Indieweb for Journalism

From IndieWeb


Indieweb for Journalism is the application of Indieweb principles to one's personal site with a particular emphasis on use cases for journalists, photographers, editors, related bloggers and platforms which are publishing their work.

While the general principles of Indieweb can apply to anyone's site, in an attempt to help foster the next generation of potential Indieweb adopters who may be focused on areas of news, journalism, or distribution, we're compiling some specific hints, tips, pointers, and examples which may be germane to these particular audiences to assist in their motivation and adoption.

In addition to the material below, be sure to see getting started, which is an excellent place to start for all people.


Projects

Naturally any project could be used for journalism and related purposes, but the following either are geared toward them, or are heavily used by them and have a relatively rich ecosystem of additional functionality or plugins to expand their use specifically toward these areas. New users, particularly those of generations 2+ who may not be programmers/developers by nature may be advised to take a look at one or more of these for their base functionality.

WordPress

Main article: WordPress

WordPress is a commonly used CMS in general, but there is a large and engaged community of journalists, magazines, newspapers, and other outlets using it. There are also a variety of use-case specific plugins and functionality.

Plugins

The list below isn't specifically Indieweb related, but are plugins, some with an Indieweb flavor, which people interested in these areas may find useful.


WordPress
Topics Getting Started on WordPressAdvanced WordPress Set UpPluginsThemesExamplesWordPress with BridgyDevelopmentDataSecurity
Primary Plugins Indieweb PluginWebmentionSemantic LinkbacksMicropubIndieAuthPost KindsSyndication LinksWebSub plugins
POSSE Plugins Syndication LinksSocial Network Auto PosterJetPack PublicizeWP CrosspostTumblr CrosspostrDiasposterMastodon AutopostBridgy Publish plugin (deprecated) • Medium (deprecated)
PESOS Plugins Keyring Social ImportersDsgnWrks Twitter ImporterDsgnWrks Instagram Importer
Other Plugins IndieBlocksShortnotesActivityPub PluginAperture Refback pluginIndieWeb Press ThisWordPress MF2 Feeds PluginWordPress uf2OpenIDSimple LocationParse ThisIndieweb ActionsPressForwardYarns Indie ReaderWhisperFollowblogroll2email
Themes SemPress • (SemPress Child Themes: SemPress Lite, SenPress, and Index) • AutonomieIndependent PublisherIndieWeb Publishermf2_sTwenty Sixteen IndieWeb-friendly forkIndieWeb Twenty Fifteen ThemeDoublescores
Assistance Join the #indieweb chatIRC and other chat optionsWordPress FAQWordPress Outreach ClubTroubleshooting TipsWordPress toolsWordPress channel
See also WordPress related wiki pagesCategory:WordPress pluginsCategory:WordPress themesCategory:WordPress sessionsWordPress.comWordPress using IndieMarkAWS Tutorial


Known

Main article: Known

The Known CMS was built as an opensource Indieweb project from the ground up thus making it a convenient choice. See also: Getting Started with Known#Journalists

Indieweb Examples

A group of journalists and related people integrating Indieweb principles into their websites:

Others

People working in the space and at least tangentially knowledgeable or aware of Indieweb or practicing some of the principles in the wild:

  • Jeff Jarvis, professor and director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism
  • Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at NYU 1
  • Aram Zucker-Scharff
  • Marina Gerner (example in the wild)
  • Tim Harford (example in the wild, practicing PESOS)
  • John Naughton, Technology columnist of the London Observer/the Guardian newspaper and researcher posts links, reads, quotes, commentary, and links to his columns written for other publications on his own website.
  • Add yourself here… (see this for more details)

People are heartily encouraged to look into the depth and breadth of other examples on the pages spanning the remainder of the wiki.

IndieWeb Outlet Examples

Below are a list of magazines, newspapers, and other journalistic outlets that are actively practicing various portions of IndieWeb tools:

ColoradoBoulevard.net

ColoradoBoulevard.net, a local newspaper for the Pasadena, CA and surrounding areas.

UI example from ColoradoBoulevard.net of facepiled Reads

Others

Byline Examples

It's not always/often the case for outlets to provide links to authors' personal websites. Generally they're links within the company's CMS to a page that aggregates the author's work only for that publisher. Occasionally they will also include links to other social silos like Facebook or Twitter. In an ideal world, authors, even staff writers, should ask for and receive credit links to a website that they control.

Below are some examples of larger publications which are giving links from articles directly to the author's personal websites:


Syndicating Work on the Internet

Just as many people in the social media world syndicate or cross-post material from their own blogs to sites like Facebook and Twitter, there's no reason that journalists couldn't follow a similar model for their own work. Typically a writer will be able to reach far more people by publishing their work in the New York Times than on their own website, so in addition to earning money by giving it to the outlet, they should archive a copy on their own website for their personal portfolio as well as all the usual social media sites in addition.

POSSE

Main article: POSSE

POSSE is an abbreviation for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere, a content publishing model that starts with posting content on your own domain first, then syndicating out copies to 3rd party services with permashortlinks back to the original on your site.

Indieweb Examples

Examples in the Wild

  • ProPublica, an independent nonprofit investigative journalism newsroom, in addition to publishing content on their own website also "syndicates" a copy of the article to the publishing partner with whom they often worked or collaborated on the particular article. This type of syndication dramatically increases the circulation of the original story.

PESOS

Main article: PESOS

PESOS is an acronym/abbreviation for Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site. It's a Syndication Model where publishing flow starts with posting to 3rd party services, then using some infrastructure (e.g. feeds, pingbacks, webhooks) to create an archive copy under your domain.

Indieweb Examples

PASTA

Main article: PASTA

PASTA is an acronym/abbreviation for 'Publish Anywhere, Save To (private) Archive and may be a workflow that many journalists would execute to maintain a personal portfolio of all of their work.

Indieweb Examples

Examples in the Wild

  • Savemy.news is a service that uses Twitter in combination with the Internet Archive and webcitation.org to help journalists create public archives of all their work. The tool allows users to download a .csv copy of all of the links to their articles. [2]

Annotations

Main article: annotations

Archiving

Main article: archival copy

Many journalists may be using their site as a portfolio and as part of that having an additional archive (aka Archival copy) can be crucial if their outlet should fold or disappear from the internet.

Dodging the Memory Hole conferences via the Reynolds Journalism Institute has some interesting resources and lists of researchers, librarians, archivists, and technologists working on archiving "born digital" news.

Beyond news: understanding the role of archives in journalism businesses is a blog post about a survey of news organisations' archiving practices, carried out by The Tow Centre for Digital Journalism. Conclusion: most are not doing a very good job of it, while those that are can see benefits.

Related Conferences/Organizations

Articles relating to Indieweb and Journalism


Resources related to Journalism

See Also