Rob Wells

At the start of September I switched from WordPress to Tumblr for hosting my website. At the time it made sense. Tumblr is far simpler to use, and makes it incredibly easy to share all sorts of stuff.

But it lacks some stuff that WordPress does really well. With Tumblr your posts aren’t the focus — when you log into the Tumblr dashboard it shows you the posts from those you follow. It’s not particularly suited for use as a CMS, which is made clear when you see that it shows your posts as a big list. It’s geared towards publishing, publishing a lot, and seeing what other people are publishing.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I don’t doubt that it got me blogging regularly, and even often, which is something that I just wasn’t doing before. In fact, I wrote a post about how effective Tumblr was in doing that.

It’s served me very well over the past few months, but how easily things could get “lost” in a mass of posts — particularly ones that you’d spent a long time working on — was really quite disturbing.

WordPress is the opposite, with many options for sorting, categorising, and finding content. This is one of the things that drove me to Tumblr, probably because I didn’t have many posts (and very few of good quality) and WordPress was constantly pointing it out.

While working on my deconstruction of Bullet Magazine’s website the importance of having a clear layout that made it very easy to find and archive content became very apparent. It’s the whole reason why their website is crap, and the whole reason why it needs to change.

And then I published.

I wrote recently about the last two articles that would go up on The Linc’s website in 2009. In it, I included some statistics: since September 14th there were 225 articles posted, of which 95 were news.

The sheer number absolutely amazes me. But I am greatly saddened when I take a look at the online presence of our closest competitor, Bullet Magazine. Whereas the amount of stories we posted averages out at nearly two and a half every single day between 14/9/09 and 20/12/09, there are just 29 articles on Bullet’s website — averaging out at one every three and a half days.

This is absolutely baffling, as Bullet has had three printed issues this semester. I can’t tell you how many articles they published in total as all the copies are back in Lincoln, and they’re not available online at all, despite their Facebook page promising that “Bullet Magazine is also available as a downloadable PDF at www.bulletonline.org.” (Note: This was removed while I was writing this article. There were significant changes to their Facebook page today.)

In this article I will examine Bullet’s current situation online, look at the technical issues that prevent them from having a good, easily accessible, and easily updatable website, and suggest changes that they can make in order to improve things.

I am not doing this to brag, to glibly point out flaws, or spitefully criticise them. If this was the case, I wouldn’t offer suggestions for changes. On the contrary, my motive is to help them build a better online presence, as it is utterly essential for both those writing the articles, and those reading them. Putting copy online allows for a more-or-less permanent archive, that is accessible by anyone, anywhere in the world, and all you need is an internet connection.

It allows writers to easily share material with friends, family, or potential employers, and the material will be accessible long after they’ve graduated.

Readers can similarly share material very easily with people who can’t get their hands on a physical copy, or access it themselves if they don’t have one. The persistent nature of online content allows for them to read older articles, long after the issue has disappeared from the stands.

There are no downsides. With the right setup, putting things on a website is incredibly quick and easy. There is no excuse not to do it.

We’ve just posted a predictions piece for 2010 on The Linc’s site. Barring any big, breaking news that’s it. The last thing we’re going to post this year.

It’s been a great year for The Linc, and a great semester in particular. Since September 14th we’ve had 225 stories, of which 95 were news. We’ve had two great print issues, with the December issue being our biggest ever, at 16 pages, and in full colour for the first time.

It’s been fantastic welcoming some very talented and dedicated people to the team. I wish to thank everyone who has written news this academic year, and can’t speak ill of anyone that I’ve dealt with personally. There have been disagreements and arguments, and I’ve swore a lot at a lot of different people. But on reflection, everyone has contributed high quality work, and The Linc has been better a result.

I am very confident in the team of people who I expect to take The Linc forward, and the sun that I can see at the horizon of 2010 looks very bright indeed.

I’d like to thank everyone I’ve worked with on The Linc this year — every single one, including Leo Worsdale — because despite the occasional friction, we’re awesome.

If you’d like to read our last two stories of the year, one looking back and one looking forward, here are the links:

• In review: biggest stories of 2009
• Looking ahead: Lincoln in 2010

Here’s the video of John Pilger discussing “why journalism matters” with Professor Richard Keeble of the Lincoln School of Journalism. It took place on Monday, October 12th 2009.

It’s taken forever to get sorted, and the video quality & the camera work isn’t the best, but it’s the whole talk, including the Q&A at the end.

If you’d like to read it, here’s my email interview with Pilger.

Link: Journalists off the mark on key news stories

The University of Lincoln’s press office beat me (quite substantially) in publishing a write-up of Dorothy Byrne’s talk at the university last week. It’s a decent article, though Ian writes consistently good copy so that shouldn’t surprise anyone.

But what is interesting is… it’s missing half the people who were part of the talk last week. There isn’t a single mention of Mike Jempson, director of Mediawise, who shared the stage with Byrne.

Update: 11.40pm, December 1st, 2009

My copy’s available here. I’ve focused on Jempson because he had more interesting things to say, and I’ll leave the press office to write about Byrne’s pathetic defence.

Update: 1.20pm, January 25th, 2010

I’ve just spoke to Jenny Sheriston from the press office. Apparently she wrote the copy, and excluded Jempson because Byrne was more interesting, and she considers Byrne to be one of the most important women in broadcasting.

I didn’t write this at the time, but it was the reason for my concern of Jempson’s exclusion: Byrne is is a prominent figure in the dominant media, and so has fairly easy access to other dominant media organisations.

Outside pressure groups, like Jempson’s [Mediawise][ws], often have great difficulty getting attention for their critique of the media, and those with more radical views are often ignored completely.

We should bring attention to marginalised views, and not just focus on the powerful.