June 17, 2003, 3:27 PM ET
Why news sites don't need specialized blog systems
I just posted this to Poynter's online-news listserv. I was responding to an editor of a major news site who was asking about which blog software to use on his site.
> I'm looking for recommendations for
> good blog software ... I'm open for
> suggestions. We're also looking at building
> our own, but if I can find the right
> software for the right price, we'll go with
> that.
I highly recommend integrating a self-built system into your legacy CMS, if you've got the means to do it. Ideally, if you've got a good CMS already and it's customizable enough, just extend it to produce "blog" output. Honestly, weblogs are nothing special -- they're just another form of article.
The allure of specialized weblog publishing systems is that they make Web publishing easy for non-technical users. Producers of news sites are not non-technical users; producers of news sites have an idea of how to publish content on the Web already -- and they have the tools to do it. (Well, for the most part.) Do you really want to introduce an extra layer of complexity into your site by bringing in *a whole other publishing system* just to manage the weblogs?
An online producer shouldn't have to use a scattered mess of publishing systems just to get stuff done. There shouldn't be a standalone "poll tool," a standalone "blog system" and yet another "main newspaper content system." The goal should be to unify these tools, not to decentralize them.
