How to Build a Self-Publishing Newspaper with Twitter

[Update: 10/15/2011 – I'm no longer maintaining the paper.li example site. So, while still functional, it may be out of date.]

There are plenty of blogs and news sites online, so why build your own newspaper? Most of us probably don’t need to, but some bloggers or educators might find it useful to have a centralized, up-to-the-minute repository of news or discussion on a narrower topic than most websites or blogs offer. Teachers could incorporate such a webpage in a number of ways—as a research aide for students, as a discussion starter, or as a way to collect and visualize student comments posted to Twitter or blogs.

There are already different ways of aggregating information on the web: newsreaders, Twitter lists, blogrolls, and even old-fashioned directories. But not all of these offer the simplicity and easy, one-link sharing of paper.li, a service that automatically turns links in a Twitter stream into a newspaper.

As an experiment, I created my own online paper for news about Cuba. In this post I’ll outline the basic steps for creating your own.

3 Easy Steps

1) Sign up for paper.li.

You must link to a Twitter account to register and sign in. The account you link to paper.li can be different from the account(s) you wish to aggregate in your newspaper.

2) Choose a type of stream.

Currently, paper.li only pulls data from Twitter. However, there are three kinds of Twitter streams to choose from: a) user accounts; b) hashtags (label); c) and Twitter lists. I chose to stream a list because I wanted to aggregate data from more than one source and to have more direct control over the paper’s content. It’s tempting to use the hashtag option for a single-topic paper, but Twitter users know that not everything that goes out with a given hashtag is worth reading, or even on topic. For example, the #cuba hashtag might give me news about Cuba, but it also would likely include gossip about Cuba Gooding Jr. or details about someone’s vacation plans. Also, streaming from a Twitter list that I created allows me to curate that list. See the advanced section below for how to set up your own list.

3) Create the Paper

Enter the username, hashtag or list name that you want to stream and click the big green “Create” button. It’s that easy. You’re done. Save the URL for your paper and spread the word.

Advanced Steps for Streaming Lists

Create Your Own Twitter List

This is easy. Log in via Twitter’s web interface. On the Home screen, you’ll see a section called “Lists” in the right-hand column. Click “New list.” Give your list a name and make sure it’s public. Now you can add Twitter users to your list by using the “List” drop-down menu on each user’s profile page. Check the box next to the name of your list. Your paper.li newspaper will use the links posted by all the list’s members.

Get Content from Sources other than Twitter

This is a bit more complicated, but still relatively simple. It involves creating an aggregate RSS feed (i.e. multiple feeds in one) and publishing that feed into an account on your Twitter list.

I used Yahoo! Pipes (requires registration) to build my aggregate feed. This entails virtually no technical prowess. If you can build a stack of Legos, you can combine RSS feeds.

First, you’ll want to identify the websites or blogs you want to include and find the URL for their RSS feeds. Because many sites don’t publish visible links to their feeds, this isn’t always as easy as it should be. Below is a short video tutorial on finding these URLs.

Once you’ve identified the feed URLs, you’ll want to enter them into the “Fetch Feed” module in Yahoo! Pipes. You can clone my Pipe, or create your own from scratch. Just drag a “Fetch Feed” box from the left-hand column into the main drafting area. The image below shows my Pipe.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

It consists of only two modules: 1) “Fetch Feed,” with the RSS links listed in the content fields, and 2) the “Pipe Output” module. If the Pipe is working properly, clicking on the Pipe Output box should render results in the debugging section at the base of the page. There you can see which blog posts and news items are flowing through the Pipe. Give your Pipe a name and save it.

If your Pipe is working, return to your main screen by clicking “Back to My Pipes.” Choose the Pipe you’ve just named, then right-click “Get as RSS.” Copy the link address. This is the link to your new RSS feed combining the multiple feeds you want to add to your paper.li newspaper via your Twitter list.

Publish Your Feed

The next step is to publish the feed to a Twitter account. You can use your existing account, but I recommend setting up a dedicated one. There are a few ways to publish your feed to Twitter. I’ve tried two: Twitterfeed and Feedburner. Both of these allow automatic updates to a Twitter account. Feedburner seems to update more often, so I’ll give a brief step-by-step guide to using it to link to Twitter.

1) Login to Feedburner. If you have a Google account you won’t need a separate registration.

2) Enter your aggregate feed URL (the link to your Yahoo! Pipe output) into the big box and click “Next” to burn your feed.

3) Modify the feed title and URL to your taste. Click “Next.”

4) Go to “Feed Management,” then “Publicize.” Using the “Socialize” service, you can publish to Twitter. Add the Twitter account you want to publish to, and adjust the output format (optional).

5) Activate the service. Feedburner should now be publishing to the Twitter account you designated. There may be a delay, depending on the feed content and output settings. Don’t forget to follow the Twitter account with the list you’ve used to create your newspaper.

(De)limitations

Paper.li offers a very easy and fairly attractive way to publish a Twitter stream to a webpage in newspaper format. It’s main drawbacks are the inability to publish content from sites or services other than Twitter (although this can be remedied via the process outlined above), and its lack of customizability. The ability to alter page design and layout, along with a way to prioritize or rank content, would turn paper.li into a much more useful and powerful tool, allowing non-programmers (the vast majority of bloggers and teachers) to easily create automated, crowd-sourced publications. For an interesting example of what such a publication might look like, check out Digital Humanities Now. I envision using these tools to aggregate student responses and feedback in my courses, but there are certainly numerous other possibilities.