YouTube invitation

I believe I received a YouTube invitation from fitnessfactor overnight because I already subscribe to another fitness video channel (if only I was better at making time to stay fit!). I am betting that they scoured related channels, and invited subscribers of those other channels to check out fitnessfactor.

A bit spammish in practice, but it did entice me to click through and check out the videos.

One weakness of the fitnessfactor invite was it was not personal. They just used the default YouTube text:

Hi Sean,

I've been using YouTube to share personal videos with my friends and family. I'm inviting you to become my friend on YouTube so I can easily share videos with you in the future.

To accept my invitation, please follow this link and login. If you're not already a YouTube member, you can sign up first.

Thanks,
fitnessfactor

I've got social networking profiles all over the Internet. It's not that hard to learn a little bit about me, and a personal touch would go a lot further when it comes to recruiting me to subscribe or otherwise participate in what you're trying to accomplish.

An alternative approach:

Hi Sean,

We noticed that you subscribe to cbtrainer's videos, and as a busy executive and father of three, I am sure you are looking for any tips you can get to stay healthy and fit efficiently, while resisting the urge to indulge in fast food and unhealthy snacks, especially when you are on the road.

Check out our videos by following this link, and if we can fit into your video and fitness life, we'd love to have you as a subscriber.

Thanks,
fitnessfactor

Now, not every potential user is as visible as I am on the Internet. But take out the executive and father details, and it would still be a lot more personal than the default text.

Don't forget what you're up against. I received another YouTube invitation last week that was much more like a typical MySpace invite. "Hi, you looked interesting to me, and you should come over to this other Web site to check me out." They've become so numerous, it's become just noise. The fitnessfactor invite was a lot closer to that noise than it needed to be.

It's all about the signal-to-noise ratio. You need to amplify your signal to rise above all the noise. A little extra effort and a personal touch can go a long way to achieving that.

For related thoughts, check Lee Odden's "Blogger Realtions 101." While it refers to bloggers specifically -- and bloggers will be a specific focus of a chapter in the Audience Development Playbook -- Odden offers some pretty good tips on outreach in general that will be helpful regardless of platform. Also see his more recent post, "How NOT to Pitch a Blog."

A review of V845

We've been talking up the Hudson Valley group's high school sports effort (http://www.varsity845.com) quite a bit lately, and exploring with some of you the possibility of borrowing elements and functionality for your use (Southcoast has since taken them up on the offer, and is working to integrate some of the scoreboard elements into their high school football coverage).

See below some outside feedback on the Varsity 845 effort.

While projects like this do depend on some technological pieces being in place, success comes only from completing the circle with widespread buy-in and usage by the staff. Matt Pepin has done a superb job of using the technology that Patrick Mullen has provided, and running all-out to make sure the content is filling the platform and building the audience.

Please reach out to Patrick and Matt when you can. They have hit upon an initial formula that can work for you. Lots of audience growth can be derived from consistent and persistent use of online tools to strengthen your timely and interactive coverage of the local online sports scene.

________________________________

From: Pepin, Matt
Sent: Tue 9/25/2007 11:08 AM
To: Vanderhoof, Joe; Mullen, Patrick; Gliedman, Erik; Osenenko, Derek; McGuire, Meg; Mohart, Doug; Polay, Sean
Subject: a review of V845

Everyone ... very favorable coverage of V845 by the New York State Sportswriters Association in the president's blog. Link is here, text is pasted below.

http://www.newyorksportswriters.org/blog/blog-2007-09-22.shtml

Matt Pepin

Sports Editor

Times Herald-Record

Middletown, N.Y.

The 411 on '845': Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill was famously quoted as saying "All politics is local." He was also known for his ability to return to his old neighborhood and recognize people he hadn't seen in years, greeting them by name and attending to them as though they were life-long friends.

Rep. O'Neill got it. He understood that he needed to be attuned to the lives of his constituents. It's grassroots politicking, and it's how he got re-elected time after time after time, though being a liberal, Irish Democrat in Massachusetts certainly didn't hurt his cause.

I'm not sure yet whether the effort will amount to "too little, too late," but newspapers and other old-school media are going the grassroots route as well these days, focusing their newsgathering and delivery on so-called "hyper-local" approaches. Major newspapers and electronic media that used to have multiple foreign news bureaus are shutting them down to concentrate on national and state coverage. Those that used to maintain a presence in New York and Washington, D.C., have been cutting back to focus oin state and local reporting.

And mid-sized daily papers are moving their resources back from the statehouse into the local neighborhoods to recapture readership they've been losing for any number of reasons over the last quarter of a century. And the emphasis is on online operations in pursuit of the young folks.

Translation: This is a swell time to be a web designer or developer with a little flair and imagination. There's a big market for "cool" and "cutting edge" in the online world these days as newspapers court the young readers.

To that end, The Times Herald-Record in Middletown typlifies the "adapt or die" mentality this fall, having rolled out Varsity845.com <http://www.varsity845.com/> . It's a laudable effort that combines old staples -- roundups, game stories, states and standings -- with new strategies such as blogging, video clips, photo galleries and forums.

It adds up to a place in the top three of must-visit scholastic sports sites in New York, alongside Newsday <http://www.newsday.com/sports/highschool/> and LoHud.com <http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=SPORTS02> .

What makes the site superior? Start with the name. Playing off the area code for the Catskills/Hudson Valley region the paper serves, it's named so as to put a little distance between the new product and print product. Trust me. I spent 11-plus years at DemocratandChronicle.com in Rochester, so I understand how it's a lot easier to design a snazzy t-shirt with the Varsity 845 logo on it than it is to get creative with the Times Herald-Record name.

The site's design -- yellow type on a black background -- is attractive and effective, but that's relatively superficial stuff anyway. Where Varsity845.com really succeeds is its content:

* A simple, useful calendar
* Standings that are generally up to date and accurate
* Chat forums
* Results roundups and game stories
* Video reports and photo galleries
* Links to lists of players and coaches of the year in the respective sports as well as Section 9 champions

Additionally, the staff does the stuff that looks good but involves effort above and beyond what many sites are willing to do. Three bloggers contribute multiple entries each week and three nominees per day are highlighted for their Player of the Day voting.

Taken in total, it's superior to just about anything out there and positions The Times Herald-Record to defend against MaxPreps, Scout.com and other national players that are trying to make inroads into local markets. Publishers across the state should stop by to see how they should be doing it.

