A newspaper for Bay City?

Hey Guys
Alx Zeiler (lives in Tanelorn.. ) came by the bar the other day and suggested something which I jumped on immediately.. but which is of course connected with a lot of work and creativity on the side of those that are part of it...
He suggested to put out a newspaper for Bay City.
Now.. there are a few newspapers in world.. some are on the web.. and not all of them are good... or necessary.
A Bay City Newspaper would be another good way for the region to create more community feeling and to make it possible to carry word about it outside the community.
We discussed it a bit and came up with the following suggestion:

A Bay City Newspaper is created in html (wordpress. e.g.) and hosted at a website. A newspaper kiosk in world will give out a prim item that represents a newspaper and will trigger a reading animation when worn. At the same time it will open the internal browser to the website of the newspaper. There are issues like the networking of the kiosks.. but that could all be solved..... I am sure.

The content would be a mix of info, entertainment and advertising. Areas, sights and Residents could be featured.. as could events and venues. There would be space on general SL topics in relation to BC... maybe a newcomer info corner.. or whatever people would consider to be interesting and relevant. there could be an event calendar, a photo section, want-ads, a novel in instances (which will of course be situated in BC and use places that actually exist...*G) ... I am rambling on here again..but there are a lot of options.

Now.. creating a newspaper.. even if you aim at a new issue not more often than let's say bimonthly.. is a hard big bunch of work. I would like to do that.. and throw a lot of energy in there.. but I could surely not do it alone with Alx.... .

My question is now: What do you guys think? Is this a good idea? Would you support it? Is it far out? Would you like to contribute? Do you think I would shoot myself after a week? Does SL need another Newspaper? Does BC need one? Do you have suggestions.. warnings.. issues?

Please contribute to the discussion.. I would be most greatful... since I am myself yet undecided in a way.

BTW..we already came up with a name...which I think most people would like..
simply: The Bay City Explorer
As I was informed there has already the url baycityexplorer.net been secured for us..*G* .. Alx could host the website himself.

Awaiting your postings

K.

a newspaper/magazine is a wonderful idea kirachan and i do think it would be a lot of work for whoever managed it. unfortunately i do not have the time to contribute a lot, but i could help with writing an article or taking photos if you needed. i feel like if you are volunteering to do most of the work you should have the most say so about how you want it to look, function, etc. because you know best what your schedule is and what you can do. i can say i generally do not pay for magazines in SL and i see them as an opportunity to promote lifestyle, business, fashion, opinions - so it should be free so as not to present any kind of pause for someone thinking of picking it up. i do pick up magazines often though and enjoy reading them as a hud or prim object. i rarely read sl magazines on the web, but that is just me I'm sure people have many ways they read information. let me know if you need anything from me! Rezit

The idea of a newspaper is great, I think it would help build community and keep everyone up to date about whats going on. The drawback is it is a lot of work to organize and regularly publish!

How would you feel about simply just a community blog? You could still have regular features, articles, categories etc like a newspaper but its a lot more friendly to the casual contributor and the hobbyist SLer . I know an old fashioned style newspaper has its romantic appeal but here are some advantages I see of having a blog instead of a more traditional periodically published newspaper:

1) Content can be added at writers own pace, allowing trusted/regular contributors to publish on their own. There could be editor(s) who anyone from the community can submit pieces to to be published.
2) Does not require someone to come up with layouts, fillers, etc
3) can be updated more regularly (people might check back more often?)
4) if you get it on the SL blog feed, single interesting blog posts are more likely to draw in a casual audience than a bundled issue is.
5) Allows more flexibility in posting about last minute events, breaking news, spontaneous musings etc
6) Readers can browse back and more easily access content in a blog format (for example, if there was an regular article that features a cool hang out in bay city each week, you don't have to dig thru each issue to find the hangout of the week, you can simply search for that tag and see them all).
7) Blogs allow a certain amount of dialogue and discussion via comments, which I think would even further bringing people together and creating community
8 ) web ads on headers and sidebars allow greater flexibility in how much advertising a merchant is willing to commit to

Just a thought. I know I get the hankering to sometimes contribute thoughts and reviews on things, but my schedule is erratic. I know I would be hesitant to promise regular content by publication deadlines, but with a blog format I would be more likely to throw in some articles and reviews when I got the time and felt inspired.

Barnes

An interesting idea - Thinking about things I like the idea of the newspaper best - as a physical thing within SL - I think the blog idea is more manageable BUT doesn't have the same appeal, and personally I probably wouldn't get around to looking at is as much as I might an SL newspaper - just my humble opinion...

Hi all!

I'm glad you all like this idea! Barnesworth has some really good points about using a blog-format instead of a full-blown newspaper, which I completely agree with.

I tend not to like web-based viewers that pull a user out of SL... I think in-world stories should be read in-world. However, SL's in-world mediums are somewhat limited. I'll review them:

• Notecards: Text-only; pictures are just links to textures. Could be a format for an in-world newspaper, but not a very graphical one.
  
• Prims: Each "page" is a texture that gets displayed using a prim reader, which may have page arrows. I've found that these are slow to load each page and generally frustrating.
  
