The Yorker

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The Yorker is a student-run website which provides news, features, comment and reviews on everything that is going on at the University of York. Editorially independent of the Students' Union and with no political or campus affiliations, The Yorker’s coverage comes with an independent and unique character.

The Yorker is also a private limited company. The company is self-sufficient, and any profits made go to charity. This year the team are raising for the Guardian Angels Appeal. Founded in 2006, the site was conceived by two students: journalist Daniel Ashby and computer scientist Nick Evans.

From its beginnings as the pair's part-time project, The Yorker has blossomed into the University of York's largest student-run company, with over 120 members and contributing writers. Now in its second year, there is still an aura of excitement about the project.


Contents

[edit] Company Aims

The Yorker aspires:

  • To become a nationally recognised media outlet highlighted through regular nominations in student media awards for the website and our journalists.
  • To attain and maintain the highest standard of journalism through attracting and developing a diverse range of student journalists.
  • To be at the cutting edge of technological and media development, both locally and nationally.
  • To hold an independent attitude in all our coverage, reflected in our continued status as an independent company.
  • To become a Hub of student life in York, and in so doing become the first port-of-call for all students and staff at the University of York; in the future the website will provide information on every event, society, department, venue and service, both in town and on campus.
  • To raise at least £1000 for charity every three years, as well as remain financially self-sufficient.

[edit] Nomination for the Guardian Media Awards

In 2007, within four months of launching, The Yorker was nominated at the Guardian Student Media Awards for Best Website, showing that the team's innovation was recognised on a national level.

[edit] Achievements

The Yorker brings news to the York campus quicker and more comprehensively than all other media outlets. The team also brought York exclusives on the February bomb scare in the city centre (a national exclusive), the North Yorkshire earthquake (beating the BBC coverage), a breach of confidentiality by the University Counselling Services, and on the former Welfare officer hitting a student.

In line with its aspiration to be at the cutting edge of media and technology, The Yorker offers Videocasting and Podcasting coverage of the biggest news stories, interviews and the arts. Videocasts are produced through a joint venture with YSTV, called York90.

In April 2008 the ability for reporters to contribute to a live blog using their mobile phones was added. This was first put into practice during coverage of the annual Roses tournament between York and Lancaster University.

Over the spring term the site reached up to 1000 visits a day, peaking at almost 3000 for the live coverage of the YUSU elections.

The website's comment system encourages highly participated debates; unlike other York media outlets, comments go live immediately after being posted.

[edit] The Website

The Yorker website aims to provide daily news, and pool together all the information from all societal, collegiate, union, university and town web-pages to create an online calendar of events.

[edit] News

  • The Yorker website has the advantage of being able to publish news stories as and when they happen. Stories are published at least once a day during term time. Students are able to log-on from all over the world to receive up to date information about York news.


[edit] Calendar

When launched the calendar will pool together hundreds of events from societies, colleges, unions, and businesses in town.

Networked calendar
Events from organisations to which you are subscribed are automatically displayed on your calendar.
Personal events
Private personal events can be added by users.
Timetables
Users will see their course timetable and exams along with their other events.
Facebook integration
Users who choose to log in to Facebook from The Yorker will also see any facebook events to which they are invited.
Attendence system
Users can specify whether they'll be attending particular events so that less relevent events can be hidden and important events emphasised.
To-do list
Each user will have a personal to-do list comprising of private to-do items, to-do items relating to events, and subscription supplied to-do items (such as coursework deadlines).

[edit] Yorkipedia

The Yorker has also launched Yorkipedia, a user contributed encyclopedic wiki about anything to do with the University of York.

[edit] Launches

The Yorker website was officially launched in Freshers Week 2007 at YUSU Freshers Fair.

[edit] Teams

The company is divided into three teams: Journalism, Technical, and Operational, each headed by a director. These teams offer a wide range of opportunities for student involvement, consequently leading to our current diverse membership.

People who join The Yorker are not only attracted by the chance to experience the workings of a broadcaster, but also due to the approachable and friendly attitude of the team.

The directors are:

The chief executives are:

[edit] Editorial

[edit] Business and Administration

[edit] Technical Team

The technical team consists of mostly Computer Science students with a variety of programming skills.

The following members are on a placement year during 2007/08, most of whom work on The Yorker technical team remotely.

[edit] Content Management

The content of the website is created and kept up to date through several web based interfaces.

  • A news interface for writers and editors to organise articles under the various categories.
  • A VIP interface which organisations (societies etc) have access to with which they can make changes to their directory entry, organise events, and organise subscription lists.

[edit] Technical Details

The Yorker website is written primarily in the programming language PHP and uses Code Igniter, a lightweight PHP framework. It is designed to run on the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)

[edit] See Also

[edit] External Links

Retrieved from "http://yorkipedia.theyorker.co.uk/index.php/The_Yorker"
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