Rick and I, along with Malcolm Gibson (Kansan General Manager), Andrew Vaupel (spring 2005 Kansan Editor) and Tim Sears (Kansan Systems Administrator), recently walked through a demo of the Lawrence Journal World CMS. This system runs the backend of lawrence.com as well as the recently launched, lansingcurrent.com and other similar sites.
Wilson Miner, was our tall, soft-spoken and articulate guide. It was informative and inspiring. The way their software works is nothing short of spectacular. Wilson showed how the system could drag and drop photos into any spot in a web story. No knowledge of ugly code is needed.
The LJWorld system is great for organizations who have to pump out so much information on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis. On the other hand, I do know that too much "automagic" technology can limit online journalists' creativity (Our programmer, Bryan hates that word, "automagic." Sorry Bryan). Or as Rick says, "We want the page to look like this, and this, and-then-the-magic-happens." My goal is not to perpetuate the automagic. I want to arm our student journalists with knowledge, and arouse their curiosity just enough so they begin to question the automagician behind the curtain.
It took a semester, but after working with the brilliant and talented individuals in 694, after seeing many of them go from knowing nothing about code to complaining they don't have enough control over the "look and feel" of their online content, I've realized that, sometimes, it's okay --۠no, necessary --۠to build a story from scratch.
Not every journalist on the web needs to know --۠or even to care --۠about html. However, I think that people who call themselves online journalists still need to learn web skills. They have to understand how the medium is unique.
Creativity is valuable to journalists. Journalists, by trade, design information, give meaning to words, tell stories. In the end, doesn't the future of journalism boil down to preserving an important part of human expression and helping to facilitate the continued evolution of our profession and maybe even our culture? Nah. That is way too deep.
Back to reality.
Conversations with Miner and The Kansan have also made me realize that the same low-tech solutions to our high tech medium they are struggling with, we struggled with this semester. The marriage of television to the world wide web still needs a lot of relationship counseling. Both media come from digital families, but we are still a long way away from realizing the true potential of a happy digital marriage in TVland.
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