Grizzly Gazetters: Don't give up hope
The National Scholastic Press Assocation (high school version of ACP) announced its annual online pacemaker finalists, and for the first time since before I was editor in chief there, the Grizzly Gazette did not place.
I’m not going to say I’m surprised by this. The Grizzly Gazette — the online-only newspaper for Granite Hills High School in Porterville, Calif. — is produced and maintained 100 percent by students. The problem: they update by hand in Dreamweaver. That’s right, no content management system.
With multiple updates a day, there’s a huge focus on the technical end and not so much on the content. I’m not saying that the technical aspect isn’t important, but it’s not a web design class; it’s a journalism class. The flashy stuff is worthless when the content is no good.
By using a CMS, the students could focus on producing high-quality content, including (not limited to) video and slideshows and podcasts and — dare I say it — writing! A CMS won’t entirely forfeit the students’ ability to learn the dynamics of HTML and the web, it just takes away the redundancy of adding a new row to the top of the page and inserting a fresh thumbnail and hyperlink with each new article. Instead, students can focus their technical expertise on more advanced skills.
I hope with this year’s loss, the students (and adviser) realize it’s time to move on to a content management system like WordPress or Drupal.
Advice from a college j-student
Now to the real point of this blog post (now that I’m done preaching about their need for a CMS). Yes, Pacemaker awards make for good bragging rights, but the real value of being involved with the Grizzly Gazette is the freedom to innovate.
Upon reflecting on my days with the Gazette, I realize that the environment I was so accustomed to in high school is exactly what college journalism education needs right now. Evan Hackett (the Gazette advisor) had the idea of starting an online-only newspaper, despite criticism from the school district’s IT administrators that it would be too hard. They literally laughed in his face. Because of his indestructive optimism (and stubborn persistence), I came into college ten steps ahead of the rest of my journalism peers.
He took it upon himself to learn Dreamweaver and get students motivated. In Mr. Hackett’s classroom, the word “No” didn’t exist. We tried new things and broke the rules and went against every expectation that anyone ever had.
In high school, I never realized that I was producing the future of journalism. I didn’t realize the industry was changing or struggling. I didn’t realize how groundbreaking it was that I was part of a leading student news site or that teaching myself HTML and Photoshop would have so much value.
College journalism school is in desperate need for educators like Hackett. We need people who are willing to stay up with the times and force students to do the same. We need teachers who let their students take control and try to learn with them as they go. We need more Evan Hacketts in the college world.
So, Grizzly Gazetters, this post is for you. Let this be an opportunity for you to seriously assess the news site. Find out what works and what doesn’t. What are your weaknesses and how can you improve? Most of all, how can you innovate? Do things that the professional and college worlds haven’t thought of yet.
Trust me, the rest of the journalism world is struggling. In high school, you have nothing to lose. There are no major advertisers at stake. You’re not pressured with the lingering fear of getting a job. You’re free to experiment and bring fresh ideas to the rest of us. You’re free to make mistakes without terrible repercussions. Take advantage of it while you still have a teacher who will let you get away with anything and support you along the way.
Nothing is holding you back. So hold your heads high, restructure, re-prioritize and have a strong comeback next year.
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23 Comments
Thank you Lauren, I will talk to the students about how we win and lose with class. We will analyze this year’s finalists, many seemed more Word Press than content, then plot a new course. We will discuss what we need to keep and what we need to change. After Easter vacation, we will begin to rebuild for 2010. But I must say, I am a very lucky teacher to have an opportunity to work with my journalism students and the community of Porterville.
We will gather our students and community leaders, brainstorm, plan, and develop a new and improved Grizzly Gazette for 2010. We must put one defeat behind us and roar on into NSPA Portland.
Thank you for being Lauren, Mr. H.
Hi Lauren. Thank you for writing this blog. I agree with you that we need to innovate and find our weaknesses and what doesn’t work. However, I disagree with you that we need to move to a CMS.
We don’t produce the Gazette just to win a contest; we produce the Gazette for the readers of our community, and because we love it. We take pride in saying that our news site is 100% student produced and maintained. If we switched to a CMS like WordPress or Drupal, then the Gazette would have less value to its staff as well as the people of the community. I’m glad that we didn’t use a CMS during my three years in journalism. If we did, I don’t think I would have loved it as much as I do. Producing the Gazette has brought real joy to my heart, and now I want to pursue journalism in college and beyond. I’ve learned so much from the Grizzly Gazette, and I want younger and future staff members to learn too so they can take the skills they learn from the program outside of high school. I don’t feel they would get that if we moved to a content management system such as WordPress.
