Curation seems to be the new trend in online journalism. Not many users have the time to read millions of tweets or watch dozens of Youtube videos each day. Journalists can become curators of these art pieces of modern news media by picking out the most interesting user generated postings. A great tool for that is storify.com – I wrote about it some weeks ago.
Cloud computing is great – but I rather prefer to have as much control over my content as possible. So I decided to use my WordPress CMS and not Storify. It is easy – you just need to have some Plugins to make your blog more storify-ish.
Here is a list what you need:
1. Twitter: Blackbird Pie
The plugin (you can find it here) lets you add Twitter Tweets to your post quiet easily with one click on the button in your WYSIWYG-Editor. You just have to know either the URL of the tweet, the ID of the tweet or the Twitter username and – voilà – the tweet is displayed within your post:
It’s not a graphic but a text – so, your visitors can copy or retweet it with just one click:
2. Videos: Viper’s Video Quicktags
You want to add a video from Youtube, Vimeo, Google Video, Flickr and other platforms to your post? Just add the plugin (download it here) and click one of the buttons in your WordPress editor. Paste the URL to the video, change the dimensions and you’re done! Unfortunately there is not way of searching for videos within the plugin, you always have to use the Youtube search functionality.
3. Creative-commons licensed photos: Photo Dropper
I really like this plugin (download it here)! You can easily search the Flickr photo database and embed a Creative Commons licensed photo (in small, medium or large) to your posting. The advantage of the plugin is that the CC code is automatically integrated in your posting as well – so you don’t have to take care of that.
4. Maps: MapPress
MapPress is a simple and slim plugin to add Google Maps to your blog (download it here). It will add a new form below your WordPress text editor, you just have to click “New Map”. You can search and then add several locations to your map, decide which detail should be displayed and then add it to your posting.
If you need more functions try XML Google Maps.
Do you know more plugins for curation journalism? Let me know!
Good points
But I still would rather be able to add something like Storify into my Blog, including hosted one. The advantage is? I could add some articles to storify queue and not have to open my blog everytime I bump into
Agnes
Hi Claus, schöner Beitrag, danke! Der Eintrag bei tehmergency zu Blackbird Pie ist irgendwie im Eimer. Hier: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-blackbird-pie/
Lieber Matthias,
danke für den Hinweis, sollte jetzt wieder klappen.
Schau mal hier: “Storify comes to WordPress: Download our new plugin” http://bit.ly/y45OdW
Hi!
Just stopping by to say thanks for sharing our plugin with your readers, and we’re glad you like it!
If you have any questions or suggestions for improvement, drop me a line anytime.
Have a great day!
Lucinda
Thanks for the tips. I actually tried Twitter Blackbird Pie and love the idea. The only thing that keeps me from using it is the background that I can’t get rid of.
Hi Barbara,
yeah, you are right. You might try this one, it is just not so convenient: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-embed/screenshots/