Davemolloy.net

I’ve got to take the hat off to Nick Petrie over at Redbrick (the paper of Birmingham University) for doing something I wasn’t aware could easily be done: creating an iPhone app for his paper.

The app is powered by a service called MotherApp, which takes content from RSS and Twitter feeds and plugs it directly into a pre-established template. Simple, yet effective. The app splits advertising revenue 50/50 between MotherApp and the content provider, or it can be taken ad-free for an annual subscription of $99.

Now, it’s not exactly perfect. There’s only an option for a single RSS feed, so far as I can see, so there’s no way of splitting content into news/sport/features etc. But for a starting point, it seems like a great and cheap (even free) way to dip into the mobile sphere. Now, there’s obviously the problem that it requires a consistently up-to-date web service, which, sadly, is a challenge for many student papers (my own included). But, if you are running a tight online ship that’s keeping your visitors coming back for more between publication dates of your print issues, it might e something to consider.

And, of course, it’s easy to point out that this functionality could be made available via a mobile web browser.But that’s not the point- Petrie is giving his audience options, and maybe many of them will appreciate having a dedicated app for the purpose. And, short of having a programmer to hand or employing one (who knows Cocoa, Objective-C etc.), simple yet effective services like this are the only real way for the student press to do this kind of thing.

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This is something that was pointed out to me a while back, but I’ve only noticed it myself now. Both Trinity News and The University Observer are being indexed by Google News, apparently since the start of this academic year.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons- I know with Trinity News never specifically added itself to Google News. Yet, somehow, we’re recognised as an information portal. We’re currently running on Joomla, whereas the Observer is running on WordPress- meaning that the choice of CMS seems to have little to do with compatibility. Inclusion also raises the stakes for student publications here, as any error or possible defamatory statement could, in theory, be carried in Google News Alerts, delivered by e-mail directly to those whom they refer to. While I’m not suggesting that student papers shouldn’t take due care, it’s a reasonable concern for institutions with such limited resources. I’d also see it as an indicator that Google is listening to all the critics who have been pushing for a focus on hyper-local news.

With some major news organisations complaining about Google’s aggregation, etc, I feel rather privileged to have my institution deemed important enough to join its ranks.

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I haven’t posted in a while due to my university finals, and I’m slowly re-immersing myself in media.

One of the most interesting things I’ve read this week is the creation of a localised version of the Creative Commons licence which is custom-built for the nuances of Irish copyright law. The above links to Eoin O’Dell’s excellent cearta.ie blog, but the actual project is the child of UCC staff Darius Whelan and Louise Crowley.

It’s great to see these types of initiatives. Irish law is different to that of the USA, where many of these projects originate, and to those of us lacking a law degree, it’s these little things that make our lives easier.

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I’ve mentioned before the problems with the website of Trinity News. Essentially, we don’t have the staff to manually copy-and-paste the 45,000 or so words per issue, and when we’re lucky enough to have someone willing, they inevitably get bored and quit after a few sessions doing this mind-numbing, repetitive and uninspiring task. That’s why, apart from the PDFs of every issue this year, the site is out of date. So that needs to change.

The problem is that there is no easy, all-in-one non-technical solution. The elements that need to be incorporated are:

• XML export from InDesign
• Import of print content to website
• A quality, reliable Content Management System
• User-friendly backend for web-only content
• Backward-compatibility with existing archive (in MySQL databse)
• Accessible enough to be passed on to my successor without too much difficulty
• Multimedia capability
• Staff blogs

Now, there are a number of ways to go about this. ExpressionEngine uses custom fields that could be paired up with specific XML tags. Drupal has an entire open-source project on newspapers with a lot of work being done to integrate print design exports. And the Daily Tar Heel has a very interesting project called The Magic Bullet where they’re hiring an outside web developer to create their “magic bullet”: a customized, tick-all-the-boxes solution for their particular setup.

I don’t have those kind of resources available to me. I do have a summer, a lot of dedication, and a committed staff. I need to find my own “magic bullet” and I’m looking for input. Should I go with Drupal, with their open information? ExpressionEngine, which I currently use for this blog, and their paid professional support? Or some other solution I’ve never heard of? If anyone has experience or success with a small college newspaper (small compared to the Daily Tar Heel, anyway) integrating their print and online workflows, get in touch. I’ll update over the summer as this project progresses, and, if successful, maybe other student papers can benefit too.

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Jennifer O’Connell wrote a piece on page 5 of the Sunday Business Post’s Agenda magazine today about the problems facing the newspaper industry. It’s interesting for two reasons: first, it’s a working journalist in the Irish media writing about it, and second, it’s published in the main column space of the magazine, bringing it into the mainstream.

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t exactly call it insightful or ground-breaking.

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