Archive for November, 2007
November 9th, 2007
i finally got around to reading a presstime q&a on my desk with samir husni, a professor with the nickname mr. magazine. he has tracked the industry for almost 30 years, and he looks at about 1,000 mags a month. (and i complain that i don’t get around to reading enough books: geez!)
the most interesting piece i took the article, which i don’t see online, is that magazines are like chocolate. you don’t need them, but once you’re addicted, you have to have more. good advice for rockford woman and businessrockford.com.
November 9th, 2007
wqad is running a survey similar to one by minnesota public radio. by answering where you stand on the issues, it tells you how the presidential candidates rate.
ok, so this is no exact science, but it is interactive and helpful to our audience to get them thinking about the election in a constructive manner. and since people like to share these things in e-mail, it starts a dialogue.
for example, my parents ended up with duncan hunter, and they had never heard of him before (above is an ap file photo of him). they also wondered, jokingly, how their daughter could end up so differently from them politically (let’s just say i don’t often vote republican, though i have for governor twice in tommy thompson and george ryan, and how was i to know that ryan would end up in prison?).
November 7th, 2007
Don’t laugh. But I am really excited about something we figured out how to do today.
We now know how to post google maps in our online stories. We did it this morning with a story about a submerged car in the Rock River. May seem small, but I imagine this will help our readers.
I high-fived the copy editor who experimented with me and did a little happy dance in the newsroom. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t take much to excite me.
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.)
November 2nd, 2007
last night, i had the honor of speaking to more than 30 members of the winnebago county association of legal secretaries about rockford woman and work/life balance (my funniest tip: don’t wash your hair every day, and you’ll save 20 minutes).
they are a great bunch: hard-working, outgoing and dedicated to community service with programs like adopt-an-angel.
it reminds me again what great women we have in the rock river valley. i challenged them to mail me stories about why they are “rockford women.” can’t wait to see what i get.
November 1st, 2007
while this presstime article doesn’t mention the register star, it mentions our old online content management system, saxotech, and our new one, zope.
the story is about systems built to give readers what they want. it’s clear this is a work in progress.
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