Sign Design

I'm sure you know by now how much I love these kinds of contests: Embassy Suites Launches Do Not Disturb Sign Design Contest

You can involve your audience in just about anything you try to do.

Animoto - Remix

So Animoto let me remix the photos, select some as "featured," choose a new starting point in the music, or replace the music entirely. Now it's not as fulyl featured as I might like, but for those just wanting a quick way to create a video-like experience with only photos and a soundtrack -- and the ability to plug it into Blogger, Facebook and other places -- this is not a bad way to go.

Test drive of Animoto

Trying out Animoto (www.animoto.com), a site that allows you to upload photos -- or pull them from Flickr or other apps -- choose some music, and voila... instant video! On this first one, I didn't see anywhere to play with the pacings or transitions. Will go back in to read the directions more carefully now....

User-generated product development

Full credit goes to my wife, Brandy, for pointing me in this direction: Vineyard Vines Custom Department.

Submit your design, and Vineyard Vines will apply it to their products. Sure, you have to order a minimum quantity, but I still love the concept.

The possibilities for similar application to our products is endless:

• Have readers design their own print page from photos they've submitted.


• Cape Cod has Gulliver (befriend him on Facebook!). How about if you have readers design your mascot -- and then turn him or her into an online and marketing personality?


• Run some user-submitted stories in the paper.


• Solicit blog ideas from readers.

What are some of your ideas?

How we measure up on socialmeter

Found via StephKerchner on Digg: socialmeter

Here's a quick look at our scores:
ack.net: 229
capecodonline.com: 4,841
dailytidings.com: 717
mailtribune.com: 3,170
poconorecord.com: 3,059
recordnet.com: 5,600
recordonline.com: 8,105
seacoastonline.com: 9,438
southcoasttoday.com: 9,288

Note: The tally for something called Shadows wasn't loading for me, but neither was its Web site -- and before today I'd not even heard of it.

It's also missing counts for StumbleUpon, Shoutwire, Magnolia, Newsvine, Reddit, Twitter and I'm sure others. Nonetheless, it's an interesting view of our visibility to potential audience in our markets that traverse elsewhere.

Toot Your Own Horn, Why Don'tcha

So for those of you who didn’t see it, earlier last week Hudson Valley joined Cape Cod in getting their work recognized in an Editor & Publisher column.

On Tuesday, Pauline Millard, online editor at E&P (who I’ve written about previously), wrote about the newspapers online bridge database project. Millard used the project to discuss the ongoing coverage of the Minneapolis bridge collapse.

By now, you may be asking yourself ‘hey, how do I get some of that sweet coverage?’ And if you’re not asking yourself that question, let me tell you, you should be. Because while there is no guarantee that it will work, it doesn’t take much to get the ball rolling.

Start by introducing yourself. As you will see in the piece on Hudson Valley, I’m quoted. Now that wasn’t my intention from the outset – I’ve been quoted enough in my life already -- but rather was a result of my being one to approach Pauline in the first place about the project.

All I did was send her a brief e-mail drawing her attention to the project (including relevant links) and explaining why I thought she might find it of value – in this case, an example of how you don’t need a 12-person Computer Assisted Reporting team to do high quality CAR projects.

I then made sure to stay in touch with her, as she emailed me throughout the day with various questions and comments. In some cases I had the answers and in others, I called on people at Hudson Valley to provide the relevant information. And finally, when she said the project would be the topic of her column, I made sure to send her a nice little thank you note.

Now it’s true that a piece in E&P is not like Fark or Drudge and does not result in a large number of visitors, but a piece in E&P or in Romenesko, brings industry attention and the admiration of your colleagues, if nothing else, it’s sure nice to be recognized once in a while.

So next time, give it your own shot, hey you never know just who might write about the hard work you do?

Pauline Millard pmillard@editorandpublisher.com

Wikipedia contest

Ottaway Online Directors and Editors,

 

I am happy to announce a new installment of our audience development contest, this time focused on a specific content distribution idea: How many pages can you wiki?

 

I've mentioned before that opportunity exists with every landing page created -- not to mention listing our sites as geographic resources for the towns and regions we cover -- to sprinkle our links across the wikisphere. So let's focus some effort on doing so, and gain some traffic and an education in the process.

 

Here's a couple of examples where I have added our newspaper.com sites or specific landing pages to the External Links or Resources sections of Wikipedia entries:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nantucket%2C_Massachusetts#External_links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Bedford%2C_Massachusetts#External_links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampanoag_%28tribe%29#External_links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_primary#Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Isaak#External_links

 

Now, I happen to have a login, and you can set yourself up with one too. It will make it much easier to track your progress, because there is a link once you log in that takes you to "My Contributions," listing everything you've added throughout Wikipedia. If you decide to remain anonymous, you will just have to keep track of your entries manually.

 

Note: In the case of the Nantucket entry, where I had also originally added links to a few other Nantucket products, Wikipedia editors saw that as link spam and removed all but one. So I would recommend only a single external link to your your products for each wiki page.

 

And the best part about this contest? Mere participation makes you a winner. Here's how you can earn the prizes:

 

Add resource links to 25 Wikipedia pages, and I'll furnish you a copy of The Wisdom of Crowds.

Add links to 50 Wikipedia pages, and I'll throw in a $25 gift card to the coffee shop of your choice.

Add links to 75 Wikipedia pages, and you'll receive an Ottaway-logoed shirt, commemorating the our 70th anniversary.

 

(75? Am I nuts? Well at 5 a day for the next 16 business days, that'd be 80. Seems pretty doable when I put it that way, doesn't it?)

 

Deadline is 8 p.m. ET, Aug. 31. Grand prize winner will be the online editor that added links to the most Wikipedia pages: A pair of Olympus ME-15 lavalier mics. I know Seacoast needs them for their resuscitated Webcast. I'm sure everyone else can find a use for them too.

 

Fire away with any questions! And good luck!

 

-Sean

 

Facebook Group | Jersey Shore 2007

Advance has got some groups going on Facebook, including one for fans of the Jersey Shore.

I know a couple of shoreline areas where a similar social networking idea would be worth exploring for us.... Tie-ins with Beachcomber and OnCape Beach Guide products come immediately to mind.

Update: I found out about NJ.com's Facebook group from the tippy top of their Jersey Shore Blogs page.

Interactive mapping

Have fun, and get ready to drool: The New York Times > New York Region > Interactive Feature > New York City Transit System Is Crippled by Storm

Feeds: How Much Can You Eat? [ClickZ Internet Marketing Solutions for Marketers]

Feeds: How Much Can You Eat?: I'm with Kristin Darguzas of ParentDish, who was surprised to hear that 120 is a “managable” number of RSS feeds.

