We recently completed the launch of a new Website for the International Journalists’ Network (IJNET). IJNet.org, which is provided in its entirety in four languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic), is a global online service for journalists, media managers, media assistance professionals, journalism trainers and educators, or anyone else with an interest in news media. In addition to offering a plethora of content relating to news, media assistance, codes of ethics, media laws, etc. from countries across the globe, it also provides a number of tools that really make it a virtual community, such as discussion forums and article commenting. For instance, once a comment is posted to an article, a discussion is automatically generated regarding it within the Discussion section.

Fully supporting multiple languages, including a right to left language such as Arabic, is what makes this site really cool. In the Discussions section you can view commentary in a single language or even read them with all of the languages intermingled. The site’s email bulletin in also provided in all four languages, as is its RSS feed.

The site is based around a custom built CMS system that controls all of the site content and many of the site elements. This allows IJNet to post and edit nearly anything on the site at will. It was a very challenging project, but I think the finished product came out quite well (as evidenced by comments made on the site regarding the press release about the launch) and we are pretty proud of it.