http://www.baristanet.com/2006/12/deck_map_the_halls.php
Also note the box in the upper right rail of their home page, which links into the page described above:
The print edition of the Record-Eagle often refers to more information about a story that is available online. Watch the print edition for the "More to the story" icon and go online here to view the extra information.
The Web is a place for structured data. Newsrooms are a place for unstructured information. That means reporters and editors will have to begin to gather information in structured ways if it is to make it onto the Web.
Hi Sean,
Just wanted to call your attention to all the multimedia stuff we’ve done to go with our four-Sunday special project – A Nossa Vida: The Portuguese Experience in
You can find them here:
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/anossavida
What is cool about these, I think, is that the reporters themselves produced them (with varying degrees of success/difficulty) with little or no experience doing this before.
Although they each have something to offer, of particular note are:
n the overview
n linguica
n romeiros
n fado
We’ll be adding the stories from Week 2-4 over the next three weeks.
All of the content can also be found in a book we produced (which, if you have any Portuguese friends you need a holiday present for, can be purchased on the Web site [plug, plug!])
Fred Harwood
Managing Editor for Online Content/New Media
The Standard-Times/SouthCoastToday.com
Phone: 508-979-4441
Fax: 508-997-7491
E-mail: fharwood@s-t.com
Gleaned from I Want Media today:
Chicago's Sun-Times Unveils Hyper-Local Online Service
http://www.suntimes.com/welcome/index.html
The Sun-Times News Group's new Web site features a drop-down menu for users to access news in their local community. Tabs along the left-hand side of the home page send visitors to Roger Ebert's movie reviews, blogs, video, classified sections, the Yellow Pages and more.
Stop testing so much. It's not the P&G way to put out a product without test-marketing it. But consumer testing takes time--a luxury that P&G execs increasingly don't have. Says Susan Arnold, P&G's beauty queen: "We don't have time to cross all the T's and dot all the I's. This business is trend-based and fashion-based. You have to be intuitive, instinctual, and gut-driven." ... P&G has reduced product launch time from lab to roll-out from three years to 18 months companywide. Meg Whitman, eBay's CEO and a P&G board member, believes that P&G should move even faster. "Perfection is the enemy of good enough," she says. "I think that's right," says Lafley.
I'm not feeling relaxed or looking forward to another hour of reading in bed. The digital version of my typical Sunday has left me wanting.And what are our kids doing while my wife and I read the paper? Playing in Webkinz, a virtual world for youngsters. Granted, our boys are 8 and under, and at the very least the 8 year old asks me to save him the funnies, which he will read later in the day. Do I think his interest will graduate to the sports pages and beyond? Hard to say. If so, it will more than likely be because at the very least my wife and I are bringing the newspaper into the house regularly... so far....
I'm averaging about 14 to 16 hours every day online, and my head is hurting by the time I fall asleep. I'm antsy, much more impatient than I used to be. Worse, one of my closest friends this morning said that my attention span is "worse than a 2-year-old child's."Over the last couple of yers, I've tried to force myself to read a book in bed before going to sleep. Granted, reading five pages at a time before falling asleep is not my preferred method to curl up with a good book. Worse, I've broken that habit lately (again). But after reading Webb's article, I realized the attempt was my subconscious way of relaxing my brains so I could fall asleep more easily. And it was working, too -- reason enough to kickstart the practice again.
(To be fair, if you checked today, you'd probably find dozens of RSS feeds available on local news from local Web sites - but still, it's clear that our local venues have some catching up to do where Web technology is concerned.)The stop dead moment?
I've concluded that the medium doesn't matter after all. After a month without any print or broadcast media, I can say with confidence that I could easily live without ever picking up a physical newspaper again.In my conversations with people around the company and industry, I get asked from time to time, "How can we effectively promote the print product from the Web site? What can we promote?"
Sean Polay was on Newstimeslive.com and is forwarding you this article "Sean Polay sent you a story from Newstimeslive.com"
http://www.newstimeslive.com//story.php?id=1009635&email=1
Here is their message ...
