New white paper reviews virtual tools for organizing your news work flow
Saturday, November 13th, 2010For small projects that hit big, rapid success can bring about as rapid a downfall – if a lack of organization hampers the ability to scale up to size. With that in mind, Susan Mernit, a long time local media expert and consultant working for The Oakland Local, has put together a highly useful overview of some of the free or cheap web-based tools that independent journalists and news organizations of all sizes can use to get and keep themselves organized as their projects or work flows expand.
“Tools for Scaling Your News Organization” reviews a wide array of software from project management to calendars. The 36-page white paper provides a great overview of more than two dozen tools, ranging from meeting management software like Freeconference.com, to file-sharing apps, job tracking software, communications tools, sales lead trackers, and wiki software.
Each of the tools is thoroughly reviewed, and the report also compiles them into an easy-to-read chart showing whether a tool is free or paid, and then grading it on its usefulness.
Among the most effective programs, per the report, are Google’s suite of free software, including Docs, and Calendar and Groups, as well as Basecamp’s project management suite.
But the report also helps clarify when and why a journalist or news organization should use such tools, especially in organizing a virtual team. It also discusses how to introduce tools to a team, and provides an interesting set of comments from a group of respondents about how they are (or aren’t) using the tools reviewed.
The white paper was prepared for an October workshop sponsored by Knight Digital Media Center-McCormick Foundation Leadership Institute.
