http://www.SewardCityNews.com is Wordpress based with OpenAds for the side bar and Noah’s Classifieds. It’s not the greatest site and I don’t claim to have any true innovation with it but it’s struck a cord in our small community.

The site doesn’t make much money but for the time I spend on it it’s allowed for some great opportunities for myself and others.

How about a brand new online newspaper that’s not just a continuation or reinvention of a traditional rag?

Such an outfit would have minimal overhead, and everyone involved would do reporting out in the community. Like someone already said, the newsroom could be a downtown storefront.

Now you’re looking for examples of an online news site built from scratch. but it would still carry the name of the existing print newspaper, would it not?

I’m not talking about moving, laying people off and bringing in reporters with new skillsets. I’m talking about starting a whole new company from scratch.

Is there demand for this? Could someone pull it off?

I’m working on a book about social media and journalism and I love reading the site. Lots of great comments.

We’re actually building a content management system that incorporates social media into its posting capabilities — and we’re getting ready to launch an online developer community around it.

The CMS is *the* most important part of any online operation, and yet it’s oftentimes the most overlooked part of any company (at least from management).

Fun to see other people talking about these systems.

Thanks.

My hypothesis is that if you’re willing to completely drop the idea that your Web site = your mainline broadcast product, then you can use a platform or service that takes care of a lot of the business for you.

You need something that hosts video, serves ads, and allows readers to post video and leave video comments, among other content types.

Sounds like WordPress + YouTube or Brightcove to me.

Heck, Ning or the right Wordpress.com theme can do anything they would need.

Actually, Ning might even be a better choice than Drupal for what I’m picturing – definitely no developer required.

Why re-invent the wheel over and over again?

So to repeat my original point about a CMS for this purpose, if I were in the business of shutting down print editions and replacing them with “what’s next,” in terms of staffing and Web production, I would want the new online news site to have community baked into it. Reader blogs, profiles, and groups should be part of the site from day one.

There are easy ways of doing this these days. I recommend using one.

At work, I move sites from one rather static file system for publishing stories from their paper to a dynamic CMS for publishing online news, so I’m well aware of the advantages of a good CMS.

But I don’t see a need to argue over whether Drupal or WordPress or Joomla or any other flavor is the best way to get this job done.

Here’s a bit of what I’m after, in terms of a CMS for an imaginary failing newspaper going online-only:

• Community has to be built-in. This site is going to depend on locals to fill in the gaps, comment, and add some personality to the news.
• Once the site is built, no developer is required. Seriously, the point here is to reduce overhead, so there wouldn’t be a full-time coder on staff. The pieces of the site should be as widgetized/modular as possible, so re-arranging the furniture is a copy/paste job, not an epic development task in a feature queue.