Newsroom Director Blog

At this same time last year, Newsroom Director was still in the middle stages of development. One year later, it’s home to handfuls and handfuls of newspaper staffs. Initial growth has been substantial, and we’re working this summer to make things even better.

The most common suggestion among the staff and advisers is to make Newsroom Director easier to understand. It has many features, some of which are fairly extensive, and it may take a 10-minute video tutorial to fully understand how it all works. And so that’s what we’ve done.

In the next few weeks, we’ll be releasing a series of video tutorials to better aquaint new and existing customers with the workings of Newsroom Director — especially the “getting started” process.

Keep checking back for updates, but expect a release in the next few weeks. Or, just keep logging into your account, and we’ll be sure to post a message when they’re live.

Another feature was also added today in the Draft Center. When editing story assignments (in “Story Assignments” under “Management Tools”), you now have the ability to change the issue of the assignment. Simply click the edit icon (pencil) next to the story, just like you would to edit any of the other details.

If the issue for the assignment is changed, the assignment will automatically disappear from that issue’s list and appear in the other issue.

As a side note, to change between issues, simply click the drop-down box in the upper-right of the Draft Center and select a different issue.

It’s been about a month since the last update to Newsroom Director, and it’s now time to release a new feature along with some other minor tweaks.

Discussions are a new way for your staff to collaborate easily and seamlessly. Look under “My Paper” for “Discussions” when logged in. As it says on the website:

“Discussions are a new way to get things done. To get rid of meetings. To share ideas. To collaborate. There are two types of discussions: public & private. Public discussions are open to everyone. Private are only for certain people, chosen by the discussion’s creator. To create a new discussion, simply click “Create Discussion” on the left-hand menu.”

Advisers: You are able to edit/delete discussions and the posts within. This is the same by default for anyone who has access to the Admin panel. To change this, simply go to the Admin panel and click “Manage Positions”. Click the edit icon next to the position title, and make the change.

A few other minor tweaks to the program are listed below:

• In Messages, when sending messages to more than one person, it is listed only once in the outbox and all of the recipients are listed in the message.
• The names of some of the sections in the Draft Center have been changed slightly for clarity’s sake.
• Notifications in the top right corner and on the sidebar in the Draft Center are given for unread draft edits, making it easy to know when an edit has been received.
• “View All Drafts & Edits” in the Draft Center has been simplified.

Be on the lookout for new features coming in the near future!