News coverage idea

What's up Heads?
 
    So David and I were talking a few weeks ago about possibly setting
up an international news coverage system on the site, with everyone
taking a country or a few countries to keep up on and post to a page on
the site. We figured we'd hash out the details in the mailing list, the
issues listed below:
 
 
1) How to post the selected news articles:
    -- I was thinking links to the articles, maybe underneath a
summarizing header that gives a rundown of what's happening there. 
 
2) Amount of countries per reporter:
    -- I think we should leave this one up to the person, as to what
time they have to do this. We should try and do more in-depth and
up-to-date coverage on fewer countries rather than less coverage on more
countries. I'm thinking of taking 3 different countries, one in the
Middle East, one in S. America, and one in Asia. That way, I'll have a
little more comparative regional backstories for everyone else's
country. (by the way, I call dibs on Syria, Colombia, and Indonesia)
 
3) Website structure:
    -- I figure this is a subject more for the devel list, but the basic
structure I was thinking of was a base news page where you could link to
the individual pages for each country. 
 
4) Posting new info:
    -- I'm probably the only one on the heads list who does all of his
site-stuff almost exclusively from work, as my computer at home is on a
dial up. (quit making fun of me, nrrds) This means that if there's some
way to log into the website and enter info and have it post, that'd be
great. My understanding of the actual nuts and bolts of web design is
pretty pathetic, so if this is completely unrealistic let me know.
 
5) News Resources:
    -- I dug up a few sites that we can use, but maybe we should set up
an additional page that we can post links to any and all of the web
sources we use. The list follows:

www.oilsurvey.com/countrysurvey/newsbycountry.htm - Links to all the
major newspapers for each country
 
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/current2.html - For those
going after African states
 
http://mel.org/viewtopic.jsp?id=189&pathid=1042 - This seems to have a
ton of papers, but doesn't list which are in English, like the
oilsurvey.com site does. More papers, though.
 
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/~edward/worldnews.htm - This is a good
one, lots of links.
 
http://www.latin-focus.com/news/newsarchive_country.htm - For anyone who
takes a S. American country, this will be indispensable.
 
http://www.journalismnet.com/alternate/ - This isn't a list of news
sites, but it has a bunch of links that seem damned good. 

 
    So those are the issues I can think of off the top of my head. If
anyone has any more, please add them on, and I only put my ideas out
there to spur discussion, if you've got a better idea, PLEASE put it out
there. Also, should we maybe put a few people behind this project, to
make sure the infrastructure moves along? I'll gladly help out, but
someone with actual computer skills outside of MSOffice should probably
help me. Excel spreadsheets aren't great for current events.
 
    Oh, and anyone who's interested, the only fair way to pick your
countries is first come, first served. I came first, so now I'm gonna go
roll over and go to sleep. 
 
-A(m)

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