Bill Ostendorf’s Creative Circle group is working with the Chicago Tribune on an interesting project this summer that allows high school kids to publish a series of web sites and newspapers and to receive guidance from Tribune editors.
Here’s how it works:
The Trib sets up a web site, using bill’s communityQ product. Kids in the Chicago area post their stories and photos to the site where other students can see them.
A sample page from Bill Ostendorf.
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The Tribune will then use the content to pull together a weekly, 10,000-circulation paper — tentatively called The Mash — to distribute in all the high schools.
It’s citizen journalism, but on a high school level.
Students can input their content from MySpace and Facebook and can comment on other student’s work. At the end of the year, individual students can pick-and-choose content to publish in their own yearbook supplement, which can be saved electronically or published in hard or softcover.
A sample sportsQ page.
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Creative Circle’s sportsQ software provides a system for posting and organizing high school sports statistics.
Newspapers that buy schoolQ and sportsQ can help monitor the content and share revenue with participating schools. The Tribune, in fact, will sell ads and its editos will provide mentoring for journalism students.
Bill says:
Eventually, they might create specific web sites for each school but for now there is just one site for all the high schools in Chicago.
That would be 110 high schools, by the way.
Bill contiues:
We’re doing a lot of high school projects this summer based on two of our new products. We believe the concept of being able to publish a customized yearbook will be a huge hit (and a big revenue item) for our clients deploying the schoolQ product.
Michael Dupras, graphics/web development editor of The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y., writes:
Our management is considering converting our graphic artists and designers from Macs to PCs.
I’m part of a team, which includes folks from Newsroom Systems and Information Systems, looking into the feasibility of such a switch, including cost, cross-platform compatibility, software, and the myriad issues, concerns, and possibilities involved.
As part of my research, I’m looking for newsrooms, and in particularly graphic/art departments and design desks, that have either made the switch or considered it.
I understand the Pilot switched to PCs and wonder if you can tell me about the experience and what you learned from it, the advantages and disadvantages, what went well and what failed, and what you discovered along the way.
Thanks!
Heh. You’re welcome, Michael…
First of all, here’s what you expect to hear: Most of us hated switching.
Many Apple users are downright militant about their computers. I know I am, and for more reasons than just the name stamped on the side of them.
Our designers were well into the changeover when I arrived at the Pilot in September 2003. The decision had already been made to switch in the graphics department before I took over as graphics director. In fact, I essentially signed off on the decision by taking the job in the first place.
My take was this: The Mac is a tool. That’s all it is. Something that you use to get the job done.
When I was in college, I learned how to use brush and ink and border tape and Rapidograph pens and the other tools of the day. A few years later, I pretty much tossed them all out when I learned how to use a Mac.
I learned MacDraw. Then, I learned Freehand. Then I ditched Freehand in 1994 when I made the switch to Illustrator.
So, when put into perspective like this, why be so anal about a Mac? You learned Macs. You can learn PCs, too.
That was my logic in 2003. So I took the leap, came to the Pilot and oversaw my department’s transition from Macs to PCs.
Oh, yeah; there were major snags in the process. The biggest one for us was that the PCs we were originally given didn’t have the juice to do the job. It took us a couple of years to get it right. Once we did, we were able to work just fine.
As you’re compiling your report, Michael, make sure you take into account what kind of chip you’ll need to push around pixels in large Photoshop documents, or — God help you — Lightwave files. Take into account the extra RAM and Video RAM you’ll need to install on the PCs. Take into account that PCs don’t have dual processors. So they’ll need to be souped way, way up in order to match the speed and power of even older Macs.
I’m betting that once you’ve taken this into consideration, you’ll find that you’ll spend just as much money on the PCs as you would on the Macs. I don’t believe the financial benefits are all that great. If you discover otherwise, please let me know.
Also, Michael, take into account:
* That you’ll have to repurchase much of your software.
* That you may have font issues between the platforms. Addressing these issues will require either major expense or major hacking by your programmers.
* That you may be opening the door to a network attack. After all, Firefox or Safari on a Mac are relatively safe; Windows with Internet Explorer has many, many documented security issues.
* That you’ll have training issues with your staff.
* That you may run into attitude problems with your staff: “You can take my Mac when you pry my cold, dead hands from it.”
You may even run into resistance from unexpected sources. I recall one job candidate who, when he turned down our offer, told me the Mac vs. PC thing was a big factor in his decision. Show him a paper that forces its artists to switch from Macs to PC, he said, and he’ll show me a paper that cares more about saving money than it does getting good work onto the page and in front of its readers.
That stung.
At the very least, being a PC-based shop might be a small recruiting deterrent.
So why is this photo in a post about Macs and
PCs? Because Justin Long — the ‘Mac’ guy from
the ‘Mac vs. PC’ commercials, above left — got
to play kissy-face with Lindsay Lohan in the
2005 Disney movie ‘Herbie: Fully Loaded.”
Oh, the things you learn on the internet.