By reading your blog entry, I got the impression that you think we’ve abandoned the writing aspect of our paper. We do in fact focus on the writing, and personally I think our writing has improved. You’re looking at the Gazette from a college student’s point of view, but remember when you were in high school. I know our writing still has flaws and there is always room for improvement, but I don’t think it’s “no good.” Our videos and slideshows have improved this year as well. I’m not sure if you looked, but many of the finalists this year are significantly lacking in content. Half of them don’t even update every day, or even every week for that matter. On site hasn’t updated since Feb. 24, one since Jan. 30, and another since Jan. 25 and has articles from July and August on their front page. The site that last updated on Jan. 30 has no pictures, no multimedia, and has news articles that are two paragraphs long. And we’re lacking in content? Our writing is bad?
Perhaps if we created our own CMS, then I would be more willing to accept the idea. But if we used a prepackaged one, then I think the Grizzly Gazette would lose its meaning. I would rather lose a contest then lose the true value of our newspaper. Mr. Hackett wanted me to tell you that he’s looked at college papers, and he will never go to one of those; he’s not impressed by CMS.
Lauren, I really do appreciate that you wrote this blog. It means a lot to me that you still care about the Gazette. And yes we do need to innovate, re-structure, and reprioritize, and I hope they do have a strong comeback next year and take that plaque in Portland.
See you around
,
Ebony
Re: Ebony
You’re hurting yourself and your staff by not using a CMS. You’re needlessly wasting time on presentation that could be spent on content. True, technical skill is important, but learning to use Dreamweaver will not really help any Journalist in a professional newsroom. Good reporting and editing skills combined with the ability to work efficiently and cleanly within a CMS is much more important.
Unless you have a staff full of students expecting to become developers, then you’re wasting their time. If they are expecting to become developers then they’re already behind as high school students still using Dreamweaver.
Sorry to break it to you, but your logic is 100% flawed. Learn good Journalism first and acquire the technical skills along the way. And this is coming from a Web producer working in a major metro newsroom.
Ebony.
Every single newspaper, not high school newspaper, not college newspaper, not regional newspaper, every, single, newspaper uses a CMS.
From The New York Times right down to the Halifax Town Beacon (or your town’s one-man paper). The only benefit of not using one is learning a little extra HTML, but HTML is not needed in journalism past the insert-link and insert-image tags.
Your time would be much better spent producing multimedia content.
The New York Times’ reporters aren’t using tags to place articles, hell their Online Manager isn’t even doing so. Neither are the staff at your local paper. It’s done automatically by the CMS.
If you go into journalism past HS, you wont be using HTML so why sacrifice the beauty, usability and adaptability of a CMS in exchange for learning some stuff you don’t need. It only causes problems for you, your users (CMS will often flag problems for you) and your life more difficult. It’s time wasted.
Dare I say it, this Mr.Hackett who was very forward-thinking in setting up an online newspaper back in the day, needs to get with The Times (capitalised purposely).
Lauren,
Any interest in teaching? You would be ideal to take over GrizzComm and develop all the classes you have been requesting from your college professors. I can retire in five years. You would have time to explore private enterprize and if it is not to your liking, teaching at GrizzComm with community support could give you the platform to coordinate a trendsetting K-14 program. From there you could expand and become a force for journalism education throughout America. You have the ideal set of skills and personality to help transform journalism education from the bottom up.
Just an idea. Mr. h
Make the above “private enterprise.” sorry
Ebony, the decision to use a CMS is not just one of workflow, but archiving. Every CMS works by storing all articles inside a database. This is the closest we can come to a library with microfilm. Once all of the articles are in a database, that database can become indexed, searchable, and even graphically visualized. There are also lots of other ways that people probably haven’t even thought of yet that we can utilize content from stories once they are in a db.
Imaging seeing data that shows how many times a particular publication had written a story about crime, or politics, or the weather. Anything is possible once you put your content into a tabular system.
The flexibility in the design is just a matter of modifying a template and has nothing to do with the CMS. All CMSes can be customized on the front end, that’s not the selling point. The major advantage is putting it in to a database.