Sharing from Danbury....
Read The News-Times and check <a href=http://www.NewsTimesLive.com>www.NewsTimesLive.com</a> for updates.
If you do not want to have stories forwarded to you please email webmaster@newstimes.com
In a comment to my Aug. 1 posting on live blogging, Tim Esterdahl (senior writer for the college paper The Metropolitan) posed the following question:
"What is the opinion of current editors about using bloggers as sources?
"For example, say I am covering a sporting event. Being a small, budgeted publication, I am doing double duty for photography and writing. Honestly, it will be nearly impossible for me to get all the interviews I want.
"[However, since] I believe in always trying to find the best quote: Is it frowned upon to go to, say MySpace and/or develop a network of bloggers I can read for more quotes?
"Does that in some way diminish the role I play in covering the event, or does it enhance it? I personally feel that it is enhancing it as maybe I can find that one piece of information or quote that is truly beneficial. I would really like to know what guidelines there might be for this sort of thing."
Excellent question Tim! So I'm throwing this out to the Tidbits audience. What's your opinion? Does your news organization have any policies or guidelines regarding quoting bloggers? Please comment below.
From: Patrick Mullen [mailto:thrmullen@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 6:42 PM
To: alanghoff@ottaway.com
Subject: obit guest books - traffic driver
Andrew,
We always struggle with traffic deaths that involve teenagers - especially around graduation. We had a horrible accident on Friday that took the lives of three Port Jervis girls. The paper covered the story very well and we wanted to do something meaningful online. With a weekend in the way and a desire not to be perceived as 'capitalizing' on such a tragic event we decided to simply link to the Legacy.com guest books - from our index page - for each of the teens involved.
Two of the guestbooks had no entries when we started this morning -- now two of them have 2 pages of entries and a third has 6 and counting. We've had over 11,000 pageviews to the guestbook section so far today (compared to 2,000/ day average) and I really believe that we provided a great sevice to the family and friends of all involved -- just wanted to pass this along.
Patrick
When I posted "Record-Eagle Blogs" on June 9, I should have shared the whole
back story....
Jeanne, Alison, how's it going, two months in?
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeanne Hubbard [mailto:jhubbard@record-eagle.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2006 12:35 PM
To: Bill Thomas; Mike Tyree; Alison Widmer; Ann Reed; Jacki Krolczyk;
Triston Kirt; Dan Roach; Maia Conway; Loraine Anderson; Kathy Gibbons; Dave
Miller
Cc: Andrew Langhoff; Sean Polay
Subject: Blogs: A Success So Far
As many of you know, we launched our new blog site
(http://blogs.record-eagle.com) last month on the 26th of May. Since the
launch, the blogs have gotten some pretty good traffic: 6,460 page views for
the period of May 26 to June 7.
Much of the launch success is due to Sara Robinson's blog from the National
Spelling Bee (depsite the fact that no refers were made in the printed
paper). She wrote with an excellent voice and her posts were always fun to
read. I'm hoping to keep her on as a blogger and we'll be talking soon about
blog ideas for her. If you have suggestions, feel free to shoot them to me.
I'll keep you posted on what we come up with.
We've also got Dee Blair blogging about her garden, Andrew Dost about being
on the road with his band, and yours truly with a rather bland but
informative blog about web site issues.
Please keep your eyes and ears open for other blogging opportunities. If we
have a resident heading off to do something interesting, let's pitch the
blog idea to them. It's easy and can be done from any Internet connection.
Also, if there's any interest within the newsroom for staff to have their
own blog(s), please let me know. I can set up a quick training session and
can discuss content ideas. Some ideas for blogs:
- Book Blog. What are you reading, what books do you recommend?
- Internet Blog. What's happening online in our area of the world? A place
to highlight local web sites and online articles about local issues.
- Photography Blog: post a daily photo of the region and talk about how the
shot was taken, discuss photography methods, etc.