I just checked my Google Reader, and I'm at 130. That's after trimming a few real estate ones that I had added earlier this year for product research, but really wasn't reading. There's likely more than a few others I can cull from the list.

I have many sports-related ones (Gregg Easterbrook, Peter King) that I love but seem to rarely make the time to read. I create the same conundrum for myself with books, too. Like last night, for example, I sacrificed my before-bed reading time to spend more time catching up on some blog reading (thanks for the insights, Howard Owens).

No wonder a study is saying we've reached a saturation point with media.

Therein lies our challenge. Tom Heslin, my former colleague in Providence, describes it as competing for media time. I've borrowed the phrase from him frequently since. I conjured up a calculation last year to show local newspaper Web sites were at the time 1/33rd of an ever expanding media landscape. Stop if you've seen me write this or heard me say this before, but success with growing our portion of a person's media time is rooted in reaching that person on the platform he or she prefers -- rather than hoping to draw them to us more than twice a week.

The good news is the expansion of our RSS feeds to comprise all content categories -- not just our top level categories of News, Sports, etc. -- is already in progress, and is one means by which we can gain a greater share of users' media time. That expansion will also enable several other distribution programs moving forward.

Writing a playbook

As I alluded to during the online content call on Monday, we're in the process of crafting an audience development playbook, which like iTunes Essentials mixes, will break down both everyday and unusual content situations into three sets of steps:

1. The Basics
2. Next Steps
3. Go Deep

So, for example, today there is a story in our Cape Cod Times on public defenders still waiting for FY 2006-07 paychecks from the state. We started the day adding it to Digg/Twitter/StumbleUpon/Reddit, and if we had a midday update e-mail there (it's coming, right?) we would have made sure to include it among the highlighted items.

Next, as I pause to write this blog post, I am in the midst of reaching out to public defender blogs -- some local, some beyond -- to offer it as blog material, and make a connection with those bloggers to see if they are interested in receiving periodic notifications from us on stories they'd be interested in and how they'd like to receive those notifications.

There are other steps, too, that we hope to flush out as part of this, and once Version 1.0 of the playbook is completed, will have crafted a resource from which a training program can be developed. Our aim would be to take it on the road to our newsrooms, and as I mentioned Monday, spend some of our online editors conference in January focusing a workshop on specific situations and doing actual distribution and outreach for live stories while we're at the conference.

If you have categories of content you'd like to see included in the playbook, or any thoughts on the concept at all, please give Yoni and I a shout. We're already looking forward to the January conference, and think the practical workshop element will be a great addition to the program. We hope you agree.

StarTribune.com: Bridge collapse

One in an occasional series: Nice landing page for the Minneapolis bridge collapse done by StarTribune.com.

CapeCast IS on YouTube

Shows what I know! Greg was kind enough to point me in the right direction toward CapeCast on YouTube.

PAULINE'S PICKS: Cape Cast Keeps Cape Codders Informed

Congrats to the Cape team for the recognition they received yesterday from Pauline Millard at E&P, who highlighted CapeCast as one of her "picks."

By the way, if you haven't seen Eric Williams' "Hey, Potential Buyer" yet, you're missing out.

Hey, Cape Cod, when are you going to make the daily push of that feature to your YouTube account? No pressure, of course....

AP Ending Its "asap" Service in October

I missed this on Friday. Perhaps you did too: AP Ending Its "asap" Service in October

I came across it via a post by Juan Antonio Giner at What's Next: Innovations in Newspapers. He and I are of a like mind:

A good service, but in our Young Readers Global Report for the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), one of our main recommendations was not to develop “ghetto-sections” for young readers.

They hate this kind of “Guantanamo mentality.”

Some have heard me espouse this before, but it is the many unsuccessful efforts to reach young readers around the industry that leads me to consistently eschew youth portals that we hope to draw audience to, and instead push for distributing content to the audience in a format that makes sense for the medium the audience is already traversing. Two years ago, that was MySpace. Now it's that and a myriad of other sites and platforms, not the least of which is mobile devices.

I also firmly believe this is the only means by which we succeed with personalization, too, because it is not only a strategy by which we reach younger readers, but also how we get at the 91 percent of the online audience that is not coming to us now.

On a more Ottaway-centric note, I had been pushing the AP to allow us to use pieces of asap a la carte, in particular the "Worklife" column (sample), which would be ideal for our employment sections. Thus far, the answer has been no. "Must order all of ASAP to get that feature," they say.

I think there's a light at the end of that tunnel, according to the E&P story: "Elements of the service will be incorporated into the regular AP report."

Remains to be seen whether AP will unbundle features and take a more a la carte approach. Hank Ackerman, our retiring corporate liaison who recently doubled as acting bureau chief in Albany, has indicated that approach is under consideration. Stay tuned....

PoliticsNJ.com Power List 100 | Politics NJ

An interesting idea that could apply for each of our markets as we get nearer the 2008 election year: PoliticsNJ.com Power List 100 | Politics NJ

The list is definitely inside baseball, but readers tend to gobble up just that kind of thing:

In developing our list, we eliminated anyone who currently holds elected office, as well as the Judiciary. We also eliminated the living former Governors, United States Senators, and Bill Gormley: we believe that all former statewide officeholders remain highly influential and well respected. This is an Insiders List. We looked at policy makers, party leaders, fundraisers, lobbyists, labor unions, businesses, and associations and have assembled the ultimate list of New Jerseyans with clout, with an impact on politics and government in the Garden State.

Just How Far Can a Video Go?

As a follow-up to my recent post on the video “sneezing” site Hey!Spread, I wanted to share with everyone the results from just one site.

I uploaded two videos, the “How Not to Break a Baseball Bat” video from Southcoast and latest of the “Golf Course” videos from Pocono and after barely four days on MetaCafe, the baseball bat video has been viewed nearly 300 times and the golf course video about 2,000 times.

Across all the sites that Hey!Spread distributed to, the Baseball Bat video was viewed nearly 600 times and the Golf Course video 2,500 times. And all I had to do was upload the videos just once.

So if you haven’t already, check out Hey!Spread. And, if you have the time, explore the sites it distributes to as they each have their own features, some of which you might find valuable. For example, Blip.TV has its own distribution effort that will further the reach of your videos (they’ll even post to your twitter stream when you’ve posted a new video).

