Josh Andrews
I like to think that I’m in the same boat as a lot of public media web managers — I’m not a programmer by training. Sure, I’ve learned a good bit about coding over the years, but by no means am I the guy in the movie who hacks into the Pentagon’s mainframe. There are many stations in the public media system with someone just like me at the helm of the website — someone who wears more than one hat at the station (how about Web Manager/Morning Edition host). So nine months ago, when we were tasked with developing a web presence for this project, I often reminded myself to keep that type of station in mind.
In my section of the FluPortal final report, I detail how we approached the task of building and maintaining this website and shaped the project’s digital strategy. As we prepare to wrap up the project next week, I wanted to take a moment to discuss one aspect of my work that may, hopefully, spark some further discussion about the evolution of the public media system’s online presence.
One of my responsibilities on the project was to curate the selection of web tools available on our For Station Sites page. As I approached the task, I wanted to offer an abundance of easy-to-use embeddable media — items like widgets and maps, badges and news feeds that took little time and effort. But I also wanted to encourage web managers to try some new approaches and a few new tools. With this in mind, I included three introductory guides to the NPR API (a powerful tool underutilized by too many stations), the Twitter API, and Yahoo Pipes. Most everyone coming to this website has heard of these tools, but I know what it’s like to oversee a station website and how day-to-day demands and deadlines too often interfere with opportunities for experimentation. We knew many stations were planning to update their websites with H1N1 pandemic information and I thought this could provide a good excuse for web managers to try out a few new tricks.
After the launch of the site, we heard some positive feedback on the guides and decided to expand the roster to include Facebook Connect, CoveritLive, Delicious, and a guide to using social media in editorial coverage. (All the FluPortal guides are collected here.) These guides are in no way meant to be a full user manual on any topic. Instead, I hoped to familiarize stations with the potential that these tools offer, provide some tips on getting started, and include a preliminary set of best practices. While this project has focused on covering H1N1, the hope was that stations would try these tools and then integrate them as a regular part of their online presence.
I believe the public media system could benefit by building and maintaining a central warehouse of similar guides, best practices, and other resources related to emerging web technologies. While some large-market stations are moving fast to adapt to the digital future, we risk leaving behind large numbers of local stations which lack the resources to stay on the cutting edge. In this tough economic climate, we risk growing into a system of digital haves and have-nots. Providing an online space for public media web managers to learn, share, and experiment would help combat this trend. What are your thoughts? What kind of collaboration and knowledge sharing do you think would prove most helpful for local stations, large and small?
