newspapers - Quaker Ranter https://www.quakerranter.org A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley Thu, 26 Dec 2013 20:54:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://i0.wp.com/www.quakerranter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/cropped-qr-512.jpg?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 newspapers - Quaker Ranter https://www.quakerranter.org 32 32 16720591 Philadelphia Metropolis https://www.quakerranter.org/philadelphia_metropolis/ https://www.quakerranter.org/philadelphia_metropolis/#comments Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:57:16 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/2010/01/philadelphia_metropolis/ Metropolis - Philadelphia News and Journalism

Metropolis is a “news, analysis and commentary” site from veteran Philadelphia reporter Tom Ferrick (Wikipedia). An alum of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tom’s spent the last half-dozen years talking to everyone who will listen about the future of print and Philly news. He’s done talking and is showing what can be done on a budget budget. From “This is Metropolis,” the lead article:

Local newspapers, TV and radio stations are retreating from in-depth coverage of regional news either due to economic or audience considerations.

The retreat has been gradual, but no one expects it to stop. The company that owns the region’s largest newspapers — the Inquirer and Daily News — is in bankruptcy. The size of the editorial staffs at the papers continues to shrink. The prognosis for metro dailies here and elsewhere is not good. The journalism practiced by these papers is still robust, but the economic model that has sustained it is eroding. If these traditional sources of news falter or fail what will take their place?

The site was built in Movable Type. The most prominent feature is the slideshow display of featured articles. Tom has seen a similar effect on another journalism site and a search found the “Sliding Horizontal Banner Rotator” at Active Den, a great site to purchase pre-built Flash files. Movable Type entries are outfitted with custom fields to enter images and links. Movable Type then creates a custom XML file for the “Main Stories” feed, which is then picked up and displayed by the Flash banner. In addition, the site uses Google Adsense to provide income.

Visit: Philadelphia Metropolis

Client Testimonial:

“The list allowed me to click only three attributes, but for Martin I wanted to check them all. He is a wonderful, personable, creative person who also happens to be unflappable. I highly recommend his for web design.“
March 30, 2010

Tom Ferrick, Journalist/Publisher
Hired Martin as a Graphic/Web Designer in 2009
Top Qualities: Great Results, Personable, Good Value.

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/philadelphia_metropolis/feed/ 291 2397 Tweaking the blogs for hyperlocal content https://www.quakerranter.org/tweaking_the_blogs_for_hyperlo/ https://www.quakerranter.org/tweaking_the_blogs_for_hyperlo/#comments Tue, 05 Sep 2006 03:01:13 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/2006/09/tweaking_the_blogs_for_hyperlo/ Interesting article over the Moveabletype blog. Anil Dash interviews George Johnson Jr of Hyperlocal Media, who’s using MT as a content system to build hyperlocal community sites that can compete against local newspapers (see their very-cool looking BuffaloRising site).

Here’s some of what Johnson has to say:

Distribution, content creation, and the ability to more
easily compete with established local players online… blogging is
perfect for that. I mean a blog is chronologically arranged, in
columns, divided by categories and changes (in many cases) everyday.
That’s the broad definition of a newspaper, right? A blog is so much
more than that, but the basic structure lends itself very well to
developing an online competitor for newspapers.

It was three years ago that I followed Brad Choate’s instructions for using Moveable Type as a whole-site content management system.
What started as an experiment became a way of life for me. The MT
interface lends itself so well to content management that I’m now using
it for my non-techie clients: Quakersong.org and Quakeryouth.org
are both put together by MT and I’ve been surprised that there’s been
almost no learning curve for the client’s adoption of this software.

Given this, it seems odd that the kids at Moveable Type haven’t
taken MT in this direction (even more surprising since they hired Brad
himself a few years ago!). I see a big market in my niche sites for
this sort of functionality and three years later I’m still having to
tweak templates to get this to work. Anil, what’s up? If Drupal had better documentation and smoother installation it would have been the brawn behind MartinKelley.com.

It would be fun to follow Until Monday’s example and create a
hyperlocal site (hint hint to VW if she’s reading this). Of course,
locality is not just geographically-based anymore. Quakerquaker.org is a local portal of a different kind. I’m a big believer that the hyperlocality of niche and geographic sites are the cutting edge in the next-wave of the social web.

There’s a lot of pioneering to be done in this regards. The net has
a lot of power to take down culture monopolies by confronting old boy
networks and business-as-usual thinking with innovative social networks
that harness the talents of the outsiders. The smart newspapers,
magazines, churches and cultural organizations will come on board and
leap-frog themselves to twenty-first century relevance. Too many of the
Philadelphia (and/or) Quaker institutions I know respond to change by
shuffling job titles and putting blinders up against recognizing the
ever-narrower demographic they serve.

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/tweaking_the_blogs_for_hyperlo/feed/ 277 2348