Have fun and if you have any questions or thoughts, give me a shout.

Little League pages

I happened to be at Seacoast yesterday as they launched their Little League All-Stars landing page, and now notice today that Hudson Valley has done the same. Anyone else got a similar page they want to share?

As Howard Altschiller and I were discussing Twitter, he used that as one mechanism to announce the page launch: http://twitter.com/seacoastonline

(And as a reminder, make sure you're linking to new pages from your Site Maps, so that Google/Yahoo/Ask/MSN/AOL can pick them up when you next get crawled. You should enter these new pages into the Google Site Search spreadsheet on Google Docs, so when your user searches on your site for that topic, it gets featured as a Suggested Page at the top of the results. Still confused about the latter? Give me a shout.)

A Video Site That's Nothing to Sneeze At

Ok, so I know you’ve all been hearing about the importance of video and how you should try to post your videos to sites such as YouTube and/or Myspace. I also know that your time is limited, that you have many, many competing demands, so I was excited when I learned that the first video “sneezer” site had been created.

Hey!Spread takes your video and distributes or “sneezes” it to 10 popular video-sharing sites including: YouTube, MySpace, Google Videos, Yahoo Videos, Dailymotion, Blip.tv, Photobucket, Metacafe, Bolt and Putfile – as long as you have registered with each of them (they’re free). While Hey!Spread isn’t pretty, using it is easy.

You complete a simple form including your video’s:

• Title – This should not necessarily be the headline, while that sells the story (if the video was with a story), it may not do a great job selling the video itself.
• Description - Remember to include your site address in the description as a place where people can go for additional information. I found that many video-sharing sites will make links in descriptions active.
• Tags – This is completely up to you and while not all the sites use the tags, most of the larger ones do, so give this some real thought. You might even want to find a similarly themed popular video and see what tags it has.
• Categories – Their category list is pretty basic, so look for the best fit.

You then point to your video file (I found that many of the sites do not accept the flash format, so stick to the unprocessed formats) and move to the next screen.

Hey!Spread then has you enter your usernames and passwords for the video sites (you only have to do this once) and then it takes over. Depending on your connection speed, it might take a minute or two to upload your video. Hey!Spread will send you an email listing all the links once the video is posted. If your video was rejected or there was a specific problem, they will note it there as well.

I tested the service with a couple of files (which is how I learned about the flash format issue) and was pleasantly surprised. Files upload and were “sneezed” pretty fast. And in the time that it took me to visit each of the links the video was already being watched and commented upon.

Some of the sites Hey!Spread reaches will allow you to add additional information about your video, but visiting each site kind of cancels the idea of the “sneeze.”

Make sure that when you do register for theses video-sharing sites to make your sites’s own profile robust – include a photo, your web address and some fun details.

So give Hey!Spread a shot and let me know how it works for you. I think one site that gets our videos out to 10 can only be a good thing, so try to include it in your workflow.

Any questions, give me a shout.

More Twitter

Not that you were wondering, but here's who I'm following on Twitter, so far:

Biz Stone (Twitter founder)
Boston Globe (set up, but not yet in use)
Boston Herald (hasn't been updated since May)
C.C. Chapman (podcaster and new media marketing guru)
Mary McCauley (web developer at Pocono)
ESPN
JetBlue
Nashua Telegraph
New York Times
Opinion Journal
Pocono Record
Boston Red Sox
RocketBoom
SeacoastOnline
WSJ.com
Yoni Greenbaum

In the case of NYT and ESPN, Twitter has supplanted my RSS reader as the means by which I most frequently interact with their content. That's especially true of the New York Times. I still have their Media & Advertising feed in my Google Reader, but their latest news now pops up on my IM via Twitter, and I am finding myself clicking into the stories from there almost daily now -- visiting their site much more frequently than was the case before.

Are you on Twitter? If so, who are you following? Come to the Ottaway Online Editor's blog and share your list in the comments below this post.

Twitter / OpinionJournal

Hey, speaking of Twitter (as we were on the noon call today, look who else is using it: OpinionJournal.

In Push for Local Readers, Post Unleashes LoudounExtra.com - washingtonpost.com

LoudounExtra.com is very nice on the front end, and chock full of data on the back end, but the user experience in between so far leaves me wanting more: In Push for Local Readers, Post Unleashes LoudounExtra.com - washingtonpost.com.

That said, the overall effort is right on. While I could not yet find evidence of of iPod-downloadable restaurant guides or mobile late-night options, it does give me ideas for our own dining effort.

"Over the past several months, the six-person staff (and one intern) of LoudounExtra has assembled a restaurant guide by asking each of the county's restaurants to answer questions about their operation, contacted more than 130 houses of worship to find service schedules (and offered to upload podcasts of their sermons onto the Loudoun site), asked all county high school principals about their curriculums, shot panoramic photos of each school and collected statistics on each high school football player, among other data-collection tasks.

The information will be searchable and deliverable on a number of platforms, meaning users will be able to download the site's restaurant guide onto their iPods and use their cellphones to find restaurants open late at night."

<rant>
As impressed as I am with the description of what is being done by the Post in Loudoun County, the cardinal sin was committed in the article. It's an article about a new Web site, and there is neither a link to the Web site from the text of the article, nor is it in a prominent related links box that would make it as easy as possible on the user to click and go.

I don't get it. We are in 2007, right? The story is chock full of links to other places on the washingtonpost.com Web site. But the most important link -- the focus of the story, mind you -- is missing.

Please tell me I missed it. Please tell me that one of the pre-eminant Web journalism operations in the country pays attention to such details, and I am simply as blind as a bat....
</rant>

Presidential Candidates' Campaign Finances - 2008 Election Guide - Politics - New York Times

Talk about leveraging databases! Check out this interactive campaign finance feature on nytimes.com: Presidential Candidates' Campaign Finances - 2008 Election Guide - Politics - New York Times

Why Join Another Social Network?

Interesting take by Chris Brogan on the value of being a part of burgeoning social networks. I lean more toward the Rocketboom camp, in case you were wondering. I'm certainly of a mind that we need to be everywhere, though it should all connect back to our main product(s) via our profiles on each network.

Columnist Seeks Your Online Best

I recently came across a new column on editorandpublisher.com. Written by Pauline Millard, formerly of the Associated Press and now online editor at E&P, “Pauline’s Picks” offers “regular picks of the best or most innovative new online features at news sites.” Recent columns have included coverage of the Baltimore Sun’s Interactive Homicide Map and the work being done at the NWHerald.com.

