Cape Cod YouTube

A clever blog concept: Cape Cod YouTube

Only one post so far. Will be interesting to see if there is enough material there in the long run.

Living without print?

Some of you may already have seen Amy L. Webb's writeup of her 30-day experiment without "traditional" media? I'm a month late to it, encountering it tonight via an NPR story (and I encountered that by reading all the way through NPR's account of the L.A. Times/Tribune cost cutting feud).

I'm fascinated by Webb's article for a number of reasons:

One, a Sunday without a newspaper is an empty Sunday indeed! When my family has Sunday plans, and I skip my usual weekly couple of hours with a couple of newspapers, I actually get a little cranky inside.

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....

Two, as an online junkie myself, I find myself at times with the same feeling of restlessness and listlessness that Webb describes.

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.

Three, it's encouraging that the state of local news feeds from our broadcast competition in the big cities is not where it should be. So whatever broadcast competition we face at our tier of markets is further behind than that. We need to relentlessly exploit that advantage.

(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?"

I usually respond by suggesting they promote the stories coming up in the Saturday and Sunday papers, because those days are when print still has an advantage over online.

I don't expect that advantage to last, and I'll be rendered speechless by that Web-to-print marketing question sooner than I'd like to predict.

Wikipedia

Jay Small's blog post today regarding brands and Wikipedia -- and he was riffing on a post by Steve Rubel -- got me wondering: How many of our brands are represented on Wikipedia? Is the information accurate?

 

Check out the Pocono Record entry. Scroll down a bit... Holy loads of detail, Batman! The Cape Cod Times, on the other hand, has a sparse entry -- and 2004 circulation numbers. The entry about New Bedford is sparser still.

 

Piggy back that to a conversation that I had with Patrick Mullen last week: When we create geographic or topic-specific landing pages, should we add ourselves as related links in Wikipedia?

 

Rhetorical question, of course. That should be part of the landing page creation workflow, and we should make that #19 on the list of 9 Ways for Newspapers to Improve Their Websites... I say 19 because Todd Zeigler added to his list based on reader feedback.

 

I just added three external links to the Wikipedia entry for Nantucket. Took me eight minutes, and only took that long because it was my first time poking around under the hood. Won't take most more than a minute or two to add a landing page link to the Wikipedia entry or entries that make the most contextual sense. Meanwhile, I'll let you know how the Wikipedia referrals to the Nantucket sites go.

 

Promote new content and features on the home page

Called up my Google home page today, and a module in the upper right, promoting "New Stuff" that I could add to my personalized page, immediately caught my eye:


As with all things Google, it is simple, concise, elegant and effective. I'm not necessarily an astronomy buff, but I am intrigued enough to want to try out the second item, a moon phases module.

As we've been working on the Web site redesigns around the company, we've been constantly drumming the need to promote content inside the site -- and rotate those promos throughout the day. It is a proven, effective tactic when it comes to drumming up more clicks from both your core (frequent) and sampler (once in a while) audiences.

The Google layout in this case shows that not everything needs to be on the home page. There are likely a dozen or more new modules being created daily (heck, we should be creating some), but not all of them can -- or should -- be surfaced to the home page. In fact, sparseness (or "creative use of white space," in newsroom layout parlance), can provide more amplification for the promo.

Steve Irwin guestbook

Pat on the virtual back for Pocono yesterday for putting a small barker on their home page pointing to the Legacy.com guestbook for fans of Steve Irwin to leave condolences:

http://www.legacy.com/PoconoRecord/GB/GuestbookView.aspx?PersonId=19127166

Anyone else doing so? If not, I recommend it. Legacy usually does this for notable deaths, even minor celebrities. And if you have a local celebrity whose death you are reporting on, you can e-mail Legacy's customer service folks, and they'll set one up for you (and marry the obit with it later).

Also, when you do so, tease it from the paper, too!

Got Cute?

For those with Pet sections: Cute Overload!.

You can add your own widget to give your readers a window onto the cuteness (and have automatically refreshing content to boot).

(Got it from the meebo blog, in case you're wondering....)

Photo Gallery | Columbia Daily Tribune

Aside from the fact that the photo of the guy's toilet showing his reading material on top of the tank creeps me out a little, who says the reporter can't be part of the story?