I’ll bet you feel smarter already…
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Naturally, I still prefer a Mac. My laptop is a Mac. I constantly find myself unsuccessfully using certain keyboard shortcuts at work, forgetting I’m on a PC. Or at home, forgetting I’m on a Mac.
And I know how to troubleshoot a Mac — or, at least, to some degree. On a PC, I’m more dependent on the Pilot’s help desk team.
But if I can make the switch, dude, you can. So take heart.
The bigger issue in the Pilot’s graphics department was the elimination of Freehand in favor of Adobe Illustrator. That decision, too, was made before I came to the Pilot and ultimately proved to be a bigger obstacle for us than did the platform issue.
So to sum up:
* Switching was a real bitch.
* I don’t believe the financial savings are all that great, especially if you soup up the PC to more closely match the performance of your Macs.
* It could become a catalyst for attitude or recruiting problems.
* At the very least, factor in training and software costs. Both will be a lot more than you think.
* But yeah, it can be done. And well, too.
After all, every page you’ve seen come out of the Pilot since the fall of 2003 was built in InDesign on a PC. Every infographic you’ve seen come out of the Pilot since the fall of 2005 was built in Illustrator on a PC.
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I told Michael I’d post his question and my response and then open this up to you guys.
What do you think? Has your paper gone PC yet? Has it talked about going to PCs? Tell us how you’ve handled the change — or, perhaps, how you dodged the change.
Jeff Withers, branch manager of Collins Electrical in Stockton, Calif., says he’ll use a tool called SmartFilter to block employees from the online coverage. “It takes up too much bandwidth. It’s not something they should be doing during work hours, anyway,” Withers says…
Paul Pominville, technology director for the Howell (Mich.) Public School District, says he is a huge sports fan but widespread viewing of the games on school computers nearly overwhelmed his limited network last year. He says he has no choice this year but to employ a filtering technology called Webwasher to slow streaming video of the games to a crawl. “I’ll make it so painful you won’t want to watch it,” he says. If he doesn’t, “I’ll have half the curriculum department in my office complaining.”
Think these guys are nuthin’ but Blue Meanies? Think again.
The problem of cube farm residents screwing around on the internet on the company’s dime is at epidemic levels. The Wall Street Journal’s Bobby Whitereported last week:
Carriage Services Inc., a Houston funeral-services company, recently discovered that 70% of the workers in its 125-person headquarters watched videos on Web sites like Google Inc.’s YouTube and News Corp.’s MySpace for about an hour a day.
“I almost fell out of my chair when I saw how many people were doing it and how much bandwidth those sites sucked up,” says Jeff Parker, the company’s information-technology administrator. He quickly blocked access to both sites.
So you can see why companies out there in USA-land might want to shut off the bandwidth gravy train.
But what happens when news breaks? White, again, in the WSJ:
Schemmer Associates Inc., an architecture firm in Omaha, Neb., tapped OpenDNS last year to block unwanted video after experiencing substantial network slowdowns. Scott Bennett, network manager for Schemmer, traced the problems to some interns who watched online videos on blogging sites and social-networking portals. In December, Mr. Bennett installed the OpenDNS system that categorizes and filters Web content.
Later that same week, the system received its first major test when a 19-year-old high-school dropout shot and killed eight people, including himself, at a shopping mall across the street from Schemmer’s offices. During the ordeal, Mr. Bennett says Schemmer’s employees wanted to watch online news reports, but were blocked. Without the new system, says Mr. Bennett, the network would have crashed.
“The system saved me from what could have been a huge problem,” says Mr. Bennett. “I had pretty much the entire office come over and tell me how upset they were at not being able to see reports online. And I told them, it could have been worse.”
How will newspapers — many of which are just now getting into online video in a big way — deal with companies essentially standing on their garden hose?
And where will it end? They’re cutting off streaming video now. But tomorrow, they could close off access to entire domains.
Our domains. The ones we’re counting on to bring in the bucks we’re no longer getting from our print operations.
I can see a day when news organizations bid to become the one-and-only authorized source for online news for specific companies. What would your paper pay to serve a captive audience in your town’s largest office building?
In the meantime, if you want to watch March Madness, you might fire up the ol’ Tivo instead. Sounds like you might not be able to watch it at your desk this year.
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GOOOOO EAGLES!
And a special shoutout to alumni or students at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C. By winning the Big South Conference title last weekend, Winthrop earned an incredible eighth trip — over the past ten years — to the NCAA Tournament.
I worked as a student assistant in Winthrop’s Sports Information Department. My freshman year, in fact, was Winthrop’s third season of men’s intercollegiate basketball.
It’s been interesting to watch the program grow over the 24 years since I graduated in 1984.
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Charles Apple is the art director of Sporting News Today, a new daily sports e-newspaper. He speaks at various workshops and seminars, writes a column for SND's Design magazine and spends way too much time online. Log in
