Jennifer Cannon
News Editor
University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Background

Staff and budget shortages combine with an increase in the number and complexity of assignments
to make reporting and distributing news from a land-grant college more difficult than ever. Add to
that the ever-increasing rate at which new technologies and media are developing and it's no
wonder that we're all in a state of technical shock.

Martha L. Stone noted that experts predict staffing, in both for-profit and not-for-profit
enterprises, will remain static. "But what 1999 will bring is more efficient models of joint
newsrooms in media companies with more than one media outlet, particularly video and
newspapers." (1)

But even the most tightly knit production team can't succeed without providing Web users with
the information they want, how they want it. Namely, users want interactivity. But Steve Outing
said, "in my view, for a site to be truly interactive, it also must facilitate communication (i.e.
inter! ! activity) between human beings." (2)

A recent survey reports that almost 74 percent of Web users read news online. The same survey
tells us that overall, our Web audience is very evenly divided among men and women (49 and 51
percent respectively) and their age averages at 35.9 years. But their connections to the Web are
generally not the speediest available. Nearly 59 percent of users surf mainly from home, where
slow dial-up connections are the rule. (3)

A CAES news site currently under construction will combine the best aspects of print, video and
audio news reporting with the audience preferences for readability and interactivity. This new site
will change not only how our users get and use news from the College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences, but also how the editors will produce that news content.

Weekly deadlines drive our current news production with a total of ten stories produced each
work we! ! ek for print, television and radio. The three to five print stories are also converted into a
weekly Web site. Each editor researches and writes a story then submits it for editing and further
production. After editing, the stories are electronically delivered to a single editor (Cannon) for
Web publishing. The process of creating the news web and individual text and graphic documents
requires approximately six dedicated hours.

The news site receives approximately 175 hits from unique IP addresses each week. A feedback
mechanism allows users to share their thoughts on the site with us. Each comment is weighed and
implemented if possible. Through these comments, CAES news on the Web has changed from a
single document with hypertext imbedded to a site structure with interlinked pages that also
contain hypertext links to not only sources and home institutions, but also electronically published
information from our Extension Service tha! ! t relates to the article's topic.

We, the editors and unit administration, realize this process is too dependent upon weekly
deadlines and just a few people. Changing will require the advancement of skills for all the editors
involved in current news production.
_________________

1 Editor & Publisher; Jan. 2, 1999 State of the Newspaper Industry "Expect shakeups for new media in the new year"

2 Editor and Publisher Dec. 26, 1998, Stop the Presses Commentary "What exactly is interactivity?

3 Yahoo! Internet Life, Sept. 1998 "The Big Picture" by Ron Bel Bruno

Method

The shift into a database-created news site will make several changes in how our Web news
product is created. Each editor will submit his or her stories when they are written and edited,
rather than on a weekly basis. Submissions will be through a password protected form page
created by a member of our Office of Information Technology, who is also building the database.
The database will build the site "on the fly" so a single editor will not be required to dedicate time
to create it. This also allows less complicated remote submissions to the news product.

To begin this shift, the programmer needed to know how the news product would work. A
lengthy discussion of how the stories need to be submitted and how they will appear on the Web
was undertaken. In the end, we created a sample Web site providing a guide for the components,
the structure and the navigation of the new site. <http://www.ces.uga.edu/news/database/>.(illustration 1)

Within this site, we had to carefully describe how a 'normal' story would move through the
system. Each story, before submission to the server, must be coded for its priority, destination
section and tagged with descriptor words. After submission, the server places the story short title,
teaser, full title and lead on the front page of the site.

The full story is placed in the appropriate section and the lead from the front page is linked to it.

The front page will hold six story leads, so as editors submit their stories, older ones will bump
down the page and fall off. The sections will hold stories for a coded number of days before they
fall into a searchable archive.

Priority stories are coded for the number of days they will remain on the front page without
additional stories bumping them off. After that set time, they will move down and off the page.

Also on this page will be an ! ! infographic called AGlimpse. This product will illustrate facts and
figures about Georgia agriculture in an easy-to-grasp graphic. It is set to change daily and will
require close cooperation with a member of the ECT Graphics team. Each graphic will be date
coded (i.e. ag020199.XXX) so the server can replace them automatically.

We have plans in place to add video and audio clips to the site.

With this plan in place, we needed a standard web document creation software. With this, the
programmer could be reasonably certain of how it would write code and make provisions for that
in the database code. We selected Front Page '98 ( a Microsoft product) as our "standard"
software to create the pages for submission into the database system.

A training curriculum will be developed to meet the needs of the Public Affairs group members, as
well as members of other teams interested in this software. In working with the dat! ! abase
programmer, we have determined how much basic html coding is necessary for use with the
system. Each editor will import their text into Front Page, then use that software to build code
within the document for links within the story, insert bulleted lists, place pictures, graphics,
cutlines, tables, rules and lists of additional information.

This coded text can then be pasted into the submission form.

The database construction is planned to be flexible enough to allow changes in look, structure or
navigation over time. It also allows independent links within the page for inclusion of special
sections for regular features such as spring and fall garden packets, disaster-related information or
special "weeks" (i.e. 4-H Week, Soil and Water Stewardship, Agriculture, etc.)

These special sections, though linked from the news database, will not be part of it. These will be
created and updated manually, much! ! like our current news system.

As the system matures, we can also add interactive features. Already planned in are links to the
writers, sources, additional information and a feedback mechanism. An interactive feature planned
to premiere later in 1999 is a Q&A section allowing users to ask scientists questions related to the
article for which the scientist was used as a source.

Results

The CAES News Site was originally set to premiere Feb. 1, 1999, but the programmer, Sonjay
Kothrai, was also involved in other projects which took priority over this one. The site, as of Jan.
27, is still under construction and questions are still posed nearly every day about story movement
and site navigation.

The artistic design of the site is also underway. The site design will coordinate with the design for
the unit and college sites and use many of the same graphics, but will not be identical.

The current site uses a free Web-based counter that records total hits, hits from unique IP
addresses, the days the hits are made, their script-handling capability, the OS the computer
operates on, the browser used and the monitor resolution and color depth settings. This data has
been a factor in many decisions needed for this site.

"Beta testing" and pilot groups will guide the initial revisions to the site. Aft! ! er the site premieres,
we will continue the feedback and e-mail subscription form currently in use. These comments will
guide further developments of the news site. User data will be available after the site opens.

Internal surveys and feedback from submitting editors will mold the submission process. As editor
needs and uses change, so shall the process.

Conclusions

This site, though still undergoing development, should be a breakthrough for us in editorial
process and usability. We, like so many other news production staffs, feel we could always create
our products more efficiently. This process should move us toward that.

We hope the increase in interactivity and usability for users will boost our audience numbers. As a
land-grant college news effort, we also aim for commercial site editors and web managers. The
addition of interactivity will increase our attractiveness for their inclusion of our site, or links to
our site, from their sites.

In all, by employing this database system, we expect our audience to grow as the individual
contribution to create the site and its content is spread among the editors, making each of us more
effective in our news responsibilities.