“It’s no longer a question of print or online. It’s what you’re about online,” writes Dana Blankenhorn on ZDNet. Newspaper business is dying. I hear gloomy projections on print media market from all over: the United States, Estonia, Norway, Great Britain, Ukraine, etc.

In Belarus, independent newspapers do not turn profit; it’s even dubious to say there’s a media market in Belarus. The state-owned media are financially bolstered by the state, while few surviving independent newspapers are hampered by various unfair regulations, taxation policies, economic and legal obstacles making it impossible for them to succeed. But would they? Would the Belarusian press become successful if all the impediments were dropped?

Of course, once the regime collapses, there will be a short period of media boom in the country. Probably, during that time a certain number of fresh big players will come forth. Many formerly state-owned newspapers will be bought by some large businesses. Yeah, I’d project a few bright years for the Belarusian newspapers.

But together with the collapse of the Belarusian regime, we will see demonopolization of the broadband access market, as a result Internet prices will fall, the number of Internet users will grow exponentially. I’d predict that the newspaper boom will last for a short period of time. The real big deal will be the rising Internet market. That’s what we need to prepare ourselves for. Some Belarusian media are still in the Stone Age as it comes to familiarity with the latest technologies. Today computer literacy in the newsroom is a must, but we need much more of the Internet literacy. We, as the Belarusian journalists, need to accoutre ourselves with the vision of what we can achieve online in the current conditions and how we can do it efficiently. We also need to think about the future, not just grind into the gloom of today.

One way of looking into the future is by considering a proper CMS (a content management system) for your website. Choosing a right CMS is challenging. You need to consider many things. One is which CMS is best for handling a newsroom workflow. Second, you’d probably need a pretty expandable system where you can easily implement some additional features you may not need in the beginning. Third, consider a CMS’s community. If the community of developers and users is large, vibrant and responsive, you will very unlikely run into a dilemma when you don’t know what to do with some bug in your code.

Some independent sites in Belarus have chosen to go with Campsite, a CMS built from the ground-up for use by online newspapers. A few are still shopping for a proper system. I think Campsite is a good CMS. It is a good choice, but is it the best one? I played with it for a while. I also used WordPress, Joomla, Mambo, Nuke, Postnuke, XOOPS, Sapid, and a number of other CMS’s. And you know what, of all the systems my thumbs up go to Drupal. This is the system I’d strongly recommend to any serious media company.

In fact, Westki.info, where I work, is using Drupal. Being a devoted Drupaler, I am tempted to say that my CMS will beat your CMS’s ass. And here’s why. Just look at the various online media sites implemented with Drupal. In Belarus, there are few Drupal media sites. I hope much more are going to appear in the near future. Drupal is the way to go. Last week there was a large Drupal Conference in Washington, D.C. If interested, you can find videos from it at this location. Here’s one on the use of Drupal in the newsroom.