There's so much we can do, it's really wide open. Those are just a few ideas
off the top of my head.
Jeanne Hubbard
Webmaster
Traverse City Record-Eagle
www.record-eagle.com
webmaster@record-eagle.com
231-933-1469
FYI –
We created a baseball blog for NY sports fans. The thought was to create a place for NY sports fans to talk about the game—during the game. We added headers for special match-ups like the mets/braves, ny/boston and the subway series. Our NY sports columnists will chime in during batting practice tonight. They will be able provide some real-time coverage of something only folks in the ball-park are able to see….
Let’s see how it goes. If it starts out well we will improve the platform over time.
http://recordonline.com/sports/mlb/
Best,
Patrick
Go Yankees!
All Ka and I wanted was to trot three teen and near-teen kids over to an East Coast beach, within driving distance, for a long weekend.
Three plus two makes five, about two too many for a comfortable stay in one hotel room. Two rooms near a beach would be expensive, and no hotel will guarantee adjoining rooms anymore. So we hoped to find a condo, villa or small vacation house.
Starting the end of next week.
And that's where the fun began. Not fun as in "ha ha, look how easy," but fun as in "this @$%&*! thing is driving me insane ... maybe we should just camp in the back yard!"
What we found is the Internet becomes little better, and sometimes worse, than a remote phone book for locating a place to stay in those circumstances.
We had turned to the Internet in the first place because we knew most travel agents have no incentives to work very hard, if at all, to book lodging on itineraries where no flights or resort packages are involved.
Mainstream travel sites, including Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, Hotwire and Hotels.com, work fine for mainstream travel: book a flight on a major airline, reserve a room in a chain hotel, rent a car from one of a half dozen brand-name providers, get rewards program credit for all of the above.
But they outright break when you try to tell them a family of five wants a place to stay together, the Rev. Al Green be damned! Some of the user interfaces simply won't let you attempt a search for lodging for two adults and three children, unless you start your search assuming you will split them into two rooms. Others will, but since most of the chain hotels limit occupancy to four humans per room, they seldom return any usable results.
Hotels.com supposedly lets you focus a search on condos and other vacation rentals, but results still appeared to contain quite a few chain hotel rooms that would not be big enough.
I tried kayak.com, one of the newer travel metasites (meaning it searches across many of the other travel search sites). I like the way it works, and that trial was enough to get me to consider using it in the future. But it, too, still focuses too much on mass-market travel and not family vacation lodging.
Next stops: smaller, regional sites from local real estate companies, leasing agents and rental aggregators. These sites, without exception, were maddening in their inconsistencies, untimeliness and what I call "rotten Easter eggs" -- waiting until after you drilled several steps into the process to tell you something you really needed to know before you started.
Best examples:
Perhaps, you say, we set ourselves up for this failure by trying to book a last-minute stay on busy beaches in peak season. I won't argue with that. But last-minute deals can be found -- just, apparently, not on the 30 or so Internet sites we have tried so far.
Where does that leave us? Using the "Outernet," and having better luck. We're getting recommendations and leads from friends who live, or have lived, in the areas we're targeting. We have some phone numbers of leasing agents who may have some last-minute openings. Worst case, we'll book rooms a bit off the beach, but it appears our offline contacts will beat all these online efforts Real Soon Now.
I'll keep you posted.
This episode certainly reveals a tangible Internet business opportunity in local markets with a critical mass of vacation rentals. And it is proof that technology alone, in the form of databases with search engines, can't efficiently address many human wants on the fringe without, well, human attention.
Students at school here go to D.C. every two years as part of a government in action program. They meet with lawmakers, journalists, etc. This year they’re doing a blog, complete with fotos and audio files, archives. The blog entries are a little long, but that’s to be expected. Cool community stuff.
Len
Len La Barth
New Media Editor
(831) 429-2411
(831) 429-9620 (FAX)
www.santacruzsentinel.com
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