Thanks to Roger Black for pointing out the audio slideshows done by the Columbia Daily Tribune.

RE: Blog Report

One quick suggestion to piggy back Jeanne's report: Many of you that have blogs also have RSS feeds, but don't list the blog feeds among the RSS offerings (and almost all of the blogs have RSS). Would be great for the segment of your audience that's acquiring your content via RSS if you listed ALL of your RSS offerings on your RSS pages.

 

(You also should also know that you have AP RSS feeds at your disposal, which point to your co-branded, AP hosted stories. See Cape Cod's RSS page. All you have to do is plug in your sites AP code to make them work for you. Every traffic driver helps!)

---

From: Jeanne Hubbard [mailto:jhubbard@record-eagle.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 4:34 PM
To: IAC Ottaway
Subject: Blog Report

Awhile back I asked for a show of hands on who's doing blogs. Here's the responses:

 

Plattsburgh: http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog/

• Just one blog from a freelancer, unedited ("after a few weeks it was obvious that the entries needed no editing whatsoever")
• Hopes to add newsroom blogs soon. Newsroom blogs will be edited in the newsroom. Editor is concerned, however, that they won't be able to keep it up with enough frequency (shooting for three entries each week).

New Bedford: http://www.southcoastresponse.com/board/ubbthreads.php?Cat=0 (scroll down to the blogs section)

• Several blogs from outside sources (freelancer writer, local radio personality, etc.)
• Sportswriter blogged from Red Sox spring training earlier this year, with mixed results (he did great, but there wasn’t a whole lot of reader interaction with him)
• Unedited: "This has backfired only once, on a blog we had from a former FT employee who was getting disgruntled with the lack of freelance work he was getting from us."
• Intends to pursue some more beat specific blogs in the near future.

Stockton: http://online.recordnet.com/blogs/blogs.php

• 5 bloggers who are all from the newsroom
• No word on whether they are edited?

Nantucket:

• "No blogs here. Too many concerns about oversight, lack of someone to monitor content, etc."

Pocono: http://Blogs.ThePoconos.com

• Three bloggers: two staff, one columnist
• Unedited

Santa Cruz: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/blog/

• Mostly written by editors, with the exception of the book blog and the sports blog, which go unedited.

Seacost: http://www.blogthecoast.com

• 90% community contributed, 10% employee blogs
• No editing

Traverse City: http://blogs.record-eagle.com

• Several bloggers: Myself + freelance columnists who blog unpaid
• I or an editor read over the blogs before posting, but generally post without much editing
• We have had success with the "temporary" blog in which someone blogs throughout an event. We had a student blog from the National Spelling Bee and most recently a blog last week from our Film Festival. Both generated great page views.
• Staff blogs are not on the horizon. Due to our perpetual short-staffed situation, the Editor feels that blogs would detract from the daily work of getting out the paper.

Sean Polay sent you a story from Newstimeslive.com

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

FW: landing page Eagle tall ship

Sharing from Seacoast....

---

From: Deb Cram [mailto:dcram@seacoastonline.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 10:56 AM
To: spolay@adelphia.net; spolay@ottaway.com
Subject: landing page Eagle tall ship

Hi Sean,

When you get a chance, check out this landing page for the tall ship Eagle that came to Portsmouth.

Hope all is well....

 

 

 

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/special/eagletext.htm#video

FW: Bloggers as Sources: What's Your Take?

Sean Polay sent you a post from NewsGator.com:

Bloggers as Sources: What's Your Take?

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.

Message from sender Sean Polay: As with many of these types questions, I would guess that your answer is, "Depends on the story -- and the blogger." But thought this might inspire some intersting discussion among us.

Amateur Hour: Journalism without Journalists

Point: The New Yorker: Fact: Amateur Hour: Journalism without Journalists

Counterpoint: A Thousand Reporters in the Naked City Suburb

Frank Barnako: Backfence to triple "citizens media" sites

Second to last paragraph gives a glimpse at the Backfence strategy as it approaches launching more of its flavor of hyperlocal sites. I think targeting 10 groups -- or whatever number makes the most sense for your resources -- is a pretty good starting point for the conversation surrounding the creation and production of either hyperlocal or topic-specific landing pages.

