Ottaway media groups rake in several awards

The two press releases linked below are hitting the wires this morning. Congratulations to all of the recipients, not only for the recognition from our industry peers, but for working so hard on such great projects and products. Your high standards and tremendous work ethic shine through your high quality results every single day.

• Ottaway's New England media groups win Newspaper of the Year honors, among other awards
• Poconorecord.com wins two state Excellence in Cyberspace awards

Press release: SouthCoastToday.com seeks reader input on most valuable Red Sox

NEW BEDFORD, MA (March 6th, 2009) - During Red Sox Spring Training, SouthCoastToday.com is running an interactive bracket to learn which Red Sox player has meant the most to the team's fans.

Site visitors are encouraged to pick which player in each matchup has meant the most to the Red Sox franchise. At the end of each round, the Red Sox star who has amassed the most votes will advance to the next round until a winner is crowned.

"We know that people in this area are passionate about the Red Sox so we wanted to do something that we think will be fun and, hopefully, generate some good old-fashioned sports arguments," said Fred Harwood, managing editor for online content/new media for SouthCoast Media Group, which publishes The Standard-Times in New Bedford, Mass., and its flagship Web site, SouthCoastToday.com

"Rather than ask fans flat out 'Who is the best player in Red Sox history?'" - which is probably too narrow a question - we're asking which players have been the most important to the franchise, which leaves more room for debate," Harwood said. "For example, Curt Schilling might not be the team's greatest pitcher of all time, but the team went 86 years without winning anything until he and his bloody sock came to town. That's probably worth some consideration."

The contest runs from now until the Red Sox home opener on April 6th. In addition to the bracket, fans can follow the latest spring training, World Baseball Classic and regular season news at southcoasttoday.com/redsox, Staff Writer Jon Couture also writes about the Red Sox on the blog "Better Red Than Dead."

SouthCoastToday.com is also running a college basketball bracket tournament, March Mania. Prizes include a chance to win $1,000,000.

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ABOUT OTTAWAY NEWSPAPERS

Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. (www.ottaway.com), is the Local Media Group of Dow Jones. Ottaway operates eight community media groups around the country - including the SouthCoast Media Group - that collectively are comprised of 8 daily and 15 weekly newspapers, several lifestyle magazines and other niche publications, and a multitude of affiliated Web sites in seven states.

Media Contact:

Sean Polay

Product Manager, Distributed Media

spolay@ottaway.com

774.313.6093

ABOUT DOW JONES

Dow Jones & Company (www.dowjones.com) is a News Corporation company (NYSE: NWS, NWS.A; ASX: NWS, NWSLV; www.newscorp.com). Dow Jones is a leading provider of global business news and information services. Its Consumer Media Group publishes The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Its Enterprise Media Group includes Dow Jones Newswires, Dow Jones Factiva, Dow Jones Client Solutions, Dow Jones Indexes and Dow Jones Financial Information Services. Dow Jones owns 50% of SmartMoney and 33% of STOXX Ltd. and provides news content to radio stations in the U.S.

Press release: Ottaway Newspapers launches mobile-friendly sites

MIDDLETOWN, N.Y. (Feb. 25, 2009) - Ottaway Newspapers, the Local Media Group of Dow Jones, has launched mobile-friendly editions of its daily news Web sites for its media groups across the country.

The launch marks another milestone in Ottaway's ongoing mobile audience development effort, and is part of a larger content distribution approach geared toward pushing the company's local content and information to a wide variety of platforms.

"Seekers of news and information in our markets should be able to access our content on the platform that either they are most comfortable using, or that is most useful to them at the moment they need to be informed," said Sean Polay, Ottaway's product manager for distributed media. "We aim to serve the reader, and these mobile-friendly sites are a big step forward on that front."

The sites were launched by the company's digital product development team, led by Richard Hoover, and were rooted in a pilot project undertaken by Greg Bryant, online editor for Ottaway's Cape Cod Media Group based in Hyannis, MA. Their mobile site, m.capecodonline.com, was the first to launch, and was followed by the remaining media groups in rapid succession:

• Seacoast Media Group, Portsmouth, NH: m.seacoastonline.com
• Hudson Valley Media Group, Middletown, NY: m.recordonline.com
• Pocono Mountains Media Group, Stroudsburg, PA: m.poconorecord.com
• San Joaquin Media Group, Stockton, CA: m.recordnet.com
• Southern Oregon Media Group, Medford, OR: m.mailtribune.com and m.dailytidings.com

Ottaway's SouthCoast Media Group in New Bedford, MA, had a pre-existing mobile site powered by a third-party provider. Located at mobile.southcoasttoday.com, it remains in place, though it will eventually be transitioned to the shared Ottaway solution, Polay said.

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ABOUT OTTAWAY NEWSPAPERS
Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. (www.ottaway.com), is the Local Media Group of Dow Jones. Ottaway operates eight community media groups around the country that collectively are comprised of 8 daily and 15 weekly newspapers, several lifestyle magazines and other niche publications, and a multitude of affiliated Web sites in seven states.

Media Contact:
Sean Polay
Product Manager, Distributed Media
spolay@ottaway.com
774.313.6093

ABOUT DOW JONES
Dow Jones & Company (www.dowjones.com) is a News Corporation company (NYSE: NWS, NWS.A; ASX: NWS, NWSLV; www.newscorp.com). Dow Jones is a leading provider of global business news and information services. Its Consumer Media Group publishes The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Its Enterprise Media Group includes Dow Jones Newswires, Dow Jones Factiva, Dow Jones Client Solutions, Dow Jones Indexes and Dow Jones Financial Information Services. Dow Jones owns 50% of SmartMoney and 33% of STOXX Ltd. and provides news content to radio stations in the U.S.

Plug your blog into Facebook

While spending some time with Deb Cram at Seacoast Media Group yesterday, I walked her through how to plug her smgphoto Twitter feed into her Facebook profile. I realized later that we have many bloggers -- and a few Tweeters -- around Ottaway that also have Facebook accounts who could benefit from the same tutorial.

At the very least, it will help you share your blog with friends and family in addition to anyone else you're connected with on the social network.

Here are the steps to follow (Note to those reading this via the e-mail post to our onlineeditors listserv: You'll want to click through to the Ottaway Online Editors blog to see the screenshots embedded in this post):

1. First, grab the URL for your blog's RSS feed. In the case of our Mzinga blogging platform, there is an XML button at the bottom of each blog's entry page from which you can grab the URL. Right-click on it and in Firefox select "Copy Link Location," or in IE select "Copy Shortcut:"
   
2. After logging into Facebook, choose Notes from the Applications toolbar:
   
3. Once at the Notes page, click on the link to "Import a blog" under the heading "Notes Settings:"
   
4. Paste your feed URL into the "Web URL" text field, and click the square box to affirm to Facebook that you have the right to post the feed. Finally, click the "Start Importing" button:
   
5. Voila! Instant RSS success!
   

There are other, more elaborate ways to accomplish the same goal, especially if you are active on Twitter. You can create a Twitterfeed account, and plug that same RSS feed into Twitterfeed so it will update your Twitter followers when you post a new item. In turn you can add the Twitter application to your Facebook profile, and allow it to update your Facebook status every time there is a new item posted to Twitter.

But if you're not yet feeling that adventurous, just sync up your Facebook Notes with your blog feed, and you'll be on your way to being a practitioner of viral marketing and content distribution.