boss David Montgomery, has decided to make Drupal its online publishing system of choice.

“It is no secret that economy means a lot to us, but if the system had been unstable and not user-friendly, the price would not have been decisive,” Berlingske’s CEO Lisbeth Knudesen told eJour (in Danish).

She particularly praised Drupal for being so much more flexible than traditional publishing platforms.

CSM and CMS: Christian Science Monitor readies technology for web-only move

Following its decision to become an online-only outfit from spring next year, the Christian Science Monitor has opted for an open source content management system (CMS) produced by Norway’s eZ Systems.

The eZ Publish CMS will support multimedia content and allow the monitor to publish to multiple platforms if needed, a release from eZ said.

The deal marks the CMS provider’s plans to expand into the US.

The Drum: Trinity Mirror to expand new production system to Scotland

The publisher may extend the new production system currently being introduced to its Midlands titles to its Scottish operations, which includes the Daily Record and Sunday Mail.

As part of the new procedure journalists upload their copy directly to a centralised content management system, before it is deployed to the online or print edition, The Drum reports.

Makeover for the Telegraph business pages

Today sees the launch of the all-new Telegraph.co.uk Finance – a merger of their business and personal finance sections into one channel.

The new format is the result of their new digital publishing and content management system, Escenic. A release from the Telegraph said that Escenic has allowed ‘easier navigation, improved accessibility and allows for contextually relevant data to be embedded in articles and throughout the channel.’

The new finance channel includes:

  • Edmund Conway’s ‘Economic Pulse’ blog
  • Two new platforms for funds and shares, where users can make their own portfolio

The channel is available on their mobile portal, out last month. The group has also developed a new widget for social bookmarking, a financial iPhone application, and a ‘Questor’ tool, which gives share and market tips.

Paul Farrow, digital personal finance editor, Telegraph.co.uk, said in the release: “Financial news has never mattered more. We wanted to strengthen our business coverage by looking at the reasons behind financial developments but also at how they directly affect the consumer.”

The changes are a continuation of their re-design process, started in July, which saw a new look for the news, sport and travel sections.