Max Cutler

As we will be open­ing doors to the Courant News code this week, I thought I would take a moment to address expec­ta­tions that peo­ple might or might not have regard­ing the project.

I know that cur­rently there’s a strong desire for alter­na­tives to Col­lege Pub­lisher. Word­Press and Dru­pal are great, but some­times they aren’t the best fit for a news orga­ni­za­tion, and so a cus­tom news CMS is an attrac­tive prospect.

At this point, we’ve been work­ing on code for Courant News for almost six months, and have been think­ing about it con­cep­tu­ally for at least a year. As I’ve dis­cussed in a pre­vi­ous post, a CMS is fun­da­men­tally all about con­tent man­age­ment, which means that the admin­is­tra­tive inter­face is the most impor­tant com­po­nent. We have plans for the Courant News admin, which will become pub­lic when the project site launches this week. But for now we are still using the Django admin app as a stop­gap solu­tion, which is pass­able but far from ideal. Until we’ve imple­mented a more news-oriented admin, I don’t think I could rec­om­mend use of Courant News for a pro­duc­tion site.

The point of releas­ing the code and open­ing the process is to get the rest of the col­lege news com­mu­nity involved. We can all col­lab­o­rate on the design and imple­men­ta­tion of var­i­ous aspects of the plat­form, and make some­thing that is really built for and by the col­lege news com­mu­nity. We’re now ready to get peo­ple inv­oled in a hands-on man­ner, and that’s why we are “releas­ing” this week. But please be care­ful not to con­fuse the term “release” as mean­ing “ready to be used.”

I think Courant News has a ton of poten­tial and can be a ral­ly­ing point for col­lege news, and I hope we can get alot of voices inv­oled in the process. We need devel­op­ers; we need jour­nal­ists; and we need vision­ar­ies. Get excited and get involved because you see the poten­tial and want to help us through the process. Don’t get car­ried away think­ing it’s an imme­di­ate cure or imme­di­ately use­ful tool. All in due time. All in due time.