I’m sorry Mark and Beth, but I beg to differ. Write and drop journalism is not the goal for our high school program. We have more students interested in pursuing careers in computer science than journalism. The online newspaper is just a product that we can create anew each year. The task at the Gazette is the creation of the product. The learning to master new skills and work together to achieve a desired level of excellence is the true goal. The SF Chronicle and Rocky Mountain News are shuttered. Today’s online newspaper with CMS on the clunky laptop will be tomorrow’s nightly network news.
The next move in reporting information is to develop programs to personalize the delivery of information to highly mobile devices. Can my students develop information sites and interactive emails that will allow companies to target preselected consumers who can browse for information and purchase products right from their email. Can we package personalized news that is available through Bluetooth technology write into the consumer’s car speakers? At the Gazette it is not about training kids to drop ideas into a prepackaged container, but rather thinking about how the container could be made differently, and then pursuing and mastering the technology to bring the idea to fruition.
And yes this approach works; our students succeed at the next level because they have been taught to think outside of the box and never doubt what they can create.They know they can succeed because they have already produced a product from scratch and have the skill set to replicate this task in an ever changing world.
Back in the Day Mr. H.
In response to Beth: This is a high school paper, and students are still trying to figure out what they want to do. Not everybody in there is an aspiring journalist. If a student posts his article in Dreamweaver he may realize that he likes doing web design stuff and possibly consider that for a career. Also, I think Dreamweaver is one of the things that hooks our students into the program. It appeals to them, and they like working with it. And also, I don’t think a typical high school student knows half of what some of our students do. If anything…our students are ahead, not behind. I’m pretty sure a good number of developers today didn’t even work with the web while they were in high school.
Not in response anymore:
Yes I’m stubborn, but I just don’t want to use something that’s not ours. If we made our own (like some of the Pacemaker finalists do), then it would be better.
Oh, this is an Apple/Microsoft feud waiting to happen.
That said, here I wade in:
“If we switched to a CMS like WordPress or Drupal, then the Gazette would have less value to its staff as well as the people of the community. I’m glad that we didn’t use a CMS during my three years in journalism.”
Um, no. Every single major newspaper in the WORLD is run off a CMS. Computer programming? It’s not HTML/CSS and Dreamweaver. It’s PHP, Django, MySQL, Python, etc.
CMS’s avoid the bloatishness of Dreamweaver, and allow you to focus on content OR work out the programming aspects. Flat pages in Dreamweaver are just counter-productive.
And, BTW, from looking at the source code, I noticed that you’re using pre-programmed javascript code. If it were all about the technical ability, it seems to me they’d be coding their own javascript apps to use in the site. Further, if they were really into the coding aspect, they wouldn’t be using dreamweaver, they’d be using BBEdit or a similar hand-coding software.
People seem to think that a CMS encourages shovelware, or debases creativity. Nothing of the sort is the case. In fact, CMS’s *encourage* creativity by removing the constraints of flat-page HTML to create dynamic pages. There are simplified themes for any CMS that can be used to rethink the presentational aspects from the ground up (even using Dreamweaver).
If you want to look at it another way, try this:
do you still use paste-up? Do you use hot-lead type? Do you process b/w film photos?
If so, then by all means, keep using flat-page dreamweaver HTML and having your students update every page by hand. If not, then your argument re: CMS is known as a “strawman.”
Sorry for the rant.
Bryan, A strawman is a logical fallacy, an attempt at misdirection from the main argument. You and many others are arguing about the virtue of CMS over Dreamweaver. That misses Ebony’s and Lauren’s point. They are ahead of their peers because they had to create a product from scratch and gained skills in the process that their peers do not have. Forget typeset and darkroom analogies; I was a printing apprentice in college to a USC business school grad. He made the seamless switch to digital because he understood that quality is simply quality, no matter how it is produced. It will still take time, effort, and pride. But high school and even middle and elementary kids can use DreamWeaver as a little baseball player would use a tee. It helps introduce the world of web site creation and coding to young students. And unless I am mistaken, DreamWeaver is still the standard at the Digital Media Academy and beginning web site designers. When students like Jeremy become interested in coding, they can then branch out. But our class is not simply about journalism. We are moving to the creation of client web sites and html emails. Lauren mentioned the need to develop a sustainable business model for online papers. We plan to package pre-formatted client web sites and html newsletters for public service organizations in return for donations to fund the Gazette. In the process we gain hits from all service organization members. As we collect more specialized email lists, we can target and connect specific consumers with specific businesses, increasing our ability to charge.
