I am not a developer. I don’t know PHP, CSS, or any of those countless other scary three letter abbreviations. I’m just someone with a fascination with online journalism, finding new ways to tell stories online and who enjoys sharing them with a larger audience.

When I found out in the summer of 2008 that I would be switching positions to become the Web Editor of my college newspaper The Whit, I knew one thing was certain: a redesign had to take place. The Web site is antiqued and uninteresting.

I knew what other college newspapers were doing for their redesigns: they were following a young, ambitious college student from Temple University in Philadelphia named Sean Blanda. In early 2008, Blanda lead a charge in the college newspaper world. He blogged about how he was working to move his college newspaper, Temple News, to Wordpress MU. He wasn’t the first to make this transformation but he was among the first to do it in such a public way. He blogged about the process on his Web site. Over the summer, I re-read some of his posts. He (someone who unarguably knows Wordpress and developing Web sites) talked about the struggles he was having in moving his database over to the new server. I got scared.

“If he ran into problems in the midst of his transition, then how difficult will it be for me?” I wondered.

I thought of all the horror stories. Everything from, telling the staff all the great things about Wordpress and then not being able to follow through, to having no stories online the first few weeks back from summer.

I decided to take the easy route. We’d just upgrade from College Publisher 4 to College Publisher 5. I decided that, until I could find a better solution, it was probably best that I not get in over my head and try to switch the Web site to a platform with which I was unfamiliar.

That solution came sooner rather than later. In the midst of blogging about online journalism at Journalism 3.0, I came across a group of forward-thinking college students who were talking about a Knight Application they were working on via Twitter.  They said they were helping college newspapers make the transition to Wordpress and then offering support for them whenever problems occurred or questions were raised.

I was intrigued.

I found out that the group is called CoPress and they’re working to create not just an alternative to College Publisher, but a solution that will leave college newspapers more independent and more resourceful with Web content and their knowledge of the web. Afterall, why wouldn’t it be beneficial for journalism students to learn to use the same platform that is used at places like CNN, Wired, and People?

When I mentioned the benefits of CoPress to my college newspaper, there were few detractors but like anything else the big question was money. One thing that seemed very advantageous from the beginning is that we control our own ads.

In addition, although there are fees (unlike College Publisher, which is free) the fees are minimum. The Whit has signed up to be one of CoPress’s first clients. Official prices are still up in the air but any fees shouldn’t be too troublesome since we will now be in charge of our own advertising making this money back will be comparatively easy.

When I asked Adam Hemphill to explain the benefits of CoPress versus College Publisher. He replied via blog post:

Before I being outlining some of our organization’s tenets, however, I must address the potential danger of publicly replying to a query like this. I feel it is important to note that CoPress, despite being in a position to help sway some (or many) publications from using the services of College Publisher, is not explicitly aimed at doing so.

This is because our strategy and focus are fundamentally different. Above all, CoPress seeks to spread knowledge and easily accessible resources—whether or not we turn a profit. We feel it is safe to say that the same ideology is not held at College Publisher.

That aside, there are several reasons why CoPress will become an invaluable resource and, indeed, an eventual alternative to many systems currently being utilized by college media outlets. Not the least among these is the fact that our organization is, at this juncture, entirely student-driven.

In addition to offering the benefits of large-scale collaboration, this demonstrates and ensures that what we produce is done with passion and because of immediate need—with real-world scenarios in mind. We know what happens in college media because we are college media, and that is something that will continually strengthen as the network grows.

Similarly, a key component to the success of CoPress is the fact that everything we recommend, support and build is open source. Like students creating a network for college news organizations, open source software contributors make tools based on community need as well as personal passion.

They strive for continual growth as individuals and as part of a greater body, and in doing so they succeed in offering top-notch systems that rival and often overcome proprietary offerings. Open source software offers honesty and transparency, and we feel these are principles to live by as a progressive technological network.

Our belief in the open source ideology extends to the organization itself, thus we have made a concerted effort to create transparency within CoPress and its operations. This is possible because we lack a profit motivation, but moreover it encourages involvement at any and every level.

If someone is interested in involving themselves heavily with what we do, they are welcome; if one just wants to download a few plugins or find out how to get the most out of their College Publisher site, that’s OK too. CoPress wants to empower its constituents so that they can take control of their content, and organizational transparency goes a long way toward helping achieve this goal.

To briefly recap, the benefits of CoPress versus College Publisher are fourfold:

• No profit motivation
• Student-driven
• Open source
• Transparent

Simple as they may be, these few items will drive us to success. CoPress will prevail.

What CoPress does is it rips the training wheels away from college newspapers and demands them to enter the adult world of online journalism, all while still watching at the sidelines in case anything goes wrong.

The Whit only been in talks with CoPress for several weeks and already they have been more responsive and more readily available than the folks over at College Publisher. This is saying something too since the organization is made up of college students who are currently enjoying the “end of the semester crunch” and studying for finals. CoPress is either ridculiously fast or College Publisher is very slow.

The Whit approached College Publisher in mid-summer for a redesign. After several launch dates being cancelled, we were told that the site will be up by the beginning of Spring 2009 semester (roughly six months after we first approached them for a redesign). Funny thing is, CoPress (who we first approached only a few weeks ago) is saying the Wordpress site will be up by the beginning of the new semester, too!

What’s next for CoPress? Right now they’re waiting to hear back about their Knight application. They’re hoping for their requested amount of $350,000 in order to keep their project going strong.

I hope the best for them. I’ve personally joined CoPress recently as a team member and I’ve thoroughly enjoying watching the up close and personal view of this organization becoming the first real alternative for College Publisher since, well…ever.

For more information on CoPress, check out their site by clicking here or e-mail them directly at info@copress.org.

In the meantime, don’t forget to check The Whit’s Web site in the coming months to watch what will be (I’m sure!) a stunning transformation to Wordpress, all thanks to CoPress!