Remember that the success of these pages hinges on more than just creating a place to collect archived content. You need data, and community involvement, for the pages to have a lasting impact on your success with your current and potential audience.

RELATED: The aforementioned June 2006 issue of Presstime, which I finally had the chance to read during a good number of plane rides last week, was filled with new media nuggets. Among them, some hyperlocal efforts:

• http://www.coastsider.com/ (Half Moon Bay and San Mateo County, CA)
• http://www.madisoncommons.org/ (Madison, WI)
• http://www.forumhome.org/ (Deerfield, NH)
• http://www.douglasga.com/ (Douglas, GA)
• http://www.reflector.com/family/content/gofamily/index.html (Greenville, NC)

Here's some bookmarks I've collected along those same lines:

• http://www.baristanetnj.com (Montclair, NJ)
• http://www.blufftontoday.com/ (Bluffton, SC)
• http://h2otown.info/ (Watertown, MA)
• http://www.northwestvoice.com/home/ and http://www.swvoice.com/home/ (Bakersfield, CA)
• http://www.westportnow.com/ (Westport, CT)
• http://www.olyblog.net/ (Olympia, WA)
• http://www.phillyfuture.org/ (Philadelphia)
• http://www.benicianews.com/ (Benicia, CA)
• http://www.ibrattleboro.com/ (Brattleboro, VT)
• http://tcdailyplanet.com/ (Minneapolis and St. Paul)
• http://www.backfence.com/ (McLean, Reston and Arlington, VA; Bethesda, MD; Palo Alto and San Mateo, CA)
• http://yourhub.com/ (in use by Scripps and MediaNews newspapers around the country)
• http://www.mymissourian.com/ (Columbia, MO)
• http://www.gothamgazette.com/ (NYC)
• http://pocono.commuterclub.org/ (Poconos, PA)
• http://www.highway278.com/ (Dallas, GA)
• http://www.buffalorising.com (Buffalo, NY)
  

Got others -- either online-only or Web-to-print, hyperlocal and/or citizen journalism efforts -- in your bookmarks that I can add to the collection?

Audio slideshows

I wanted to point you to a multimedia piece that David Cuddy, the New Bedford photo editor, produced as part of the report on a recent show performed by a local band. Kids would be cranking the speakers or headphones, but depending on where you are viewing, you may want to start by turning them down:
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/multimedia/awilhelm/awilhelm.wmv

The band, A Wilhelm Scream, was performing at a concert sponsored by New Bedford's youth-oriented site, southcoast247.com.

There are many things I like about the slideshow (authentic, creative, gives people a sense of what it was like to be there), but perhaps best of all was the simplicity involved in its production: All David used was the batch of photos taken at the show, an mp3 from the band (pulled from the band's Web site with their permission to use it in the slideshow), and Windows Movie Maker software, which already comes with any Windows XP machine in your newsroom; no special training or purchase required.

I showed this piece to the newsrooms of Medford and Ashland this week, and the next day Julie Wurth, Medford's online editor, told me that after seeing it she quickly tried piecing together her own movie with the software. She was successful (though she didn't want to share), and was quite pleased with the software's ease of use.

I get asked frequently whether I think video ought to be a focus of a newsroom looking for ways to get more involved in producing content for the Web site. While I wholeheartedly endorse experimentation with the right stories, audio slideshows are easier to produce, are often a better user experience, and can be as good as or better than video when it comes to three-dimensional storytelling.

First, audio sideshows leverage an asset we already have: great photography. That's a key point to remember as we determine how to reorganize and reorient our newsrooms toward new media: leverage existing strengths. Second, acquiring audio, even ambient background sounds such as what you'd hear in NPR pieces, is easier to collect with equipment that is a lot less expensive. Same goes for producing them -- software is cheaper (in some cases, like Movie Maker and Audacity, it's free; Soundslides is $30), and the learning curve is much gentler than Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, or Macromedia Flash.