As I trust Jeremy, we will look into teaching some of our tech interested students into exploring how to build a CMS system. We will listen, learn, and grow. But why is it that many drop and go journalists cannot get a job or fear being let go? Maybe it is the same reason that talking heads are being released in local broadcast markets: a limited set of employable skills combined with shrinking ad revenue.
Light that strawman up! This is fun. We need to get some action on our blogs. Let’s send our newsletter to all the emails at college journalism departments. Then we can CMS Journalism Connects and all meet at the Gazette. grizzlygazette.net that is. Sorry Lauren for having fun trying to type, but my wife and Jed are coming home from UCLA and Mica is practicing being a cheerleader outside with the dogs. Oh well, I’m back in the day and need to take a nap. Mr. H
“And unless I am mistaken, DreamWeaver is still the standard at the Digital Media Academy and beginning web site designers.”
Maybe “beginning,” but I don’t teach Dreamweaver. I teach hard-coding with TextWrangler or BBedit. Dreamweaver is InDesign for HTML.
I’m not missing Ebony’s point at all. It’s a strawman as a logical fallacy in that it assumes that a CMS backend prevents the creativity and programming skills that might otherwise develop. Might I suggest that some of the best journalists/designers I know developed because they didn’t have to spend time screwing around with static HMTL files? That’s a strawman (for example, check out Ryan Sholin’s weblog, which he designed from a basic CSS stylesheet with WordPress).
Your class is not “simply” about journalism, but you deny them the branches that matter like databases – which are the HEART of CMS?
HTML e-mails? I don’t even look at them. Images are blocked in gmail, and I rarely allow – looking for content, not design. And that’s really what this all boils down to – content versus presentation.
My opinion is that content is more important than presentation. True, I’m not on the high school level, so perhaps wasting time on revising Dreamweaver templates is worthwhile in that world. IDK. But in the broader universe, I’m of the strong opinion that content trumps presentation every time.
Employable skills? Um, I’ve interviewed numerous pros who do hiring. You know what they say? HTML/CSS is basic, but not the sine qua non of the job.
I think it’s good that you’re working with outside clients, but don’t find anything to be proud about tying them to your group with flat HTML files in Dreamweaver. Why not allow them to update their own content with a full-fledged CMS? Sharecropping isn’t pretty whether in the 19th century or the 21st.
You diss a lot of journalists with that term “drag and drop.” I don’t know any journalist whose spent time on a Flash package or a video presentation who considers that “drag and drop” journalism, anymore than a designer who’s produced a front page in InDesign would consider that “drag and drop” design. That’s an incredibly haughty attitude.
As for the question of layoffs, honestly, most have nothing to do with the web site. Most of it has to do with a) the economy, b) stuck-in-the-mud management c) advertising disruption and d) huge debt that can’t be sustained.
In short, it has nothing to do with HTML/CSS.
BTW, I wasn’t a USC apprentice, but I’ve worked at a small newspaper where I actually delivered papers, built a darkroom from scratch, and watched the bottom line like a hawk. And I can honestly say that creating static Dreamweaver pages is living in the past.
Cheers.
I like how this keeps coming back to the argument that the students need to “know the basics” in order to “branch out” and find out what they want to do in college.
Well those basics you mention have advanced. Dreamweaver and HTML are not the basics anymore. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. — these are the basics. These are foundations for delivering content to your readers. From there you build.
So where before your basics were Dreamweaver & HTML and you then built up a fortress from there, the basics, your foundation is now a CMS, like it or not. It’s efficient and absolutely necessary if you want your students to be at all relevant when they get to college, let alone the industry.
The “tech” skills they will learn from building upon a CMS will be unbelievably valuable. Have you ever looked at job descriptions for Web designers? None of them list “Must know Dreamweaver and HTML.” They all want far beyond that — and the skills they desire don’t require Dreamweaver & HTML as building blocks. They require basic knowledge of a CMS, Flash, Photoshop, databases, etc. These are the new basics, and you simply need to accept it if you want these students to be able to be marketable to anyone.
