Today Internews offers journalists, bloggers, and ordinary citizen partners of its projects the occasion to fully benefit from the new opportunities for innovation and distribution of information allowed by the Internet.
SPIP (Système de Publication pour l’Internet Partagé) was selected as a publication platform as it mimics the trusted practices of traditional editing (hierarchy of the editing responsibility, revisions tracking, communication during the editing process, archive system by key words, etc.) while providing access to all the opportunities offered by the Internet (RSS flow, multimedia content, statistics, search engines, etc.).
Additionally, SPIP meets the needs of groups producing information whose editorial team is spread across geographical regions by providing private forums, an internal messaging option, an online calendar, and various other functions.
Finally, the system’s general usability and its multilingualism (SPIP exists in more than 50 languages, and allows the management of several languages within the same site) were two determining factors in selecting SPIP.
Despite these benefits, transferring activities to the Web is not necessarily an easy or obvious option for many journalists and activists. For this reason, Internews created an online handbook with detailed instructions on how to manoeuvre and manage the program.
And as such, www.spipmedia.net was born.
The site contains more than 40 lessons organized in 4 levels, from novice to webmaster, in several languages (English, Persian, Burmese, Khmer, etc.). All the lessons were written with great attention to detail, coherence and quality. Each lesson presents several illustrations or exercises in Flash format; screenshots accompany nearly every explanation. The entire tutorial was reviewed by at least three individuals with limited knowledge of SPIP in order to ensure that all users could understand the explanations.
Moreover, this online database is continually updated.
Internews contacted Netapsys, a service company specializing in new technology, to revise the lessons and verify that the handbook properly explained how to appropriately use SPIP.
Today Spipmedia is Internews’ chosen tool for journalists, “webmaster journalists”, and the greater community of writers and editors that the organisation supports through its projects. A question, a doubt, a memory lapse? On www.spipmedia.net, a Flash demonstration or a written explanation is always available to provide an answer.
We are happy to share this website with you and look forward with enthusiasm to receiving your comments and suggestions.
For more information please contact Laurent Giacobino at lgiacobino AT internews DOT fr