Of the NWHerald, Millard wrote:

"They've had a daily online newscast in place since March 2006. At first they partnered with the CBS affiliate in Chicago to produce them, but have since brought the production in-house. The result is a piece they call the QuickCast, which hits the site at 4 p.m. each weekday. They also produce about 10 interactive features a week. Most are embedded in the online stories. All recent work is archived on a single page that makes it easy for readers who are interested in video to find what they are seeking."

Her column is worth checking out as a quick way to keep up on what other newspaper sites are doing. In addition, and the other reason that I wanted to draw your attention to her column, is that Millard is seeking suggestions (email her at pmillard@editorandpublisher.com). Here’s an opportunity to promote what you are doing at your sites and share those successes with the rest of the industry.

In any case though, check out her column, I think you’ll find it time well spent.

Recovering Journalist: Keeping Customers Satisfied—Or Not

A newspaper-related jobs-to-be-done illustration: Recovering Journalist: Keeping Customers Satisfied—Or Not

Speaking of Mainetoday....

Check out their new vlog: Roger That!.

Joe Michaud's description of how it got started is here.

Like Amanda Congdon, Rocketboom, even CapeCast, it's another example of how a healthy dose of irreverence and personality works online.

If I'm watching video at my desk during the work day (and a large portion of our video audience will, at least initially), entertain me. If you happen to inform me along the way, I'll consider that a bonus. I am not likely taking a break from my daily grind to be served up a bland talking head.

MaineToday.com | Joe Michaud: On the Green Line

Joe Michaud is blogging the revolution at Mainetoday.com: On the Green Line. Note the blog description's tie-in to Newspaper Next.

Full disclosure: Joe and I are on the board of the New England New Media Association, and have been friends for several years.

Most intriguing item I found in the blog so far: The new design scheduled to launch next week.

Twitter / redsoxcast

Check out the Red Sox Twitter page. Play by play, which you can follow online, or receive each "Tweet" as a text message.

Comes courtesy of new media guru C.C. Chapman. Wouldn't you know I learned about his blog post via his Twittering.

Blogging the Presidential Debates

As newsrooms throughout the country prepare to cover tonight’s Republican Presidential debate on CNN, I thought it would be a good opportunity to look at some of the online coverage from Sunday’s debate.

While most newspaper websites offered the usual crop of blogs, cnn.com also had Republican strategist Mike Murphy and Democrat columnist Arianna Huffington providing live color commentary via streaming video. If you tuned in to the coverage on CNN’s Pipeline service, what you saw was a split screen with Huffington and Murphy on one side sitting and watching the debate on TV while offering commentary, as the other screen showed the debate itself. I thought it was an interesting approach since it acknowledged that some people can walk and chew gum at the same time and that for many viewers, the commentary was just as important as the debate itself.

On washingtonpost.com’s The Fix, Chris Cillizza used video excerpts to increase the impact of his blog entries. So in addition to four or five paragraphs about Senator Chris Dodd getting applause, he included video of the exchange. If you look at his entire coverage of the debate, you’ll see that while he didn’t include video with every entry (ok, only four times), he did it often enough to enrich his reader’s experience.

Meanwhile on politico.com, Ben Smith made what I thought was a valuable point at the start of his coverage.

“A brief note on the strangeness of covering these debates: Hundreds of reporters are assembled at Saint Anselm College in Manchester watching the same debate on nice flat-screen televisions that we could watch on cheaper televisions at home,” he wrote.

It is a good point to note that for the many newsrooms that don’t or can’t send reporters to actual debates, there is no reason why you can’t still offer live coverage. For example:

• Get a group of local political observers together to watch the debate and let a member of your staff serve as their online moderator for a live conversation via a blog about the debate.
• Create a forum and encourage readers to post their thoughts or comments about the debate as it's happening.
  

My only caveat is to be honest with your readers about where you are and make sure you promote the coverage both online and in-print.

What did you think of the online coverage? Were there any techniques that you thought worked? What are your plans for future debate coverage?

Craigslist Treasure Hunt - Open House (washingtonian.com)

What a great content idea! Talk about utility: Craigslist Treasure Hunt - Open House (washingtonian.com)

One of the things I find most frustrating about Craigslist is its completely cluttered nature. The signal to noise ratio lists quit a bit toward the noise.

More entries are here.


I, of course, would not limit the scope of content to the perusal of Craigslist. I'd include our own classifieds, and anyone else in my market that allowing ads to be posted to their site.

How Google, Yahoo & Ask.com Treat the No Follow Link Attribute

In our conversation on today's Online Editors' call about content distribution, whether or not to link landing pages from Wikipedia was raised. I'm a firm believer that we should, but there's lots of debate about the efficacy of the practice out there in the search engine circles (if you think journalists like to debate, you should read some search engine blogs...).

As I was putting the finishing touches on the Wikipedia training doc that I am about to distribute and post on the DevCenter, I came across a blog post from yesterday that ties into our conversation quite nicely: How Google, Yahoo & Ask.com Treat the No Follow Link Attribute

Executive summary: Wikipedia's applies the "nofollow" attribute to links to external Web sites. Google honors that attribute (though they "hope and expect" Wikipedia and others to phase out use of that attribute). Yahoo and Ask do not honor the attirbute, and index the linked content.

As Meatloaf once sang, two out of three ain't bad. Makes adding links to Wikipedia worth the effort in my book.

Big Bang For The MySpace Ad Buck - Forbes.com

OK huge caveat emptor here: A study conducted by News Corp. shows that setting up MySpace profiles can be a highly cost-efficient marketing method.

Of course the MySpace owner would say that. I'll be interested to see if minds more capable than mine challenge their math.

Even without the math to back it up, however, I'd believe it. How could word-of-mouth buzz generated in a medium -- with as substantial a mass audience as MySpace claims -- not have a positive impact for mass marketers?

Ergo, how can it not help you?

Traffic postscript

How could I forget CapeCodOnline and the coverage it carried this week of a high-profile homocide?

They received quite a spike on Monday, and their continuing coverage has sustained high traffic this week, at least relative to the previous month:

Technorati Mini

Here's a handy popup window (finally... a popup that's handy!) in which you can plug in your domain, and keep track of what bloggers are commenting and linking to on your site.

One more traffic success to note

Before I pay attention to my Firefox beer o'clock plugin and crack open a cold one, let me add my congratulations to all involved in the successful launch of the redesigned Seacoastonline.com this week.