• Webpage-on-a-prim: It does work, but not really an option since it requires changing the media the URL of land you're on, and then pressing the video play button.
  

We also have several options for an out-of-world solution:

• Blog Format Website: Could post articles on a blog site, either in "issues" or whenever the articles are completed.
  
• PDF: Could release issues as a PDF document (probably not very user-friendly).
  

A blog site would probably be the best format in terms of styling and ease-of-use. Originally I thought we could open such a blog in the internal web browser of the viewer and preserve the in-world experience, but as of right now there is no way for an object in SL to open a site in the internal browser
(See http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-4843)

So here's what I think we should do. We publish articles on a blog-style site, as we receive them, without worrying about creating specific issues. We also upload these articles to SL as notecards. We then create an in-world newspaper object that, when worn, makes the user's avatar appear as reading the newspaper. It gives them the option to read the latest articles in-world (via notecard) or on our blog site (via external web browser). If VWR-4843 ever gets implemented, we can change to just using the internal browser. This way we give the people who want to stay in-world a way to read in-world, and still have a site with a true layout, etc.

As for the networking of the kiosks, etc, that's no problem. I'm a computer programmer by trade and I'd be happy to script everything we need.

--Alx

OftenHird wrote:An interesting idea - Thinking about things I like the idea of the newspaper best - as a physical thing within SL - I think the blog idea is more manageable BUT doesn't have the same appeal, and personally I probably wouldn't get around to looking at is as much as I might an SL newspaper - just my humble opinion...

Its just a matter of personal preference I guess. I'm the opposite, I'm much more likely to read something when its outside the client. As Alx pointed out a lot of the in world ways can be cumbersome and limited, but in world publications remain quite popular so its clear not everyone feels that way. It just becomes more work, I was simply proposing a way to format it where nobody would be spending hours each week putting together layouts and uploading textures or pasting stuff into notecards.

I like the idea of doing a combination of both. We could do a blog and then publish an in world digest version at the end of each month (or whenever). I think that would be a more relaxed way of doing it as the end of the month version would be more like archiving the previous months activities rather than getting them out there for people to read for the first time.

I am personally not a very big friend of the blog option, they tend not to have a very reader-friendly setup when it comes to finding what is new... or searching for a certain topic. I actually prefer the pdf version (e.g. M²..) but that is just me. I totally agree with the critique on the amount of work necessary to create something like that.. so I do think that a blog is the best option. We only have to make sure that it keeps as much of the newspaper atmosphere about it.. we can do that via design and setup on the front page and by sorting the articles not by date posted but by category, which would be categories that fit into the newspaper setting. Since newest articles would still be up front it would become more like a (sort of..) daily newspaper with attached archives..*G

A month End digest via notecard might not be a bad idea... alternatively... with more work... the "newspaper" prim could display the digest as a texture... but ... no.. too much work...*G

greetings
K.

So since everybody seems to think this is a good idea, I think the next step is to get some info on who wants to/can do what, so just post here.

I can host the site, write articles occasionally, edit, script anything we need in-world or out, and provide a parcel for use as an office/hq if needed.

I am not very good at graphic design or building anything decent-looking from scratch in-world, so would need someone to help with that.

well.. I could organize, write, take pictures, do some basic graphic design, can build... though not necessarily VERY well in a large scale... go out and interview people and work as a general PR person.

I think.

*G

I love the idea of a newspaper. A blog could work if it's really well organized, and a regular web-site would look better but be more work. I do think we should at least give a few notecards out for a couple of articles and maybe include a texture or two each time. It could be a screenshot of part of the front page or a photo with a caption and/or title added. We could set up a donation jar at BC Centre to help support the newspaper as a whole or just for texture uploads. There could be a modifiable texture on the vender for the parcel owner/renter to attach the new texture to, if we don't find a way to change them automatically (but it should be optional to change it, so there would need to be a generic texture to represent the paper, too).

Do we want all the advertisements, if we use them, to be for BC or for anywhere? If only for BC, maybe there could be ads that are free and at a size that has some proportional relationship to the person/group's contributions to the newspaper's content. That would encourage people to help with the newspaper. Of course you could combine these with paid ads.

The paper could include jokes, riddles, comics,story installments (as mentioned before), trivia, simple games, (maybe) an opions/letters to the editor section, free & brief classifieds (help wanted, yard sale), or even an advice column if someone's interesting in doing that. I think the more it is like a real newspaper the better it would be.

I can do a small article, pictures, basic photo editing, word searches (if anyone thinks there would be people interested in that), and other small tasks, but would make a lousy reporter or editor.

Better stop now before everyone gets a headache from reading all this

oh.. I would LOVE to do the advice column.. I always wanted to do that...*G
I agree that it should keep the character of a newspaper as much as possible... we should just be careful not to overload it.
Having free ads for people that contribute is a great idea, paid ads would help the maintaining of the website... and I don't think we should accept ads for Bay City only (we could offer different rates though.)

K.

As a programmer, I can also automate some of the things we do (like creating screenshots of articles to put on the newspaper prim/newspaper stand) so that it's not so much work all the time.

I think we should sit down in-world to discuss this idea sometime Weekdays are best for me, but a weekend can work too.

If there is anything that needs to be built I could help out.