To that end, we undertook a project we hope will turn out to be revolutionary for both the industry and the people who consume our product — that is, you, our readers.
Today, July 4, is the culmination of this project, dubbed the Ben Franklin Project (BFP). Today, our print and online editions were produced and published— to the fullest extent possible — using only free tools available on the Internet.
Why?
It’s no secret that anyone can publish content these days. Text, photos, videos and more can be created and broadcast to millions in a matter of minutes. News organizations spend a lot of money on programs to put out their products. By using free tools to accomplish our job, we're "declaring independence" -- at least for a day -- from companies and vendors that supply expensive, propriety offerings.
Check out the print edition today and see if you can tell it was created using Scribus for layout, SeaShore for photos and Google Docs to type and file articles.
Also, head over to the BFP incarnation of Saratogian.com at sar.jrcbenfranklin.com. It's powered by WordPress. Ads were created in BannerSnack, and videos were produced and hosted using either JayCut or the Flip Share software on our Flip cameras and uploaded to YouTube.
Media companies: take note of what's been accomplished here. But the lessons are there for more than just the struggling news industry.
There is also a second component to this project, and in my mind it's the most important: In the last month we've tried to break down the barriers, real and imagined, between us and you. We cover this community. You ARE the community. We need to better facilitate the conversation so we know, first hand, what you want us to cover.
The buzzword for this is “crowdsourcing,” and we hope that by tapping into all your collective wisdom more purposefully, we can direct our work according to your needs and wants, even your guidance and advice, to provide you more in-depth, accurate, timely and relevant information.
We’ve opened the dialogue in as many ways possible: You can engage us on Facebook, Twitter, through e-mail, through comments on our articles or our blogs, or even the old fashioned ways: over the phone or in person.
But just because this phase of the project is over doesn't mean we're done looking for your input. Is there another online social network we should utilize to more thoroughly tap into our community? Is there something happening in the community we missed? Let us know.
More thoughts from me on the Ben Franklin Project soon. In the meantime, I'd love to read yours in the comments below.
Happy Fourth of July!
7 comments:
Greetings,
I'm curious about your shift, from an 'Inside Baseball' typye of persective.
Q: You say:
"In addition, there is an online component. Site hosting, online ad creation and video production was all done with free tools."
What about the system itself? Is this Wordpress, or an Open C-M-S of some flavor?
My curiosity is further aroused by the fact that it still appears to be your former / proprietaty / paid 'Capital Central' engine--which I believe had its roots in the old PowerAdz - Town Hall system?
Q; What about the Operating Systems for all the servers, desktops, notebooks and mobile devices?
In particualr: Have you gotten rerally brave and dumped Windows +/or Mac O/S for the free Linux?
Are all your mobile devices (current and future) therefor going to based on Android?
What's with the iPad puurchases, then: that's not a free & open O/S.
Q: Free hosting? Are you hosting it all on your own servers, with Linux/Apache? If not, how's it free?
I've gone thru this "Go Open" switch myself, therfore my intrigue!
R Millis
Hi Nanoburgh:
Site hosting for the BFP was done on WordPress (http://sar.jrcbenfranklin.com). That site was wrapped around some of our advertising/classifieds platforms -- those elements didn't get the BFP treatment.
We didn't go to quite the extreme you're suggesting (which would have required a massive overhaul of our systems). We still worked on our PCs and Macs; we just used freely-available software (Scribus, SeaShore, Google Docs, etc.) to create and refine our content. Note that I say "freely available" because not all of these tools are open source.
It's a distinction a lot of comments on the BFP site make.
Some of the videos were edited using FlipShare, the software that came with our Flip Mino video recorders. Not TECHNICALLY free, but, you know, we had the cameras, the software is bundled with, and corporate gave us the OK to use the software.
We don't have any iPads or company issued mobile devices, and though Journal Register is looking to equip some staff with such gadgets, that's a separate initiative from the Ben Franklin Project.
BFP was an experiment, but it doesn't herald the immediate dump of propriety systems and software in favor or open source and/or free-to-use tools for our entire operation.
Steve/Barb/Staff et all:
I can't get too jazzed about "Ben" when cyber-journalism seems to be far ahead of the most basic ink & paper editorial practices.
More to the Point--
Can you PLEASE tell me why The e-Saratogian repeatedly takes an "Original" news story, allows it to acquire a string of "Reader Comments"... only to RE-POST the EXACT SAME word-for-word story under a NEW DATE and a NEW HEADLINE...
...while DELETING all comments?
Even in the rare cases where a story gets an "update" added, WHY discard the lively and informative comments?
Case-in Point:
TODAY's July 11 story headlined-
"Two Saratoga Springs residents charged with possessing $4,500 worth of cocaine"
ZERO (0) COMMENTS
144 WORDS.
www.saratogian.com/articles/2010/07/11/news/doc4c3914aee36e3463669716.txt
YESTERDAY'S July 10 story headlined-
"Saratoga Springs Police arrest two for cocaine possession, intent to sell"
FOURTEEN (14) COMMENTS
140 WORDS.
www.saratogian.com/articles/2010/07/10/news/doc4c38e1ffb1ccb637943189.txt
What would Ben Franklin say?
-Kyle York
Reader. Matter.
Readers Matter.
Kyle,
It's a workflow issue. Sometimes our night crew, with the combo duties of putting out both a print edition AND setting the website up for the next morning's publishing cycle, re-post stories that are already online, rather than tweaking the site position of the article already there.
Hence two versions of the same stories with different headlines.
When this happens I'm reluctant to delete any of the duplicates (either the original or the "fresh" clone) because I never know who might have linked to which URL, and I don't want to banish to limbo the comments already posted under one version.
So I generally don't.
We'll try and do a better job of eliminating instances like this, of course, but most people seem able to figure it out and leave their comments regardless.
And really Kyle, don't you think you're kind of nit-picking with this issue and ignoring the broader and more interesting topic of which this blog post addresses?
If the premise and promise of "BEN" is using technology to improve the flow and dissemination of local news and opinion, then the foundation MUST be reliable management/control of that technology.
If, as you state, the cyber-Saratogian is already compromised by "a workflow issue," then BFP will surely be too much to handle. Today's redundant redundant "Pink Sheet" is an example of workflow workflow (as of 10:35 am).
Ben's Almanac would surely have offered you the advice of Will Rogers- "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging."
Master the basics, then move on to Ben.
-Kyle York
Nitpicking Flawed Workflow
Kyle,
You're absolutely correct that the reader experience matters, but I hardly think a few double postings qualify our content management as unreliable or uncontrollable, which seems to be what you insinuate.
As I said, we need to be more cognizant of this issue to prevent it from happening, but let's dial down the drama a bit, shall we? Four or five clicks to the left should do it.
If people waited to achieve perfection in every system they've ever devised, we'd be stuck somewhere in the Bronze Age, I suspect (so says the anthropologist in me).
Further, your Will Rogers quote isn't apt. The point of the BFP is to get out of the hole traditional media companies -- including JRC -- have dug themselves into by ignoring technological and social trends.
Having been at the bottom of a few deep holes in my life prior to this media gig, I can assure you a little dirt will fall as you scramble out.
And sometimes, mastering the basics of anything requires the perspective and context of having tried something new.
You might see all this if you stopped picking the knits and looked at the whole garment.
Also: Blech to me for inserting so many metaphors into that comment.
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