The traffic tie-in here is that in addition to a successful launch, we've had relatively few traffic-related hiccups so far (knock on wood!). In fact, their audience seemed to be consuming more pages than before -- certainly relative to last month -- as they learned their way around the new site:

Pocono: DJ, Rainbow and the bell

Speaking of traffic success this week, Pocono has been a nonstop hotbed of activity, especially on Wednesday. A local DJ decided to parrot the remark that got Don Imus in trouble, and in turn got himself fired.

• Story 1
• Story 2
  

The success was exciting from any number of angles. I was in Pocono on Wednesday, and Editor Bill Watson was spending most of his day managing the hundreds of forums posts that were streaming in all day, while the newsroom and online staff (all while I was working with a small group to answer their Saxotech and other questions and conducting the parenting guide brainstorming session... what a day for me to pick to plant myself in Stroudsburg!).

That also wasn't the only story. For those who have heard us cite the long-running Djinn Buckingham story as one of Pocono's early UGC success, wouldn't you know that Rainbow Buckingham herself became a part of Wednesday's updates. On any other day, it would have been the lead story, and the Pocono crew would have been happy for the spike.

Same is true for the late day story of a local bank taking itself public, punctuated by its CEO ringing the NASDAQ closing bell.

The result of all of that activity? Not your usual peaks and valleys. Instead, Pocono experienced a high-level of sustained traffic throughout the day:

What's better is that the audience activity has continued into today, thanks to strong follow-ups yesterday and today, the latter of which included a story about Howard Stern commenting on what was happening with the DJ in Stroudsburg.

(One suggestion, Marta... link all that DJ coverage together through the Saxotech internal links functionality, at the very least -- or is a landing page already in the works?)

Hudson Valley Media Group repeats April 12 page view success

On April 12th last year, the Hudson Valley crew received a nice traffic spike from their photo gallery and other coverage of the Villa Roma fire.

What to do an encore a year later? Kick off a Cutest Baby contest, of course:



When you pit the baby contest against the fire coverage, the babies are the winners:
The baby contest received 137,579 page views yesterday while the Villa Roma fire galleries received about 92,000 page views a year ago.

Camp Guide winner

As the readers of this blog already know, San Joaquin Media Group was our Camp Guide challenge winner. But am posting here to close the loop on the previous post, and so we can share the entries with the rest of our colleagues.

Entry	Score
San Joaquin	8.367
Hudson Valley	8.200
Pocono Mountains	8.067
Southcoast	7.500
Cape Cod	3.100

One of the judges indicated that she wished she lived in Stockton, because some of the camps there sounded great for her 7-year-old. That judge also liked San Joaquin's info on fees.

Another judge: "Without a doubt, they are all quite good.... It was important to me to see the camp categories on the first page (sports, religion, nature, girl/boy/coed, overnight, etc.) and also to be able to access the camp's website easily."

Most had trouble opening Cape Cod's in IE, something Greg warned against when he submitted his entry. Given that he is deep into readying his site for its redesign launch, we were impressed that he even took a stab at the challenge.

Many thanks for the entries, and many more thanks to the judges, who turned around the scorecards very quickly in time for our monthly round of calls with the publishers earlier this week. All of the judges had their name tossed into a bowl for a drawing, and the winner, Ruth McCleod, will be receiving a Panera gift card as a prize, too.

Stay tuned for the next challenge, coming later this month!

Camp Guide challenge

Welcome to Round 2 of the Ottaway Online Editors Guide Challenge.

 

First, please note the criteria for winning will be different than the Wifi challenge. My aim is to foster more widespread participation.

• The Challenge:
  Craft a comprehensive guide to summer camps in your region. Use of UGC, photos, mapping, and how-to content a plus.
• The Prize:
  Winner: 1 copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements for use by anyone at your location not currently enabled with a full Photoshop license (ideally for someone who regularly be cropping big barker photos).
  Runner-up: $25 Dunkin Donuts (or coffee shop of your choice) gift card
• The Winning:
  Staff at Campbell Hall will be asked to participate in scoring the entries, and the best score will win. I was recently a judge for the New Hampshire Internet Awards, and am going to borrow part of their scoring system. Scale is 1 to 10 across five categories, with 10 being the best. Categories are:
• Mission Accomplished: Did the guide complete the job to be done (help a parent decide on which summer camp to send their kids)?
• Content: Was it easy to read, well written and concise as well as relevant to the guide's mission? Was the content useful and engaging?
• Interactivity: Is audience participation evident, or solicited?
• Functionality: Is the guide more than a list, and easy to get around? Was a map used? Other tools?
• Overall Experience: A rating based on the interplay of all of the above.
• The Deadline:
  Camp Guide must be posted on your site by close of business (5 p.m. PDT, 8 EDT), April 5, and an e-mail must be sent to onlineeditors@ottaway.com, declaring the guide's location.

Note: All entries will be shown off and discussed on the monthly publisher calls, April 9-10. That is also when the prize winners will be announced.

 

Here's some camp guide examples and snippets from around the Web to get you started. There's not much in the way of a interactive or comprehensive guides, so we're in pioneer-like territory here:

• http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/education/sfl-summercamps,0,3020763.special?coll=sfla-education-utility
• http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/campguide/index2006.html
• http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/travel/camps.html
• http://www2.mysanantonio.com/specials/campguide/
• http://opera.cincinnati.com/campguide/
• http://www.timesunion.com/life/campguide/
• http://www.startribune.com/camps/
• http://www.azcentral.com/families/moms_summercamp.html
• http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/FEATURES01/60215018/0/ARCHIVES&theme=SUMMERCAMP&template=theme
• http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=WNCPARENT   
  http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/WNCPARENT14/60302010/1080/wncparent&theme=CAMPGUIDE&template=theme
• http://www.lowcountryparent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070301/PARENT01/70315015/1202
• http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070312/LIFE/703120321/1039/life
• http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070227/PARENTING05/70227004/-1/PARENTING
  http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070227/PARENTING05/70226023/-1/PARENTING
  http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060401/PARENTING03/60330038&SearchID=73275766309214
• http://www.pressconnects.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070320/LIFESTYLE/703200312/1004/LIFESTYLE

delawareonline is social networking

I'm traversing the Web, looking for Camp Guide examples (the reason will become apparent soon), and in doing so I came across a nifty three-tabbed social networking teaser widget on the delawareonline home page.

Those who have heard me advocate playing in the audience's spaces will know I'm a sucker for this stuff. I wholeheartedly endorse the concept.

