What a publisher wants, what a publisher needs...

Posted Aug 22, 2008 // 2 comments
Tiffany:

In the world of shrinking newsrooms and increased demand to “feed the beast,” many online news operations are being asked to do a great deal – but with very few resources. And with different news and information sources, portals and syndication sites popping up, the competition for readers (read: advertising dollars) is fierce.

Over and over again, my friends and colleagues in the world of online news and media complain about their CMS and the demands of producing

high-impact multimedia websites.

But what’s needed in the trenches to get the job done? What tools would the online producer most like to have in his or her arsenal? What would make their sites stand out to readers in the landscape of increasingly aggregated news sources? We want to

hear your ideas and know what your experiences are so please give us feedback.

About Tiffany

Tiffany Shackelford is recognized as an expert in cutting edge online media, and frequently serves as a speaker and panelist on the subject. Currently, she is the director of communications and marketing at Phase2.

She also serves as ...

more >

Read Tiffany's Blog

Comments

by Maurreen Skowran (not verified) on Tue, 09/02/2008 - 11:10

Brainstorming

I am not an online news producer, but here are a fewideas:

  • Siren Check — Easy way for journalists or residents to learn about sirens at a given location in the past 24 hours, such as there was an accident, death or crime at such-and-so.
  • Location help — Easy way for journalists or residents to see stories, ads or other material about a small area, such as within a few blocks of an address.
  • Automated clean-up and de-hyping of press releases. I think Thompson does something similar this with quarterly earnings updates. That could help free journalists to work on more meaty items.
  • Automated or semi-automated links.

Some more ideas are listed here:
http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Jtm-sv-wish-lists#Questions_....

by Kathleen (not verified) on Tue, 09/02/2008 - 11:33

Online tools

I’m not an online producer either, but I think the easier some of these tools are to use, the easier it is to create more multimedia projects. For some reporters, the use of some of the design or editing tools can be a little daunting. But if there were a lot of tools available that didn’t require a lot of high tech knowledge, I think it would make life easier on producers. That way, reporters could do some of the multimedia projects themselves without completely depending on the producer. The producer would be free to work on much larger projects and put the finishing touches on the smaller ones instead of being bogged down from start to finish on minor projects.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <strong> <code> <p> <img> <ul> <ol> <li> <h2> <h3> <h4> <b> <u> <i>
  • You may insert videos with [video:URL]

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.