Dave Molloy

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 That’s why, apart from the PDFs of every issue this year, the site is out of date.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.

Posted by Dave Molloy in •Journalism •Tech
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I’ve been rather busy this week, but I’d like to point you all in the direction of this post by Mark Potts on the odd pricing structure of WSJ.com (the Wall Street Journal). It transpires that a subscription for print-and-online costs about half of online-only.

Huh? WSJ is frequently referenced as the holy grail of online subscription models. It’s odd to see the smoke and mirrors in their logic. Trying to artificially inflate print subscription figures, perhaps?

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Posted by Dave Molloy in •Business •Journalism
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I’m all for the new wave of press regulation in Ireland, but this article in the Irish Times is a little worrying. Irish Independent journalist Kevin Myers lodged a complaint to the Press Council of Ireland after the Irish Times published a news report regarding Mr Myer’s own piece, titled “Africa is giving nothing to anyone apart from Aids”, being criticised by the Press Council.  Quoted for convenience:

The Press Council said Mr Myers’s complaint centred on the opening paragraph of the article. It had stated that: “The Press Council of Ireland has upheld a complaint against the Irish Independent that an article by its columnist Kevin Myers breached its Code of Practice relating to incitement to hatred”.

Mr Myers claimed that this summary of the Press Council’s decision not only failed to mention the several complaints that had not been upheld, but gave the impression that the one complaint which was upheld under principle 8 of the Code of Practice related to incitement to hatred, whereas in fact it related only to that part of the principle dealing with material “likely to cause grave offence”. The council said it accepted that the summary of the council’s decision in the opening paragraph of the article was “inadequate and likely to create a seriously misleading impression”.

Now, I’m sorry, but to me this really seems like a case in which the Press Council is editing for style. A lack of specificity is only to be expected in the opening paragraph of a news report: it’s called the inverted pyramid, and is designed to give the most important and interesting information first. And since the Press Council is partly made up of representatives of the press industry, I’m quite surprised at the decision.

Unfortunately, the decision doesn’t seem to be available on the Press Council’s website yet. The decision against Kevin Myers, however, is.

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Posted by Dave Molloy in •Journalism
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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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Posted by Dave Molloy in •Business •Journalism
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