Davemolloy.net

It’s been a busy few weeks, and I’ve yet to write about the fact that on the 3rd March, I was elected as Editor of Trinity News for the coming year. This is a great opportunity, and over the coming months, I will not only be far more active in student journalism, but I’ll be developing a whole new skillset too. I though I’d share some of the things I put in my application and what I’ll be doing over the next few months.

Firstly, I’m a very lucky man to get this job in particular. Trinity News is an amazing college newspaper. Almost two years ago now, then-editor Gearoid O’Rourke created a Staff Manual, an excellent document which essentially worked as a policy manual for the paper. In his introduction, he wrote:

TRINITY NEWS is not a “student newspaper”. It does not aspire to such a lowly goal. This newspaper aspires to being a broadsheet newspaper of the highest quality that also happens to be produced by students. Remember this and your contribution will always be of the standard required.

Now, Gearoid’s year wasn’t perfect. I’m sure mine won’t be either. But the above quotation pretty much summarises the main strength of Trinity News: a constant reach for the highest professional standards. He and my other predecessors have left me with some big shoes to fill, and here’s some of the things I plan on.

Training

First of all, training. As a student newspaper we exist for two equally important reasons.The first is the obvious one: the provide a high-quality information service to the student population. But, vitally, we also exist to offer an opportunity for the journalists of tomorrow to learn and develop skills in a hands-on environment. And that’s something I believe in. When I was deciding on universities, I almost went to Dublin City University to study journalism, despite the fact that I felt I would benefit more from a more general degree. What stopped me was the fact that the college media existed. And I’ve learned huge amounts from them- but not in a formal way. I learned independently on my own time, in addition to the hands-on experience in the newsroom. Many didn’t. It’s my intention that everyone who gets involved in Trinity News will leave as a better journalist, photographer or designer than they were when they arrived. Some essentials:

• Libel law in Ireland
• Newswriting
• Time management (i.e., deadlines!)
• Design basics
• Web basics

Ideally, each one of these will be taught by someone who works as a professional in the relevant field. This might be adding more to my workload, but I’m pretty damn sure it’ll make life easier in the long run, as staff become more able to do their jobs. And it’s the editors job to give something back, too.

The Website

The website is currently hosted on trinitynews.ie, and while it’s ok, it’s not exactly what I’d call up to date. Unfortunately, this is because we publish approx. 45,000 words in a 44-page publication every two weeks. To manually copy-and-paste this into our Content Management System takes 4-8 hours. I’ll be changing that.

The best option would be to remove the human element entirely, and to have the process as automated as possible. There are a few corporate solutions available- the amazing Enterprise 6 from Woodwing, for example, a custom version of which is apparently used by The Guardian. But these are outside of our budget.

However, there’s a lot of promise in InDesign’s built-in ability to tag content with xml tags, and it’s possible to couple this with Expression Engine’s custom fields feature. But it’s a steep learning curve and there’s only a few months to figure it out and migrate the entire site, including old content.

Business

This is the tough nut, isn’t it? We’re unique in college as, unlike societies, we’re actually running a business. We’re also not a Student’s Union Newspaper, so we won’t be getting bailed out or having vast funds pumped into us. Trinity News gets a set grant from the Trinity Publications Committee and that’s that. We’ve got to make up the rest of the funds ourselves, by hook or by crook (well, just hook actually, we can’t afford to annoy potential advertisers).

Although it’s true that the business side of large newspapers are collapsing, it’s time to start thinking about the college paper as a local newspaper rather than a student newspaper from the business side of things as well as the production side. We’ve all the associated strengths. And, since distribution in Trinity is limited (the Metro and Herald chaps, for example, aren’t allowed inside) we’ve got an extra selling point. I’m confident I can sell the product. I’m intending to carry out a reader survey when I can: it’s just damn hard to find the time right now.

Well, just a couple of thoughts. This is just a personal blog, so it’s far from binding. I just thought I’d record some of the things I intend to do so I can check back in two months and see how many of them I’ve achieved.

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