What is a CMS? What does it do?

red green and blue text

People who work on newspapers or on news websites speak often of “the system”. Sometimes they mean it in a general sense (the way in which the world is run, or how their company works) – but mostly they mean the computer program that they use to write or edit their articles. These staffers sometimes don’t know that the system (which is often hated) has another, longer name: it is actually a content management system,…

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Curation 101: The story of the day

I have a very modest little Twitter account – but I am fond of it, no matter how small it is. Lately, I’ve been using it to focus on something I call the Story Of The Day. It’s a concept that dates back to my days in full-time employment, when I was part of the team running Independent Online – or sometimes the only person running one of its subsidiary channels.

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Thoughts on web design: it begins with an article

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an editor in possession of a new website (or a newspaper) must be in want of a redesign. The Jane Austen phrasing was irresistible, but this is one of the true certainties of journalism: when a publication gets a new editor, he or she will want it to look different. When I was a print journalist I live through three different redesigns. And in my time in online…

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Why online headlines matter, a lot

Huffington Post South Africa engaged in an interesting but flawed experiment this week.They published a story with this headline: ‘Donald Trump Praises Jacob Zuma as “The Best, Ever”‘ . Very clickable it is, combining two big names in online traffic generation. However, what you get when you open the article is a discussion of fake news – a “we make you click and now we will teach you something” story. Huff Post’s news editor Deshnee Subramany…

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