A conversation about tagging

At the suggestion of Paul Jones, I spoke with Thomas Vander Wal, principal and senior consultant of  InfoCloud Solutions, Inc., and a student of Web tagging.

Here’s the audio from our talk. You can listen to it in an embedded player on Andrew’s personal blog here. (Darn wordpress.com won’t allow embedded audio.)

Or you can download the file here. [audio Vander Wal chat]

Basically, we discussed how the DTH’s new site can integrate user tags with the ones our own staff are going to provide. We came to a consensus on that users should definitely be able to suggest tags, though they should be moderated. That will help us know what readers are looking for, but avoid some of the obscene tags that could come through unfettered access. We also discussed the utility of individual user pages that could compile those user-generated tags and link to the stories that the reader had tagged.

Another interesting idea: Letting a reader “curate” our stories for a month, tagging them as he or she sees fit.

Watch us build college media’s best Web site

Welcome to The Daily Tar Heel‘s Magic Bullet, the development blog for our new Web site and content management system. Here we will outline what we’re looking for in our new CMS and Web site in our quest to have the best college media site in the country.

The blog’s title comes from how Andrew explains online journalism to folks who ask him about the current pains in the industry. There’s no magic bullet that will save newspapers, no simple steps that will make news organizations more effective online. Each organization needs to find what works best for it. Here, the DTH plans to find our magic bullet, and hopefully set an example for newspapers around the country.

The contract is signed. We are leaving College Media Network (a.k.a. College Publisher), and building our own Drupal-based site. In essence, we’re starting from scratch. We’re having a conference call with the site developer tomorrow. Be sure to check back to watch this all unfold. Check out our work-in-progress list of requirements.

Our primary bloggers:

Andrew Dunn, editor-in-chief.

Sara Gregory, managing editor/online.