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By nickaster on
Mother Jones recently collaborated with EchoDitto to launch a new online presence which facilitates community participation and allows Mother Jones to expand their award-winning investigative journalism.
Background
Mother Jones is a nonprofit news organization that specializes in investigative, political, and social justice reporting. There are currently two main "channels" of distribution: an award-winning bimonthly national magazine (circulation 240,000), and a website featuring new, original reporting 24/7. Though Mother Jones was one of the first magazines to embrace the web—first launching their site in 1993—in recent years the constraints of their old site proved too great for the quality and quantity of the content, not to mention the needs of an increasingly engaged readership.
The goals for the relaunch were twofold: first, to migrate to a modern and supported CMS providing Mother Jones with an attractive and usable vehicle for their content; and second, to keep Mother Jones on the forefront of innovation by empowering their readers to become part of the deeper conversations that good journalism provokes.
Why Drupal?
Drupal was chosen as a CMS for several reasons, including its technical flexibility and built-in support for many of the community features we were looking for. Drupal's user access control system allows us to create multiple roles and control access to all of the site's features. Beyond its technical merits, Drupal also gives Mother Jones a software platform in synch with its values. As an open source project, Drupal shares a common spirit with the type of open-source journalism we wanted to provoke: a platform that harnesses the power of the community, inviting contributions from a wide, diverse network to create a better, more useful product. Third, Drupal's robust and flexible community building features allowed Mother Jones to encourage and showcase the capacity of its readers.
Adapting Drupal to the Newsroom and the Newsroom to Drupal
Transitioning to a new medium is hard. While they share common goals and principles, print journalism and web publishing demand different ways of thinking about workflow, users, and content. One of the biggest challenges for this project was creating a system that allowed Mother Jones and Drupal to meet halfway. This required effort on both sides: EchoDitto worked to adapt Drupal to the level of flexibility Mother Jones was used to in terms of layout, content, and the editorial process; simultaneously, Mother Jones began the difficult task of evolving the magazine's culture and workflow to meet the demands of a 24-hour publishing cycle with a greater emphasis on online media and a dialogical philosophy of journalism.
Workflow
There were several challenges in designing a backend to meet the evolving demands of this new workflow. Our goal was to create a system that could accommodate many users with different skill levels and a variety of needs, providing both ease-of-use (automation) and flexibility.
To accomplish this, we created a backend with a fully integrated workflow allowing content to be created and edited using the Drupal interface, and permitting flexible scheduling of both publication and promotion. We created a custom fork of the Nodequeue module which allowed editors to easily promote nodes and view the status of nodes in the queue. We also implemented a complex permissioning system to allow some users to directly add/edit content on the site, often tied to a content's taxonomy.
Content and Layout
In some ways, the evolution from the print magazine to a Drupal-based site has the opposite effect on content and layout than it does on workflow. While workflows became more flexible and relaxed, site layout and content types become more rigid.
Using CCK to create highly customized content types, we molded Drupal to fit the newsroom vocabulary; for example, articles have a byline and a dek instead of an author and teaser. To provide more flexibility, and to avoid the creation of thousands of inactive user accounts, we built custom byline functionality which associates nodes with author profile nodes in addition to user accounts. This allows articles to be published without requiring that the author be a registered user, and also permits an article to have multiple authors.
Additional content types include blog posts, podcasts, article packages, podcasts, and photo essays. Photo essays are implemented using the node reference, image, and thickbox modules. These essays were a particularly challenging concept for development because they often include text and audio as a component of the essay - sometimes on a per photo basis, sometimes shared across many photos.
Deriving from a print magazine tradition, certain related articles and media needed to be grouped as "special packages". These groups of content are published simultaneously and play off each other with links and their own unique table of contents and shared branding scheme which sets them apart from other areas of the site. We created a "package" content type and used the JSTree control to create a UI for package creation.
Due to the volume of content created daily, Mother Jones editors required a high degree of flexibility to present the content in a way that was easy for readers to follow and allowed them to highlight the top articles. Using customized versions of the Nodequeue and Hierarchical Select modules, the site gives the editors the ability to customize the location and order in which content is displayed on the homepage and section pages.
