pod and paper

This small paper's Web site has a feature that allows you to download stories to your iPod.

Go here for an example:

http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/news/2007/jul/04/technical-college-awaits-state-funds/ipod/

Copy Editors and the Web

Pam Robinson has started a series of potentially revealing interviews talking with copy editors about what (if anything) they're doing as their papers shift more emphasis online.

She starts with Jonathan McCarthy, editor of Newsday.com. Highlights:

• Many copy editors are already doing the work that helps make web sites go; they just may not realize it. Good web sites rely on good headlines and tight copy. In our case here at Newsday we have asked copy editors to think a little differently about how headlines work and what might make a good web story. Aside from the copy, anyone in the newsroom should take some time to find out as much as possible about their site’s audience. That will aid them in understanding what works and what doesn’t.
• By relying on the Web for breaking news, stories for the print edition should be more analytical, longer and useful. In its best model, a good web site makes a good paper better.
• The best thing anyone can do to take control of his or her work on the web is to become engaged with the Internet. See what your competitors are doing. Think about who might want to read your work and how they might find it. Promote your work on the web by getting it linked in blogs and message boards. Suggest multimedia ideas (videos, audio, photo galleries).

The 3 a.m. shift

E&P has a pretty good look at how Gannett's much-touted "Information Center" approach is faring a year after being rolled out. The papers say the approach -- more updates to the Web, a renewed focus to be ultra-local, inviting readers in on conversations -- has generated much more Web traffic. One paper says it's up 72% month to from last year.

• I liked this quote from a Merrill Lynch newspaper analyst:

  "They are giving the reader something rich. People who might not go to the site for news will go to find out home prices. It is an opportunity to serve advertisers better by connecting with the local audience and a number of local advertisers."

• The article does allude to concerns within a few of the operations that each newsroom is being asked to do too much, but there isn't a lot of explanation.

• In Rochester, N.Y., the paper is learning that the online features can drive print circulation. Editors discovered this in September when they prepared a multimedia package on local sex offenders, which included a database of registered felons and various audio and video reports.
  
  The Web package was prominently placed on the home page on Sept. 28 to promote much of the same material in a Sunday print presentation three days later. The effort resulted in the biggest Sunday single-copy sales of the year, with 4.9% more than any other Sunday. That record was broken two months later when the same approach was used for a report on police overtime.

• In Phoenix, the paper partnered with Arizona State University to pay 15 students $10 an hour to cover local news online during early-morning hours.

• In Parsipanny, N.J., where a Web editor works the overnight shift to keep feeding the Web and trying to grow the overnight audience, the editor says the approach has changed the mind-set of staffers.

  "It is less of a print-driven approach," he says while chatting in his office, "being absolutely as local as we can be and getting readers involved as often as possible." The early jump on the Web is key, he adds, noting that the paper's monthly page views jumped from 3.3 million in March 2006 to 4.9 million in March 2007.

Flickr

Not only are we not getting that nasty warning when we go to Flickr from inside the newsroom, but folks on the Charlotte Flickr group are posting links to our news website from their pictures. Somebody did this for the business story about South 21 at this Flickr space.

Now we can do that too and drive traffic from Flickr to charlotte.com, even at work.

Better navigation, fewer page views?

Some folks are wondering why traffic as measured in page views has dropped off at USA.com.
Could be the companies doing the counting, or it could be the way page views are counted, or it could be faster, easier navigation, suggest a couple of new comments at Howard Owens' blog.
Analogy: planned obsolescence? If we let traffic metrics drive our decisions too much, we'll make our pages more complicated to drive up page views. (We'll make cars that don't last so customers will buy more replacement cars.)
Honda and Toyota didn't go there.
I wish there was a way to measure quality time and satisfaction of visitors as well: did they spend lots of time reading and viewing, or did they spend lots of time trying to find what they needed? Sounds like a graduate degree research project, or Eyetrack study.
Can we quantify satisfaction? I.E., does a 1-minute visit mean a visitor was dissatisfied, while a 3-minute visit mean they found what they needed?

BBC experiments

A BBC reporter uses social media to drive readers to the BBC, and to tell the story behind the story.
Read here.

Can't find it?

One other small thing we can do now:
If you read something in the paper, but can't find it on the website, email the online message group.
If you see a misspelled headline or a missing headline, email the online message group.
That group is responsive, even early in the morning, and they appreciate the extra eyes. Diedre McGruder made a fix this morning to post online Lisa Zagaroli's Inside Washington column, which is important to me and my neighbors as 8th District residents.
And you'll feel better, knowing you did what you could. If you know the editor or reporter who initiated the story, you can let them know their story was missing from online, and perhaps they should check how they do webcodes in CCI.
Along the way, you can hope for a better way. But for now, this is something we can do.