Can newspapers benefit from Everyblock?

The code behind Everyblock.com (as of June 09) was released under an open source license, but as of today I’m not aware of a single website using the technology. Newspaper in particular I would expect to have a keen interest in this software, but so far not a single paper has tried it.

What’s the hold up?

The code has been downloaded 859 times as of this writing.

For those who care enough to download, one read through the documentation is probably enough to scare you off. If you actually try installing the system, all but seasoned LINUX geeks will likely balk or fail completely. (out of date dependancies, etc.)

It’s like baking bread from scratch vs using a boxed recipe. The materials required to cook from scratch cost more, you need to be or employ an experienced cook and it takes far longer. Unless newspaper have a budget for this project of even a fraction of Everyblock’s original 1.1 million they can forget about implementing software like this.

… unless … we we simplify the installation procedures and provide tutorials on best practices and example use cases for under funded newspapers.

Have you installed the Everyblock software? Where did you get stuck? Do you have ideas on what we as the open source community can do to make it more useful to the majority of newspapers out there?