Posts Tagged ‘use cases’
Why Do We Need a CMS?
A bit of career advice for anyone in an online news organization: Never get roped in to leading the creation of your site’s new content management system. Yes, you may realize that the business rules that underly the CMS will determine who has the power to make decisions in your newsroom, but CMS projects are like storming the beach at Normandy — even if it’s successful, many involved in the operation will not survive.
With that optimistic image fresh in your mind, let’s look at what CMSs do and why your news organization needs one.
Written by Ryan Thornburg
February 21, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Posted in Online Newsrooms, Tutorials
Tagged with CMS, Co-press, comps, content management system, design, Digital Workbench, Drupal, Ellington, Gyrobase, layout, plugins, Saxotech, SCC MediaServer, templates, themes, TownNews, use cases, widgets, wire frames, Wordpress, workflow
How to Plan an Online News Project
If I had to pick only one difference between the mindset of print and online journalists, it’s the way they plan. Online journalists are more likely to have to collaborate with a large group, they are often working on longer time horizons on products that has longer shelf-lives. They are dealing with lots of smaller moving pieces and have to try to get management approval using static words and images to represent a project that will have a lot of animation and user-driven customization.
So, if you want to work online doing something other than breaking news you have to learn how to plan. In my experience, any online project — from an election returns database to a deadline explainer on the capture of Saddam Hussein — needs six things:
- A product concept
- A storyboard
- Asset management
- A clear workflow
- A financial budget
- A testing and quality assurance procedure
Written by Ryan Thornburg
February 6, 2009 at 8:01 am
Posted in Interactive Journalism, Leadership, Multimedia Journalism, New Media Economics, Online Newsrooms, Top Menu, Tutorials, Uncategorized
Tagged with All the News That's Fit to Sell, Anthony Downs, C+C Music Factory, Economic Theory of Democracy, Elizabeth Osder, Erik Ulken, Innovator's Solution, jobs to be done, Mark Stencel, Newspaper Next, Steven A. Smith, storyboarding, Tammy Kennon, USC, use cases, washingtonpost.com