So far, there are 151 photos on Flickr and 34 videos on YouTube with the delawareonline tag, and they have 30 MySpace friends.

It's clearly not a mass medium for them yet, in part because it's hard to tell how often they are updating and inserting their own content. I'll be so bold as to suggest that they're not doing it enough. Looks as if the front page of the paper they use as the main photo of their MySpace profile is from early March.

At least the folks at Go! at the Times-Herald Rcord are updating their cover photo and blog weekly (1,641 MySpace friends and counting). Ian Hill, a.k.a. 209 Music, has been caring and feeding his MySpace profile since 2005 and has 1,845 friends to show for it (music is a natural fit on MySpace, by the way... if you have a music critic on staff and he or she is not on MySpace, shame on that critic).

You get out of these efforts what you put into it, and as the old lottery adage goes, "You can't win if you don't play."

Anyone using Flickr or YouTube, either to post your own content or network with others?

Pocono Record - St. Patrick's Day

While I am singing the praises o' Pocono, check out their St. Patrick's Day landing page. In particular, try out the quiz, teased from the top of the right rail.

Something that will make Kurt and his staff's hearts melt: Marta tells me that a day after launch, the ad positions for the page were sold out.

Wi-Fi Hot Spots in the Poconos

Our runner-up in the Wi-fi Challenge is the Pocono Record, which posted its map of Wi-Fi Hot Spots in the Poconos yesterday afternoon, first with a tease from their News Updates block and later with a small barker, too.

Like a few of you, Marta and co. had a few weeks ago published an article about wi-fi hotspots in the paper and online (teased the days earlier with a UGC solicitation in their Noon Update), so they had a good base of data to start with. But the landing page, complete with the map, is a much more user-friendly way to present that data, and becomes a place to continue to build the library of knowledge about an increasingly important utility in the community.

As a runner-up prize, the Pocono staff will be receiving a Dunkin' Donuts gift card, so that they may celebrate their success with Boxes o' Joe and tasty treats.

Wi-fi winner

Editors, we have a winner in the wi-fi map contest:
http://thrnewmedia.com/maps/wifi2.html

Erik Gliedman actually sent me three e-mails yesterday, updating me on his progress. He met all of the requirements, and went the extra mile by eschewing his co-worker's app in favor of his own map coding.

For his efforts, he has won the promised handheld video camera. Share with your colleagues, Erik, but nice going! Please share a product review of the camera when you get a chance.

Stay tuned for the next challenge....

Wiki/UGC/Guide to airport outlets

Wiki and UGC is probably redundant, eh?

Nevertheless, check out AirPower Home, coming to my attention today via my daily Thrillist e-mail. It's a guide to airport power outlet locations.

Job to be done, baby! Outlets are always at a premium when you need to stock up on battery juice before boarding a flight. A sample:

Boston, MA

• Logan has several phone card vending machines which are plugged into dual outlets. The second AC jack is exposed, but you may want to bring a thin extension card because a blocky power adapter won't fit.
• There are some tables with outlets near the wall in the dining areas (near Sbarro, Starbucks, etc.), but the cord will go across a walkway, so make sure it's long enough to lay on the ground so you don't trip anybody.
• If your flight leaves from a lower level terminal (i.e. near the ground), there are a couple plugs behind the rows of seats. You may have to push the seats out a couple inches to get to them though.

Wi-fi challenge

OK, folks. I'm issuing a challenge. We'll make it a contest, actually.

First Ottaway Web site to have a wi-fi guide like this will win for its staff use a Pure Digital PSV-352 60 Minute Point-and-Shoot Camcorder (shown off by Hank Ankerman of the AP at the assignment editors conference and now in use at the Pocono Record).

Requirements:

• Must show a map of the wi-fi locations (Patrick Mullen has an app he's willing to share to help you with this).


• Must include ability for users to submit new locations and update existing ones.

It would also be good to distinguish between free wi-fi and paid access.

(Note: The Tacoma map came to my attention today courtesy of MediaShift.)

Time-saving software

While teaching a photo gallery/video production session at the Cape Cod Times yesterday, I mentioned a few pieces of software I've collected in my arsenal over the years that I have found to be great time-savers for a multitude of Web production tasks. So now sharing with a broader group (and so Gene can share the list with the class participants):

• NoteTab Light
  Text editor on steroids. Has an invaluable Pasteboard feature that allows the user to collect a series of CTRL-C/copy commands in a single document for handy pasting later. Best of all, it's freeware.
• Picassa
  Picture organizer from Google. Has some basic editing features (cropping, toning, etc.), but best of all for our purpises is it's Web-page creation capabilities that will batch resize photos -- which eventually leads to a much faster upload process for Saxotech photo galleries. I'll post a how-to on the DevCenter soon. This software is also free.
  
• VideoZilla
  Video converter that can aid the encoding of Flash video for use in Saxotech sites. Got an old Quicktime or Windows Media file that you want to put into your new Saxotech-enabled video player? This program worked great for me when I tried it on some old Southcoast Safety at Sea special report videos to ready them for the new site launch. My favorite feature? It installs an option whereby in Windows Explorer you can right-click on the video and start the conversion right from your computer's file and folder view. Again, how-to coming soon. It's not freeware, but at $29.95, how can you live without it?

Note: That Southcoast link is on their staging server, so you have to be on our network to view it... when the site launches next week, the special report will be more widely availabe here.

Half loaves of bread - Slashfood

Half loaves of bread - Slashfood: Certainly you would have to file this product under "Jobs To Be Done."

NYT: Photo Scavenger Hunt

If it were my universe and I were king, I would definitely steal... umm... borrow this idea for UGC photo galleries in any one of our markets. Certainly there could be any number of riffs on the idea, tied to either specific events, places or topics -- or just as a general, regularly scheduled scavenger hunt.

Plus, you could even use this tactic to solicit photos for specfic needs you have in building guides. You're all creating guides for wifi hotspots, right? You need photos to illustrate, right? Solicit them in a UGC slideshow, and then repurpose them for the guide.

Spring Training '07

It's raining/sleeting/freezing over where I am, but at least a few around the Ottaway empire are buried in snow today, so it's difficult to avoid daydreaming of points south. Take a stop over to recordonline.com's Spring Training '07 landing page.

It's as comprehensive a page as you'll find for following the Yankees and Mets preseason, and interacting with the writers and fellow fans.

Try to find a better landing page on the New York metro-area sites. I've not seen one yet. If you do, let me know. It's always good to learn from what others are doing.