Start with a CMS, let your students play with it and take it places. Otherwise you’re going a great disservice to your students and your readers.
BTW, having been a contest judge and conducted contests as well, it’s amazing how random the selection process seems at times.
Bryan, I have just done a little reading on Web Press, Joomla, Drupal, and EE. which would be most compatible with high school students and trying run an online newspaper. Could the same CMS be used to create client web sites? What is an alternative to html email in which a client can visually display a product and provide the customer with a opportunity to order a product right from an email. If a rawhide braider could email an enticing visual brochure to all the subscribers of Western Horseman, what program could do all of these different tasks: create online high school newspaper, create client web sites, and create some sort of email to display products and provide ability to order products? It wold have to be a system that could be run by high school kids and taught to younger students. The goal is to have some Grizzly gazette students move on to local community college then come back and serve as interns to local elementary and middle school students, who would then come to the Gazette. You sound like you know what you are talking about. i nned to get by students, community leaders, and community college on all same page to plan for new system for next year. i will need Jeremy to implement new system and train younger students.
Interested in new ideas, Evan
Also, local radio station wants us to broadcast live over our website. What technology do we need to film and broadcast directly to our website. Will wordpress joomla drupal or ee allow us to do that?
Evan
Ryan, you have met my high school students, could you answer the questions that I asked Bryan in my last two posts?
Point by point:
I have just done a little reading on Web Press, Joomla, Drupal, and EE. which would be most compatible with high school students and trying run an online newspaper. Could the same CMS be used to create client web sites?
Yes. All of those CMS’s have been used by non-journalism entities to create web sites. I’ve used all of those you mentioned, and can say that each has its pluses and minuses. I’d be happy to discuss those via e-mail. Also, there’s a group called copress (copress.org) who could give you some ideas about the diff. options.
“What is an alternative to html email in which a client can visually display a product and provide the customer with a opportunity to order a product right from an email. If a rawhide braider could email an enticing visual brochure to all the subscribers of Western Horseman, what program could do all of these different tasks: create online high school newspaper, create client web sites, and create some sort of email to display products and provide ability to order products?”
I think you’re talking about different audiences/purposes. I’m not saying you need to abandon the idea of HTML e-mails. But be judicious. Is that the best use of high school news media time? Perhaps for “clients,” but not nec. for the journalism part.
” It wold have to be a system that could be run by high school kids and taught to younger students.”
We use feedblitz to send out daily updates on ICM (feedblitz.com) – RSS feed set up and it runs by itself. a little $$ for the higher end graphics and such (which we don’t use).
“The goal is to have some Grizzly gazette students move on to local community college then come back and serve as interns to local elementary and middle school students, who would then come to the Gazette.”
Sounds like a good goal – building a pipeline for future journalists/innovators. Good plan.
“You sound like you know what you are talking about. i nned to get by students, community leaders, and community college on all same page to plan for new system for next year.”
Yeah, coordinating is a challenge. Lauren is a very smart journalist – that’s part of why I hired her for CICM. But I didn’t hire her for those design skills she learned in high school (no offense, lauren) but because of her ideas for *content*.
And she’s delivered in spades so far. Which is a tribute to the Grizzle Gazette, in some ways.
happy to discuss any of this – scmurley -at- gmail.com
I’ve sat back silently and watched this conversation unfold, and I’m pleased that the discussion could advance here. A few things to add…
@Ebony:
This disturbs me. Do you think the people of your community have any idea how content gets on a Web site? To them, it doesn’t matter if you’re hand coding line breaks or not. They care about the content. By sticking with Dreamweaver, you’re limiting yourselves to the redundancy of updating the site.
And I do remember what it was like to write as a high school student (it wasn’t that long ago!) I remember running out to write articles to ensure something fresh was on the site every day. I remember sitting down individually with reporters and walking them through each article. I remember waiting up for soccer results to get the story up before the next morning.
That is why I came in ahead of the curve. Because I understood the dynamics of the web and the 24 hour news cycle. Of course, knowing HTML basics did help, but the attitude was more important.
@Evan Hackett:
I have a feeling there is a strong misunderstanding of what a CMS is. You don’t have to use a pre-packaged layout from a random web designer. Your students can code the CSS and make your site look exactly as it looks now (although I’d recommend going with a cleaner design). Jeremy, a commenter, said it best, “The flexibility in the design is just a matter of modifying a template and has nothing to do with the CMS.”
