Back from Boston
2 comments November 5th, 2007
I had a great time in the Boston area last week, talking with fellow journalists about pushing to get news content on their Web sites and then publishing those stories and photos in print later.
I was in Framingham, Mass., about 30 miles west of Boston. On Thursday, I talked with journalists who work for daily newspapers about Web-first publishing. We had such good discussion that I had to whip through the second half of my presentation. On Friday, I met with weekly newspaper editors and reporters. Both groups have their own sets of challenges, but the the basic messages I heard were the same.
How do we do this with the resources we have? We talked about deadlining stories throughout the day. Many papers deadline stories for print publication. At morning papers, stories usually are finished in the early evening. Many of these stories can and should be done earlier in the day. That way, we can post the stories when Web traffic is higher. In Rockford, online traffic is strongest during the day, Monday through Friday. Traffic picks up starting at 6 a.m., peaks at noon and starts to drop after 6 p.m.
We talked about resources, too. How do you do a quality newspaper and Web site with the same resources? It isn’t easy. The idea is to post content all day long and take the best stuff you posted to the Web today and publish it in the newspaper tomorrow. The work you do for the online product ultimately benefits the print product, too. Online readers get information when they want it; print readers get more analysis the next day.
I’ll give this spiel one more time next week in Canton, Ohio. That’s where our former managing editor, Jeff Gauger, is now executive editor.
(Maybe I’ll have some time to visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame, where my beloved Brett Favre will one day be inducted. A side note, Jeff is a major Seahawks fan. And only one notable Seahawk (Steve Largent) is in the Hall of Fame. Mike Holmgren will be there one day, but odds are he’ll go in as a Packer coach. Take that.)
