Archive for December, 2007
December 31st, 2007
On this last day of 2007, I want to share our photographers’ best pictures of the year. We posted the photo gallery late last week, and it’s already a reader favorite. It was fun for me to click through and remember the events our staffers captured. In the newspaper tomorrow, we’ll run a page of some of these photos. Online, you can see ‘em all.
(I am having some issues with linking to the individual photo gallery because it’s a pop-up. Go here and click on “2007: The year in photos.”)
December 31st, 2007
Sometimes the conversation on our forums is far from civil, and sometimes we ban users for violating our terms of service. Some of the stuff people post on our forums I can’t imagine they would say out loud. So, why would people post it online and put that stuff in writing? My best guess is the anonymity factor. Here’s one of the rules I learned early on in my career: Don’t put anything in writing that you would never want to appear in the newspaper or on the Web site. That means e-mail messages, Word documents, blog posts … well, pretty much anything. I’ll never understand why people post the stuff they do on mySpace and even Facebook. Don’t they know their future employers check google them? On our forums, though, most people don’t use their real names. So, I guess that’s safer. But still, with technology advances every day, I would worry I might not be so anonymous after all.
December 20th, 2007
the january/february issue of rockford woman hits newsstands friday, and therein we announce the five finalists for rockford woman of the year.
you will be able to vote (the site is changing over from last issue to this issue gradually today) until jan. 9.
merry christmas, and happy new year!
December 17th, 2007
one of our sister newspapers in gatehouse is attracting attention. the somerville journal in massachusetts covered tufts university’s annual naked quad run — on video. so don’t click on the link if you don’t want to see a lot of bare bottoms.
howard owens, director of digital operations at gatehouse and a regular blogger, argues that newspapers too often shy away from really covering what’s going on their communities.
somerville took some criticism, that it was covering the event like a college newspaper, but i didn’t see live coverage from tufts at all.
note: thanks, r hookup: i incorrectly linked to the magazine. the newspaper link is now there, but i only see advance coverage. maybe they stopped publishing due to the end of the school year.
December 12th, 2007
Forums went back online just a few minutes ago. Sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused our forum users.
December 11th, 2007
I am sorry to say our forums are still down. We’re in contact with Hostway about the problem and still don’t have an ETA of when they’ll be up again. My apologies for the inconvenience.
December 11th, 2007
We had 151,445 page views and 20,002 unique visitors yesterday. We had the bulk of our unique visitors from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. We recorded 27,349 visits, with the bulk between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. (I provided definitions of Web terms below.)
Good work to all. Definite news traffic drivers were NIU and double homicide.
The highlights in news coverage …
NIU coverage got us 6,500 page views.
Suspect in bar killings got 3,036 page views.
Owner of bar, son injured got 1,302 page views.
CW video of anchor Laura Gibbs’ engagement got 1,113 page views.
Wis. teen killed outside bar got 1,127 page views.
Update on Mayor’s baby posted at 8 p.m. got 945 page views.
I expect traffic today, thanks to the weather, to be strong.
Anna
Technical definition of a page view: a page view is each time a visitor views a webpage on your site, irrespective of how many hits are generated. Pages are comprised of files. Every image in a page is a separate file. When a visitor looks at a page (i.e. a page view), they may see numerous images, graphics, pictures etc. and generate multiple hits.
Technical definition of a visit: a visit happens when someone or something (robot) visits your site. It consists of one or more page views/ hits. One visitor can have many visits to your site.
Unique visitor: A unique visitor represents any number of visits from the same computer. If a person returns to the site again, a visit is counted, but a unique visit is not.
Sources: SmarterStats, Opentracker.net
December 10th, 2007
Tried a different approach when reporting today about the threat at Northern Illinois University which closed the campus. Instead of “writing through” the main story every time we had new information, we instead added information to the top of the original story, changed the headline and updated the time stamp. That way, readers could get every tidbit we posted in reverse chronological order if they wanted. You can see how we did it here. Or click on the thumbnail below to see how the story was played on the rrstar.com front page.
December 10th, 2007
We are experiencing problems with the server on which our forums are hosted.
We do not know when they will be available again. We apologize for the inconvenience.
If you have any questions, contact me at avoelker@rrstar.com.
December 5th, 2007
At this writing, nearly 2,100 people have signed electronic petitions on rrstar.com requesting that Robert Henry Lower remain in prison for murdering Joey Didier in 1975. Several hundred of you have faxed petitions to the Register Star. The response is huge considering it’s only been three days since we published a story in our online and print editions. The petitions — we offer you a choice to reject or support his parole — here.
Aaron Chambers, our Springfield bureau chief, went over to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board and scanned several documents, including Lower’s confession. (You can read a post about this on our Editorial Board’s blog, A Seat at the Table.) I can’t even begin to tell you what’s in that letter. Most of it is so graphic, I can’t share it here. Joey was delivering our newspaper when he was abducted. It’s 32 years later, and it’s one of our region’s most horrendous crimes. I can write that with certainty based on the response we’ve gotten so far from those of you who believe Lower should not be paroled.
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