Yesterday we were delighted to announce that West Africa Democracy Radio and Sourcefabric had won a Special Distinction prize in the Knight-Batten Awards. Other winners included Storify, NPR's Andy Carvin and his Twitter community, Guardian Data and Bloomberg Government. Of our project with WADR, the judges said:
"This Dakar-based network of radio stations serving 13 countries in West Africa designed a publishing system that works for those without resources. Partnering with the Czech journalism nonprofit Sourcefabric, WADR integrated several open-source tools, including the Newscoop CMS, Airtime radio software and the SoundCloud audio-distribution platform to publish reports in French and English online, on air and on social media sites."
One of the things we love about the project is that anyone can take this model and build a social media radio website. It's built on the free, open source software Newscoop and Airtime, and web tools such as SoundCloud, Twitter and Facebook.
Here's a quick round up of resources for those interested in how, and why, we did it!
Radio site toolkit.
- Newscoop - open source CMS for newsrooms
- Airtime - open source software for radio stations
- SoundCloud - online audio sharing platform
Project documentation.
- Photos, presentations and press releases. Head over to our press centre for digital materials on the project.
- Case study. Our Cloud formations article gives the full rundown on the projects aims and architecture.
- Developer's guide. Everything you need to know on using SoundCloud sets in your Newscoop themes.
WADR networks.
- wadr.org - the hub of WADR's news activity
- SoundCloud - over 11,500 followers and growing every day
- Facebook Page - receive embedded audio and comments
- Twitter - each article, hot off the press
So, that's everything you need to make your own open source radio platform pushing content to social networks. Let us know how you get on!