The only difference is that all the busy work of manually linking each teaser to each article (and all the other odds and ends) would be replaced with the click of a submit button. Students won’t have to focus on the redundancy of posting and can use the gained time to innovate.
As Bryan and I discussed on Twitter, it’s not an either/or situation. It’s not a matter of either learning HTML or learning a CMS. The two go hand in hand.
I know from three years of working at the Gazette (and numerous visits to the newsroom after graduation) that the students are not learning HTML. The few students who ever see Dreamweaver use the design view (not code view). Even I used design view while I was there. I picked up on the actual HTML side after I left.
Plus, it was my understanding that with the $200,000+ grant I helped Grizz Comm receive, there would be an intro to HTML class as a prereq to the Gazette class, no? So they’re learning the basics anyway. One intro class is all it takes to learn Dreamweaver.
With a CMS, every person on staff can post to the site; students can post from any computer with Internet access (meaning posting live from sports games and events, instead of being limited to computers in the classroom on campus that have Dreamweaver). There are endless benefits of a CMS that I don’t have time to explain here.
Power to you for being open to new ideas. Good luck and I’m always here to help.
Ok, two other things:
Live-streaming sites-
Mogulus
UStream
And no, I will not consider teaching. Maybe in the future and maybe Bryan Murley-style workshops on the side. Definitely not upon graduation.
And @Bryan, I know you didn’t hire me for my design skills
That’s what my graphic design job at the university is for. CONTENT IS POWER.
As the web engineer for the Grizzly Gazette (I do most of all the coding behind the scenes), a CMS means to me that I control the code that gets put on the page. The greatest problem with our the way the Grizzly Gazette works now is the lack of standardization among pages. It limits what I can do concerning articles, especially trying to sort them with PHP. I speak only from a web designer’s view, as I have no interest in journalism aspect. I am not a great writer.
I first learned HTML then CSS before reaching into Javascript and PHP (all self-taught). My previous knowledge helped me decode a CMS, which gave me idea of making my own. A CMS is basically a page where PHP puts in the content, and you control the style with CSS. I prefer making my own cheap imitation of a CMS since I can gain experience with databases and such through the process and I won’t get sidetracked with the abundance of features of a previously developed one.
In response to other things:
I use Dreamweaver because thats what I started with. I didn’t (and still don’t) have any problems with just looking at the “code view” so I never sought out any other coding programs. Besides, its color-coded (unless other programs are color-coded as well). There are some premade Dreamweaver Spry codes, but I used those before learning any Javascript, and just never changed them. I do have many custom made scripts (both Javascript and PHP) scattered throughout the Grizzly Gazette site.
I know what a CMS is. I know that we can still create our own layout and use a CMS to manage the content. But last year when I went to the conference and talked to the other Pacemaker finalists, a good number of them said they created their own CMS. It was impressive…and in my mind it would be less impressive if we used an already made one.
“But last year when I went to the conference and talked to the other Pacemaker finalists, a good number of them said they created their own CMS. It was impressive…and in my mind it would be less impressive if we used an already made one.”
Speaking as someone whose staff won an online pacemaker this year using College Publisher, that’s a weak argument.
FWIW, the criteria for winning an online pacemaker varies greatly from year to year. I know, I’ve been following them for several years. I don’t know of any pacemaker finalist that won because they had a custom CMS. In the past, it’s mostly been based on looks (the overall design) and not the content (believe me, when it’s all shovelware with no hyperlinks in stories, you know they aren’t judging on online content).
Last year, I believe they really judged on multimedia/online only content. Again, I never heard a word about the CMS.
And, to be honest, it’s not at all impressive to me whether a site has its own custom CMS or it uses WordPress or CP. What’s impressive to me is how they use it to do journalism. Examples: Daily Tarheel does great journalism, some good interactives – uses CP 5. Collegiate Times uses a homegrown CMS, does great journalism, some good databases. Six of one, half-dozen of the other.
And, FWIW, I don’t have a problem with a web developer designing his/her own CMS. Just make sure it’s well documented for the next crop of web editors who might not have the same skill-level (I could tell you horror stories of poorly documented CMS’s that have hamstrung college publications after the original author disappeared into the ether).
The main advantage of an already-developed CMS is that many of the bugs have already been worked out, as well the security vulnerabilities.