As with the development of communication technology, changes have been inevitable in the field of media. For this reason, it will be examined how journalism on the internet is carried out, how its infrastructure will be established and how it is provided on it. In addition, it will be shown practically how to set up and run news portals.
Can Bekcan
Eastern Mediterranean University
Creating News Portal
Eastern Mediterranean University Faculty of Communication and Media Studies Department of New Media and Journalism
Course Outline
Course Completion Requirements
The course will cover the brief history of the internet, internet terms, journalism, site establishment, news writing, reaching the reader through social media usage, how to use the services provided by Google and journalism ethics. Each student must manage their own website individually and as part of the group.
You must fulfil the following requirements to successfully complete this course:
- Mandatory attendance is required for all. Attendance is a minimum of 70%. Students who fail to meet the 70% threshold will not be eligible to complete the course, regardless of their practical scores.
- Weekly Lab Practices: You must regularly complete and submit weekly hands-on tasks. These account for 50% of your final grade.
- Final Project: You will successfully deploy and maintain the collaborative news portal project, including individual content contributions and reports. This will account for 50% of your final grade.
Exams and Projects
Within the scope of the course, in-class practices and final project will be applied.
- Practicals %50
- Final project %50
Format of the Lesson
Creating News Portal course is going to be conducted to theoretical and practical. Theories are going to be transferred to form a basis for practical studies. All theoretical information will be shared on this site weekly.
Course Outcomes
- Technical Proficiency: Ability to deploy and configure professional-grade CMS environments, including domain management, server-side configuration, and theme customization.
- Editorial Excellence: Mastery of digital news production, including SEO-driven headline drafting, multimedia embedding, and metadata optimization.
- Ethical Journalism: Application of professional journalism standards to digital platforms, specifically focusing on digital copyright, source verification, and transparency in online publishing.
- Data-Driven Workflow: Implementation of web analytics to monitor engagement and refine content strategies.
Course Policy
Attendance & Professionalism: Participation is mandatory due to the intensive lab-based structure. Those who do not attend cannot get points even if they do class practices.
Technical Investment & Infrastructure Policy:
To ensure a stable and professional publishing environment, the course hosting infrastructure is centrally procured and managed by the instructor. Students contribute their respective share of the hosting costs directly to the instructor, and payment receipts are systematically archived for administrative and financial transparency.
System Access & Instructor Control: Full administrative control of the server infrastructure remains strictly with the instructor. Students are provided with individual user credentials, granting them controlled access exclusively within their designated operational parameters to build and manage their personal portals.
Maintenance & Activity Obligations: Students are required to maintain and update their systems consistently, ensuring active content generation over a 1-year operational period. Inactivity or failure to publish content for a consecutive period of one month will result in the immediate termination of the student’s hosting account and an official report submitted to the Department Chair.
Content Policy & Academic Integrity: Because these portals operate under your academic profile and institutional affiliation, strict adherence to digital ethics and legal regulations is mandatory. The following behaviors are strictly prohibited and will result in the immediate termination of the hosting account and direct referral to the University Disciplinary Board:
- Publishing illegal content, hate speech, harassment, or material violating copyright laws.
- Sharing content that breaches academic integrity, university code of conduct, or professional journalism ethics.
- Using the allocated infrastructure for spam, malicious activities, or unauthorized commercial operations.
Students retain full ownership of their digital portfolios beyond the semester, provided they maintain ethical, legal, and operational standards of publishing.
Useful Links
Workflow: Individual vs. Group Sites
Throughout this course, you will operate in two distinct digital environments. The Weekly Practices (worth 5 points each) will be performed on your Individual Site, serving as your personal sandbox. You will then collaborate and apply all these mastered skills to your Group Site, which constitutes your Final Project.
Weekly Course Schedule
- Week 1:Intro to Digital Journalism & Web Ethics
Task: Group formation, deciding the portal’s niche concept, and defining the target audience. - Week 2:Domain, Hosting Procurement & FTP
Practice 1Task: Server account setup and successful FTP connection test (Individual Site). - Week 3:WordPress Installation & User Management
Practice 2Task: WP installation, database setup, and assigning correct editorial user roles (Individual & Group Sites). - Week 4:Theme Installation & Visual Customization
Practice 3Task: Theme activation, logo/favicon upload, and color scheme customization (Individual Site). - Week 5:Core Site Architecture
Practice 4Task: Creating standard pages (About, Contact), establishing categories, and building menus (Individual Site). - Week 6:Essential Plugins & Security
Practice 5Task: Installation and configuration of essential SEO, caching, and security plugins (Individual Site). - Week 7:AI in Journalism, Originality & Fact-Checking
Practice 6Task: Analyzing an AI-generated text, identifying hallucinations, and rewriting it into an ethical, original news piece. - Weeks 8–9:Midterm Exam Period
Exam - Week 10:SEO Content & Data Journalism Integration
Practice 7Task: Creating an SEO-optimized original article that embeds an interactive data chart (e.g., Datawrapper/Flourish). - Week 11:Setup of Analytical Systems
Practice 8Task: Implementation of Google Analytics / Site Kit and Search Console property verification (Individual Site). - Week 12:Visitor Increase & Social Distribution
Practice 9Task: Optimizing metadata/Open Graph tags and executing a social media sharing test for an article. - Week 13:Pre-Launch Checks & Ethical Audit (Peer Review)
Practice 10Task: Cross-editing on the Group Site. Audit a peer’s article for broken links, SEO scores, AI plagiarism, and ethics. - Week 14:Final Project Submissions
Final Evaluation
Detailed Grades
Weekly Lab Practices
%50
You will be expected to complete a practical task each week, as outlined in the timetable. Each application is worth 5 points, for a total of 10. If you are not present for the course, you will not receive points for the application.
Evaluation Criteria
Grades will be given according to results of the ability to solve the problem.
Final Project
%50
This is a group project, but each member must take notes individually. Each of group members must write 10 contents and upload them to the system.
Evaluation Criteria
- Obtaining Group Domain
- Setup of the System and Assignment of Users
- Organising the Theme
- Analytics Setup
- Preparation of Pages
- Preparation of Menus
- Report (written text in which you describe the situations experienced in group work)
- News (Posts)
- Posts
- Ethics
- Original
- Keywords
- Length