NewsWire.co.nz is the new news website for the Whitireia Journalism School, New Zealand.

I built it. And, aside from the fee for hosting (pennies) and my own personal wage, we did it for FREE. And what’s more, it’ll stay free.

We created and launched the site within THREE WEEKS. That includes setting up the hosting, domain name, content management system, design, editorial structure, promotion and publishing software. Oh, and lets not forget that students creating the content have been training as journalists for less than six weeks.

I’ll cut to the chase: IF YOU RUN A JOURNALISM SCHOOL, YOU NEED TO DO THIS TOO. IT IS TOO EASY TO NOT BOTHER.

The simplicity of the operation is staggering. Using a series of free, open-source tools, we have created a multi-media news website that is already involving the community.

Now, when I was putting all this together, I constantly referred to the work of Mindy McAdams. Her how-to guides have meant some very tricky aspects of the teaching — setting up Audacity, for example — were made a lot simpler.

Now it’s one thing for Mindy to create those sorts of guides for her own students, but it’s another thing altogether to put those resources on the web, for free, for everyone to learn from.

So, inspired by Mindy’s example, I’ll explain everything that went into NewsWire.co.nz. Maybe some other journalism schools can follow Whitireia’s lead.

» Read more: Introducing NewsWire: If you run a journalism school, you need to do this