newschallenge

If you work with a government organization who has ever used an automated “508 testing” tool online, you know the pain: a screen full of alerts and the dreaded words: “200+ violations.” What do you do with that information? Is it code to fix or content to fix? Who can fix it? I wouldn’t know either, and accessibility is my full-time job.

Hello, fellow Newspapers On Drupal group members, and thanks to Ken for the introduction. As he mentioned, Placeblogger, a Drupal based site I worked on -- with a LOT of help from Drupal shop Bryght -- won some Phase 2 funding from the John S and James L. Knight Foundation, which gives grants to organizations and projects that advance journalism.

The interesting thing about this funding:

1. What gets created with the funding must go into the public domain.
2. The goal of the foundation is to get tools into the hands of newspapers.

I think that's pretty exciting!

For my project, the fact that I'm on Drupal helps me meet both these goals. The project hasn't been completely nailed down yet, but it's likely that much of the funding will go towards creating Drupal modules -- and then using Placeblogger, the site, as a sort of proof-of-concept. I suspect that we'll spend a lot of time on location and Aggregator2, but at this moment we're not tied down to anything.

So help me do some thinking: if you had a little money to fund Drupal module development to aid newspapers, what would you tackle?

I would really like members of this group to consider themselves informal advisers to this project, and to benefit from it directly.