Four years ago, I was editor at my small college newspaper, and we were experimenting with new (for us) forms of online publishing — we’d launched a new site based on Django, after experimenting on WordPress, and I was desperate to find other tech-minded journalists.

Somehow, I got introduced to people like Daniel Bachhuber, Greg Linch, Adam Hemphill, and a few others. Together, we went launched CoPress, where we encouraged college media to become more innovative.

At the time it was an organization seriously at odds with college media. Most major papers were published using College Publisher, a locked-down platform which also severely misaligned incentives for college papers by taking most/all of their online advertising revenue.

Within a year, though, we managed to launch a half-dozen newspapers on WordPress, and I think a critical turning point was when five of our partners won Pacemaker awards for their web presences.

CoPress only lasted two years, but its had an impressive legacy. One of our former advisor, Bryan Murley, just analyzed the results of the 2012 Pacemaker awards, and found that more than half are on WordPress … and only 4% are hosted on College Publisher.