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Engagement Social media

Blogging a newspaper redesign

Here’s a blog you’ll definitely want to follow. It’s by Broc Sears of the Center’s staff; Broc is also a professional in residence in new media at the Schieffer School of Journalism. Broc is leading a team of students who are redesigning the Daily Skiff at TCU, but he has done something that lots of community papers can emulate when they do a redesign — he is blogging the redesign, asking the campus community for input. A university is much like a small community, and a university newspaper is community journalism — TCU, for instance, has a campus community of about 10,000 students, faculty and staff. Broc and the redesign team have taken the campus community on the redesign journey, and it’s very much worth following. It’s amazing how much the campus has followed the blog — it’s a great way to get the community to identify with the newspaper and to buy in to the whole redesign effort. When it’s all over, Broc will be writing a blog for the TCCJ website on how, and why, to do a redesign “in public,” but for right now, this one is worth following.

By Kathryn Jones Malone

Kathryn Jones Malone is co-director of the Texas Center for Community Journalism. She began her career as a staff writer at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, then worked as a staff writer for the Dallas Times Herald and The Dallas Morning News; as a contract writer for The New York Times; as a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine; as editor of the Glen Rose Reporter; and as a freelance writer for numerous state, regional and national magazines. She teaches journalism at Tarleton State University.