The nice thing about what Patrick Mullen, Erik Gliedman and Matt Pepin have done here is that once everyone is on the common platform, this won't be that hard to replicate for the Red Sox in New England, for example, or the A's and Giants out West.

Track the candidates

Sure, you can sign up for breaking news alerts from Seacoast Online, but NH Primary Candidate Appearances are also among their offerings. Sign me up!

Speaking of candidates, coming tomorrow from Seacoast: thenewhampshireprimary.com

Let It Snow

Nice stormy weather landing page from Erik Gliedman and crew.

Pocono also had a nice tactic in their Morning Update to point to some of their existing landing pages:

If you're stuck at home it's a good day to explore this site, which has a lot more on it than just the breaking news. For information about where you live, we've got an entire section. We've also got some exhaustively detailed special reports on everything from gangs in the Poconos to the legacy of Tocks Island Dam to political protection for questionable mortgage practices in the Poconos that will take your breath away.

Cape Cod and Pocono also had a couple of good road condition text alerts, while Southcoast kicked off their school closings text alerts. I'd show them to you, but I'm still struggling with how to get the screenshots that my nifty new Treo program takes for me out of the bleepin' Treo.... Take my word for it for now.

StuandMikey

Here is the car review video Fred was talking about yesterday:

MySpace as a viral marketing tool

As a follow-up to this week's discussion regarding MySpace and other places we need to be playing...

I noticed on my MySpace page today that my "friends" Go! in Middletown and 209 Music in Stockton added blog posts in the last couple of days to their page. Because I have added them as my friends, I see their new material on my personal dashboard:

Voila! Content distribution in MySpace.



I'm guessing that we should add a session like "How to Create a MySpace page and Ways to Use It" to yesterday's brainstorm notes from the Online Editors' conference?

One of the sessions that got cut at the last minute from this week's conference was Ken and I talking about Web 2.0 and how to leverage others' technologies for marketing and content purposes. We talked about it some (YouTube players in story pages, for example), but I'll also hang onto that as an idea for an upcoming conference call/WebEx session.

Wired News: Italy Hails Laundry Text Alerts

In doing some research today, I came across this Sept. item from Wired: Italy Hails Laundry Text Alerts

Julien Buratto and Davide Bongianni..., a project manager and graphic designer respectively at a Milan web company, have launched a website called stendibiancheria.net (Italian for "hang out the laundry") that pairs a mathematical formula with forecasts from weather.com to arrive at a "laundry index."

In late August, just in time for the meteorological uncertainties of fall, they added a free text-messaging service so users know when it's time to high-tail it home and pull in the clothes. About 600 subscribers have signed up so far.

CLearly filling a void in Milan "Jobs to be Done."

Competition watch

AmericanTowns.com
was among the featured sites in a NYT article today (so, too, were our friends at Baristanet) about hyperlocal sites in the greater NYC area.

Among the featured towns on AmericanTowns:
Nantucket
Provincetown
Stockton
New Paltz
Carmel
Poughkeepsie

But click on any state on the AmericanTowns home page, and you can see pages budding for non-featured towns, such as my favorite town, Sandwich.

The Power of UGC

The text alert came across today @ 4:27 p.m. while we were having the monthly call with the Middletown folks. That drew us to the site, where we noticed this comment posted at the end of the article.

Rebecca928
January 09, 2007 03:32 PM
I work for Dr. Luck right across the street from where the accident happend i seen the accident happen and was the first one to call for help. I would like to say that we are all praying that everone makes it through this. I dont know how many people are going to have to get hurt before they do something about this intersection on route 208 and spring mountain rd.Are prayers are with you.

Now THAT is news as conversation with the community.

Some Words of Advice for Small Newspapers

In case you missed it, Steve Outing writes today about 10 things publishers and editors should be doing to keep their heads above water in today's media landscape.

Society of News Design: New Media Quick Course — 2007

Not that anyone has a deep-seeded desire to go to Muncie, Ind., much less in the middle of winter, but if you've got folks proficient in Flash, this course could be a good way for them to take their multimedia story-telling skills to the next level.

FW: Deck Map the Halls

Sharing an idea from Bakersfield via our new friends at Baristanet....

---

From: Debbie Galant
Posted At: Friday, December 15, 2006 3:53 PM
Posted To: Baristanet
Conversation: Deck Map the Halls
Subject: Deck Map the Halls

http://www.baristanet.com/2006/12/deck_map_the_halls.php

We saw this holiday light map over at Bakersfield.com and decided we had to have one of our very own. And the wonderful folks over at Faneuil Media, who made our Tear Down Map and our Java Map have agreed to make it happen. Have some Holly Jolly to show off? (Lights? Reindeer? Inflatable Simpsons? Or just some really classy garlands?) Send us your street address (with town) and a photograph, and we'll include you on the map. Please use this e-mail address: barista.lights@gmail.com and send your photos (low-res, please) in by the end of the day on Monday.

Related...

More to the Story from the Traverse City Record-Eagle

Interesting in-paper marketing tactic from our recently departed sibling in Traverse City:

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.

Also note the box in the upper right rail of their home page, which links into the page described above:


It's a tactic used a lot by local broadcast TV stations. I've seen the practice referred to as NewsLinks, but maybe that was just a Belo TV term. It's meant to be one place to collect all of the things you relentlessly promoted in your news broadcast.

If you adopt this idea, don't let it stop you from enhancing your story files. Remember, people increasingly encounter our content via the search engines, e-mail sharing, IM or otherwise (i.e. not via our home page or section fronts), and it is important to lead users from that story to the enhanced or related content you have on that topic.

A Dozen Online Writing Tips - CyberJournalist.net - Online News - Tips and Tools

Someone asked this week whether there are any good online writing resources or training that we could recommend. We came up empty at the time, but I did manage to dig up these tips, written in 2000 by Jonathan Dube, who is now editorial director for CBC.ca.

This post is also a way to introduce the new members of the mailing list members to the existence of this Ottaway blog, in which I share insights and tidbits from our peers and elsewhere about this Internet thing we're trying to wrap our arms around.

New posts get automatically e-mailed to the list.
Some days that's many posts. Some weeks there are none.

A Newspaper Chain Sees Its Future, And It's Online and Hyper-Local - washingtonpost.com

A Newspaper Chain Sees Its Future, And It's Online and Hyper-Local - washingtonpost.com

A must-read, and file it away for future discussions. Many of you have likely heard me advocate a similar concept whenever I am asked how our newsroom workflows might evolve.