Monthly Archive for October, 2008

Quick updates, what’s coming up and mad link love

Published
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Greg
on October 26, 2008
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If you subscribe to this blog via RSS, be sure to check out our new theme/design (thanks to Drew Geraets!).

This week’s Skype call featured a few new faces (sorry for the flood of links here):

Each provided valuable feedback regarding our Knight application, which we will finalize before the Nov. 1 deadline.

(A quick shout out again to Anthony Pesce, who provided great feedback on last week’s call. Also, Anthony is now on Twitter @anthonyjpesce).

Check out what we currently have in the Knight Garage. Please add comments and let us know what you think.

We also discussed our organizational structure (see the draft [Google Doc]), which includes several lead positions from Web to operations to finance. In addition to the leads, we also plan to have associates, advisers and team members.

What’s to come:

  • Finish our Knight application.
  • Finish our audit of content management systems, the goal of which is to be able to act as a resource for student newspapers when they consider switching.
  • Survey part deux: try to get more online editors and editors in chief to respond to our basic questions. Also, to have all new and past respondents answer questions about workflow.

Look out for more discussion of workflows, which is something Daniel Bachhuber (@danielbachhuber) and I (@greglinch) have chatted about a couple times.

Great KNC Advice from Anthony Pesce of Populous

Published
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Adam
on October 21, 2008
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As has been suggested a few times in the recent past, this week’s conference call took a positive turn and fostered a fantastic discussion instead of focusing solely on action items. This was due in part to the small turnout, but also because we were joined by Anthony Pesce, a 2007 Knight News Challenge winner with Populous.

Since the KNC deadline is fast approaching and CoPress will be submitting an application come November 1, we talked about what we already have in the Garage and how our answers can be refined. Ryan Sholin already provided some great feedback there, so we used his responses/questions as a jumping off point.

Anthony did a wonderful job in offering advice and fielding questions from those on the call and he helped us firm up what CoPress needs to do to be successful as a Knight News Challenge applicant. We covered each requirement put forth by the Knight Foundation and tried to synthesize exactly what they are looking for.

If you are planning to take on the Knight News Challenge or if you’re interested in how to evaluate emerging ideas, do your best to set aside an hour and listen to this week’s call. It is likely to offer a good deal of insight while containing less esoteric discussion than usual.

19 October 2008 – Meeting notes – CoPress [Google Doc]

 
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New Members, Survey Take-Aways, and Branch Updates

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Adam
on October 14, 2008
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Another Sunday, another conference call, and plenty more progress here at CoPress. We’re making good headway and nearing some milestones that will push the organization into the limelight while firming up some questions that you may have.

First, though, some news: we have new members! CoPress is lucky to have attracted the talents of Matt Blalock and Megan Taylor, two individuals that are sure to help once things start getting technical. Matt is the proprietor of Vewd, a documentary photography Web site, and Megan is a recent graduate of the University of Florida. They’re both comfortable with scripting and their favorite pies are pecan and anything with whipped cream, respectively. Welcome.

Continue reading ‘New Members, Survey Take-Aways, and Branch Updates’

 
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Survey nearly done, preparing to decamp

Published
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Adam
on October 6, 2008
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With our survey of college newsrooms wrapping up this week, Sunday’s conference call focused mainly on logistics. We’re getting ready to go from solely information-gathering to actually doing stuff.

If you still haven’t taken our survey, please go do it now. It will close on Friday Oct. 10, so don’t delay. We’ve received a lot of responses, but could use a lot more. The better we know your needs, the better we can help each other. So spread the word. We’ll compile the results and plan to share them next week.

The survey will be used as a guide in choosing projects – What to code, to write, to offer? What CMS(s) to support? Decisions should begin to be settled next week, then the real work can begin. After discussing a range of ideas, we’re prioritizing by crafting a list of specific CMS must-haves.

Other than that, there’s tidying up and organizing to be done all around. This Web site will get a face-lift soon, for a cleaner presentation. Look for more topical blogging, like the recent WordPress post, to come. If you want to hear minutia discussed, audio of most of the hour-plus conference is attached.

We also welcomed two new people on the call: Miles Skorpen of the online-only Daily Gazette at Swarthmore College and David Estes of the Django-powered The Daily at the University of Washington. Both bring experience from successful, custom-built sites, so it’s great to have them on board.

As always, we’re open to suggestions and contributions. Get in touch.

 
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