More praise for Fort Myers

The Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press, which seems to be an incubator for new ideas at Gannett, won APME's first Innovator of the Year award for its "culture of innovation." This is the paper that has mobile journalists armed with laptops, audio recorders and wireless Web connections out patrolling neighborhoods for "hyperlocal" news. The paper also earned a lot of buzz (on this blog and elsewhere) for its crowdsourced story on sewer problems.

I like the idea of both these things -- allowing community members to get involved with investigating a story and unleashing reporters from their desks. But, man, it seems Fort Myers is getting a lot of traction from one story a year ago and a lot of ribbon-cutting stories. (Have you heard of other crowdsourcing success stories? Know of any people who admit to being devoted readers of hyperlocal news?)

Am I being too cynical?

(Oh, the other finalists for the APME award: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle. The AJC was nominated for its newsroom overhaul. The D&C got the nod for its RocDocs, which gives online users access to data, maps and investigative reports assembled by the newspaper.

Meanwhile, 45 miles west ...

The Shelby Star, with a circulation of about 15,000 and a staff of 19, is experimenting with some of the most innovative digital technologies in the industry. Use of blogs, moblogs, video and an integrated newsroom are among the innovations being rolled out.

So far, the changes made — the overhaul of the way the paper gathers, produces and publishes news – have generated an 84 percent increase in Web readers.

In addition, the Star is working on something called the Star Car – a WiFi-enabled mobile Internet reporting vehicle. The installation of this is scheduled for next month, with the launch coming in July.

Sez the publisher:

The second thing we're doing is really focusing on driving traffic on a day-to-day basis. We're learning to be strategic about not only what news we break, but how we break it.

We've tried to learn from TV news on this. They do a lot of teasing and 'holding back' on news and content to lure viewers into their newscasts. We're doing the same thing — dribbling out information, sometimes slower than at the pace we actually collect that information, to encourage users to revisit the site for updates. ...

All of this is contingent on monetising these increases in overall consumption of our products. How and when will that happen, I don't know, but I'm very confident it will happen and we'll continue to be strong news organisations that simply focus on multiple mediums.

Source: journalism.co.uk