No editions, please

Submitted by yelvington on November 20, 2008 - 9:58am

While we're treading water pending the rollout of our Drupal-based site management project, I thought it might be worth mentioning some of the principles and assumptions behind it. Here's one: No editions, please.

I've seen developers put a great deal of effort into creating Web content managment systems that are intended to reflect the edition structure -- daily, weekly, monthly, whatever -- of a legacy (print) product.

Don't do it. We live in a 24x7 world. The Internet is always on. Information should be available when it makes sense.

I'm not denying the existence of circadian rhythm, nor am I suggesting that news organizations forget all about daily cycles. Most people get up in the morning to engage with a new day, and most newspapers will still be printing daily editions for awhile yet. We still need to plan for days, and publish some information with respect to daily cycles.

But it need not, and should not, rule our lives, or dictate the organizational metaphors we use to display information online.

Comments

Submitted by Tad (not verified) on November 20, 2008 - 10:11am
I think, and i hate to use the word, but the 'paradigm' here is too large, ominous and established to break through... but it is exactly what needs to be done for any kind of progress at this point. Nomenclature and semantics are getting in the way of developing a solid, dynamic and usable product that will generate repeat users and more interactive sessions. Even the outdated focus on page-view driven structure is getting in the way of evolving this project into what it really needs to be. What is the solution?