Free software, free press. Which of those seems more likely in countries such as Georgia, Guatemala, Russia and Indonesia? Most clever programmers can probably get the software tools they need for free, albeit illegally. If it toes the government PR line, perhaps the media organisation stays on the air or in print. But to help it have a truly free voice, and the tools to speak it loud and clear, the Media Development Loan Fund is there to help. A nonprofit organisation that supports the press in transitioning countries, the MDLF strives to give independent news outlets the tools they need to provide a high level of journalism while keeping their businesses self-sustaining.
The Center for Advanced Media–Prague was set up as an offshoot of the MDLF. CAMP’s mandate is basically to assist news sources with technology. Free software for free media is the slogan. Peter Whitehead, director of communications for MDLF, says clients need a broad range of new media assistance. “We realised that many of our clients, independent news outlets in developing democracies, not only needed the financing and business advice we provided, they also needed technology assistance, from training to software solutions,” he said.
MDLF and CAMP’s answer is a group of open-source products, bundled under the name Campware. Campsite offers newspaper and magazine software for web publishing, and Campcaster is an open-source radio management application. Cream is a customer relationship management system, and Dream is a CRM system for tracking print distribution and sales. Whitehead says that one of the greatest advantages of such a system is the low cost. “Few news organizations can afford massive investments in new media projects,” Whitehead said. “By adopting an open-source platform like Campsite, they are able to start on a much more advanced level more quickly.”
Douglas Arellanes is a consultant for CAMP. He believes that using an open-source model gives organisations the opportunity to use a lot of other features and functionalities they wouldn’t otherwise have. “We want to lower barriers of entry into new media by both developing technology and consulting,” he said. “Barriers are both financial and know-how; if you don’t have either it can be very expensive.”
He went on to add that if an organization has sunk a lot of money into a project it puts the heat on it for some pretty big results. “We bring that pressure down so people can experiment,” he said. Linux was CAMP’s introduction to open-source technology. Arellanes said CAMP was intrigued by the concept, but discovered that while much of the technology out there was good, it wasn’t necessarily applicable to media organizations, and even more specifically, to media companies in repressed democracies. “What’s cool about open source is with every new project or client, we bring back the code we developed,” he said. “We’re levering the open source investment to bring knowledge to everyone and as cost effective as possible.”
Arellanes said that as a nonprofit CAMP is fortunate because “you don’t have to chase profit motive with open source”. He adds that it is lucky to have smart and committed people willing to work with it, either as volunteers or for cheap because they like what they do and enjoy working with open source. All of CAMP’s products are available for download free, but upgraded support plans are available for purchase as are the services of emergency help technicians. MDLF fully backs the program.
Whitehead believes that technology is one of the most important challenges facing media organizations today. “No news business anywhere in the world can ignore the incredible technological changes that are happening around us,” he said. “Technology ultimately determines whether people want to read, listen to or watch what an outlet produces, and finding the right solution can give a news business an important competitive advantage.”
The business side of a news organization is also looked at carefully by both MDLF and CAMP. MDLF supports media companies through loans, not grants, and does so for very specific reasons. “We believe it is more effective to do loans: If you have to pay it back, you have to convince us how you’ll pay it back, so you have to concentrate on running the business,” Arellanes said. “Often companies concentrate on journalism, not business, which leads to a mentality of running from grant to grant to make ends meet.”
Since 1996, MDLF has provided more than USD 90 million in affordable financing – that includes over USD 75 million in loans and equity investments – and it has written off just over 2% of the total loaned and invested. Nearly 200 projects in 24 countries have received assistance from MDLF. CAMP ran one program, Media on Web, from 2004 to 2007 in the former Yugoslavia. Using Campsite as the underlying technology, it ended up getting 45 media organisations online. “We find, especially in media, everyone thinks their situation is completely different – no, you have a technical task, they are essentially the same wherever you go,” Arellanes said. “We concentrate on the commonalities: addressing their needs and finding economies of scale.”
The co-operation angle of open source cannot be overlooked either. “We are pooling efforts: When one person contributes a new feature, everyone can upgrade to use it. Someone finds a bug, fixes it and sends everyone the fix,” Arellanes said. “Everyone can leverage their participation.”
Arellanes is constantly promoting what he calls a north-south co-operation whereby media in developed countries use Campware technology, improve on it and, because it is open source, make the latest version available for more struggling organizations. One recent example of this is a radio station in Basel, Switzerland. It used the Campcaster program to create Open Broadcast: a user-generated station that allowed listeners to use the music aired, create their own playlists and then submit those to programmers. If they like the choices, they’ll play them on the air. “They took our tools and adapted it to their needs, and it’s exactly what we’ve been trying to do,” Arellanes said. “When a radio station in Switzerland takes Campcaster and makes their improvements, we can take their work and leverage it back to developing countries.”
Arellanes said that, while much of the work deals with software, CAMP spends just as much time on consulting: working with media organizations to identify what their needs are and guiding them through the process of dealing with IT decisions. “A lot of our challenge now is not developing our products, but matching the tools to the job, for example, blogging,” he said. “We match clients with the right tools for their needs.”
Pirated software is another big educational issue for the group. “We love open source, but acknowledge when it’s not appropriate in a situation to use it,” Arellanes explains. “There is lots of good software out there – Photoshop, Adobe – worth buying and worth the investment.” Arellanes warns his clients that governments can easily use illegal software as a reason for shutting down an organisation. “This is a great concern for us: Independent media, by its nature, is often not popular with governments,” he said.
Arellanes believes that a lot of what CAMP does is ambassador work on behalf of open-source technology, as well as translating lingo between the “techies” and the “news junkies”. “The problem with open source so far is there’s not been a true effort to bring end users into the process,” he said. “We are operating in a very narrow space, advocating on behalf of journalists to tech people.”
What’s the hot project currently going on at CAMP? Maps: “ways of using maps for the display of news”, Arellanes said. “We may have to teach journalists to use GPS, figure out co-ordinates of organisations, other locations that come up in a story.”
He cites another open-source program, EveryBlock, as a model he’s interested in. EveryBlock is a US site that received a large grant to develop its software. One of the grant’s requirements was that the program be released as open source. It’s essentially a newsfeed website that filters information by postal code. It gathers information from government and public sources and allows users to search by location.
“I want to use this as a way to better integrate geospatial data into news reporting,” Arellanes said. “These are projects that already exist. We would look to get involved with them first as users and then contributing code. That’s what’s cool about open source.”
Whitehead cites El Periodico, Guatemala’s leading investigative daily newspaper, as another example of co-operation success. “Not only does El Periodico have a great-looking website but they also use new media in a creative way and contribute programming code back to the project for things like RSS feeds and photo galleries,” he said. “They have also added features, such as ‘make your own home page’, which CAMP hopes to integrate into future versions of Campsite.”
Whitehead believes that the modern media world cannot separate technology from business models and that’s where Campware has its greatest effects: “It offers our clients and other news businesses effective solutions to some of the most important technology challenges they face, from publishing online to customer relations management.”