Engaging the Community
Many news organizations would have been satisfied with a site that simply brings their product to the web, but Mother Jones has always strived to push the envelope and this site follows suit, redefining investigative journalism by bringing their readers into the conversation. As part of their core philosophy, Mother Jones believes that the point of investigative journalism is to not merely report, but to activate. It was imperative that the new site go beyond the one-way paradigm and put readers at the front and center of their online community.
Commenting System
The key feature of the MotherJones.com commenting system is that it is designed to not only allow readers to respond to articles, but to add value to their reporting by fostering a meaningful conversation that yields not only reactions but solutions.
To steer the conversation in this direction, readers can recommend their favorite comments. They can also identify their own comments as a proposed solution or a documented result by tagging the comment at the time of writing. Through these new recommendations and tagging features, the dialogue continues long after publication. Particularly insightful, popular, or solutions-oriented commentary can then be then be discovered by readers or Mother Jones staff. Moreover, Mother Jones can keep up with readers’ responses and incorporate those discussions in future investigative pieces.
Comments Central
To harness the collective power of these community discussions, we created a new aggregation tool on Mother Jones called Comments Central. By highlighting the content with the most readers, most active discussions, and selected content from the editors, this feature brings users together and helps to focus the conversation on the topics most relevant and engaging for the audience. The potential to build out Comments Central is limited only by the imagination of those involved but is not yet heavily featured while the community builds towards critical mass.
Modules Used
Active Select
CAPTCHA - In order to promote a high level of discussion, CAPTCHA is essential to keep the spam from drowning out the conversation.
CCK - We used CCK to create highly customized content types which fit the newsroom vocabulary and workflow.
Date
Embed filter - This module enables users to embed media (i.e. YouTube videos) in their posts, but allows administrators to decide which hosts to trust.
FileField
Filter by node type - Allows the admin to restrict the available input formats by node type.
Flag - Using the Flag module allows us to steer the conversation in the right direction by permitting readers to mark the best comments as "recommended", and to flag their own comments as a "proposed solution" or a "documented result".
Forward - Allows readers to share their favorite articles with their friends and families.
getID3()
Hierarchical Select - Used, along with Nodequeue, to give editors a high degree of flexibility to determine how content appears on the homepage and on each section page.
Image
ImageAPI
ImageCache
Imagecache javascript crop
ImageField
Image Assist
Javascript Aggregator
jQuery Update
Javascript Tools
Link
Nodequeue - Used, along with Hierarchical Select, to give editors a high degree of flexibility to determine how content appears on the homepage and on each section page.
Panels
Pathauto - Automatically generates aliases for new nodes based on an administrator defined pattern.
Print - Creates a printer-friendly version of articles.
reCAPTCHA
Search config
SimpleMenu
Token
Troll - Allows administrators to moderate comments and to ban commenters who violate community rules.
Update Status
Views
Webform
Yahoo YUI
YUI Rich Text Editor - Provides users with a WYSIWYG interface, enabling writers to create rich-text content regardless of their knowledge of HTML.
Voting API
Audio - Makes publishing podcasts as simple as publishing any other content.
Scheduler - Gives editors complete control over their publication calendar.
Service Links - Encourages users to push content to their social network by providing links to share articles using may popular services.
Comment RSS
Community Tags
Content Taxonomy
Global Redirect
jQuery Interface
LoginToboggan
MimeDetect
Meta tags
Restricted Search
Tagadelic
Theme Settings API
Views Bonus Pack
Views Podcast
Workflow-ng - Permits creation of the complex workflows necessary to adapt the standards and procedures of the print magazine for online publishing.
Acknowledgements
As with any project with this scale and complexity, relaunching MotherJones.com required a tremendous amount of work on all sides. In particular, the following individuals should be recognized for their tireless effort and dedication to making this project a success: Tom Lee, Scott Bulua, Phil Lamb, Meaghan Lamarre, Justin Pinder, Michael Silberman, and Harish Rao from EchoDitto (strategy + technology), Steve Lyons (design), Kevin Montgomery (advisor) and Monika Bauerlein, Clara Jeffrey, Jim Harris, Robert Wise, Celine Nadeau, Young Kim & Nick Aster from Mother Jones.
