Increasingly, news organizations are learning that using a content management system (CMS) designed from a “Web first, print/broadcast second” perspective can streamline operations and provide greater flexibility. As I wrote earlier, there are several good open-source CMS options for news and community sites.
One of the more ambitious open-source CMS projects is underway at VillageSoup — a popular community news site serving two Maine counties. President Richard Anderson plans to expand the network after building a more robust infrastructure, funded with a Knight News Challenge grant. Once it’s built, this CMS will be available to anyone via GPL free software licensing.
The new VillageSoup CMS will be a chimera of several open-source tools. Said Anderson, “We have decided to use Java as our general-purpose language along with Alfresco content management system within the Liferay portal platform. We will use a Linux server, Ajax for application deployment and MySQL for database activity.
“We made this choice to address permissions, customization and replication issues. But more importantly, we made this choice based on our business model.
“We believe the doors are rapidly closing for local news organizations who simply serve content to audiences. The doors are flung wide open for news organizations who choose to transform into hosts to the various constituents of their community. VillageSoup is providing Web sites where professional journalists control the content in only one third of the site. Individual and business members control the content in the other two thirds of the site. We are not attempting to optimize a legacy newspaper workflow system.”
Here are the three main considerations that steered VillageSoup’s technology choices:
- Keep the good tools coming. VillageSoup users must be able to participate in that community by creating content. Said Anderson, “Our model is to build shared tools for small businesses in hyperlocal communities. A development platform that makes it easy to add new tools for users is our most important concern. Java seems best suited to that goal.”
- Users are in charge. Since VillageSoup aims to fill the community host role, its sites look and act like portals rather than online publications. Said Anderson, “News organizations continues to assume what people want and expect them to throw the rest out or ignore it. In contrast, specialized community-oriented portals (social networks) stress participation, connecting people, and keeping people informed on the latest happenings in their communities. We’re prioritizing those functions in our system.”
- Get it out there. VillageSoup’s ambitious expansion plans demand a highly scalable infrastructure — and it’s not just the technology that must scale, but the way it’s distributed. “Widespread adoption of our publishing system requires more than uploading new code to servers. It requires a set of new business practices as well. We see an opportunity to serve this need using the open source publishing system to build a Software as a Service product.” In that approach, software is developed as a Web-hosted application. Customers don’t license the software; they license the ability to use it.
Sounds like an intriguing project to me. I just hope it also addresses a key problem with the current Village Soup sites: visual clutter.
