October 7, 2009, 8:35 am
Newspapers are either a dying breed or a changing breed, depending on who you talk to. The New York Times wants to adapt, not go extinct, and one of the little ways they’re adapting involves a software tool they’re releasing as an open-source application for their fellow news organizations — or anyone else, really.
The app in question is the Document Viewer, which allows third-party documents (court records, for instance) to be attached and published along with a news story that involves said documents. According to a Mediabistro.com piece about the Times‘s Viewer project, it’s set to be released as an open source app, and to be reworked in ways to allow both news staffers and readers to add annotations and comments directly on the pages of the documents…