Check out this June 2006 Presstime article, which also lists some other software being used by smaller newspapers around the country to produce slideshows such as "A Good Death" and "Buried Truth." I've also spoken to many of you about some examples done by my staff and newsroom colleagues at my previous job (admittedly with more complicated software, but more simplified versions could be attempted by organizations with fewer resources):

• Block Island
• Thanksgiving Football
• Unmasking the Lion King
• Time Takes its Toll: Holocaust survivors
• Funeral procession for Sgt. Det. James Allen
• Classic Cars slideshow

Sure, the New York Times is all-in for video (though they continue to produce audio slideshows, too). So are many other major metros: latimes.com, dallasnews.com, washingtonpost.com, signonsandiego.com. And I do not discount the video efforts underway in Sunbury, Seacoast or Cape Cod, the latter of which saw some promising traffic for video last month: 23,000+ page views to its video player, the site's 26th most popular page of the month (0.5% of the overall traffic).

But if you're looking for a place to start, particularly as you budget for next year, an audio slideshow presents you with a pretty low hurdle for entry into the multimedia realm.

For example, you can buy several digital audio recorders for the cost of one inexpensive video camera. I recommend the Olympus WS100 ($100), but if some of your staff have iPods, a Belkin TuneTalk ($70) can work just as well (I just bought one, and will report back on its quality once I get a chance to test-drive it). For those old-school reporters still using analog (tape) recorders, an adapter from Radio Shack that connects the recorder's headphone jack to the PC can work too. There are also devices out there (maybe you already have one) that make it easy to record phone calls directly on computer. Make sure you're following your state laws in terms of notifying the person you're recording.

Other resources (by sharing the podcast links, I'm not necessarily advocating podcasting, though I listen to many. Most of the required tools are the same, however):

• Using Windows Movie Maker 2 to Present Still Photos
• WindowsMovieMakers.net
• Recording a Podcast
• Upgrade your Podcast for under $200
• Make Your First Podcast
• Create Podcasts using Your PC
• Audio-Recording Solutions for Journalists

Video Mashup

washingtonpost.com's Video Mashup. This should be interesting.... They've essentially posted videotaped questions. Reader inserts answers. Some assembly required.

Also: Internet Weighs In With Mash-Ups

Call me crazy, but it might be interesting to do a contest with your users to let them do an audio slideshow based around an event, upcoming or gone by. You provide the photos, they provide the finished product. Just a thought....

FW: obit guest books - traffic driver

And another belated one.... This was shared with the editors during their conference in June, and many instantly gravitated to the idea. In fact, Medford had a triple-fatal accident  during  that conference, and utilized the Legacy guest books as part of their online packaging.

 

---

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

FW: Blogs: A Success So Far

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

FW: New twist on sports blogs

A bit belated in sharing this. But became reacquainted with it as I was going through older e-mails this morning....

---

From: Patrick Mullen [mailto:pmullen@th-record.com]
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 5:00 PM
To: alanghoff@ottaway.com
Cc: spolay@ottaway.com
Subject: New twist on sports blogs

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!

FW: Internet fails in the travel fringe

Sean Polay sent you a post from NewsGator.com:

Internet fails in the travel fringe

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:

• Sites that let us put in our arrival and departure dates for a 4-day trip around a weekend, and find good-looking matches, only to get a rude alert when we tried to reserve that said the properties were available only for weekly rentals beginning on Saturdays.
• Sites that gave us good-looking matches that, it turns out, show up as available only because the property managers have not updated or integrated their reservation calendars in months or even years.
• Sites that simply list dozens of properties by cutesy labels, with no search at all, forcing you to browse every detail listing to find the ones that even could work -- then find they're booked up.

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.

Message from sender Sean Polay: Note Jay's last paragraph. But in addition to the business opportunity, this exemplifies the kind of "make-my-life-easier" content Andrew and I have been talking about.

Good example of a landing page for a hot-topic story

Am just back from a day-and-half excursion to Massachusetts, where conversations throughout the day yesterday were focused on the collapse of ceiling tiles from a tunnel that connects Logan Airport to the Mass Pike and I-93.

As I fired up my e-mail today, an alert came in from boston.com, reporting the latest development. Links in that story led me to a related story, which in turn led me to boston.com's landing page for their ongoing coverage. Talk about a best practice!

The landing page has links to stories, photos, related video (boston.com includes the site of their partner, New England Cable News), and forums. They also already had a commuter blog, which is linked from this landing page because of it's ongoing focus on the incident's impact on area drivers.

(Eugene, this would be a good model for the Galante landing page we spoke about Tuesday! Pass on to Eric, if you wouldn't mind...)