The water’s fine

Ryan Thornburg pointed out a story in the N.C. Press Association’s September newsletter about The Pilot, where I had a wonderful time interning last summer. By posting more frequently, they’ve increased their online readership by 14 percent in six weeks.

I just went to their Web site for the first time in probably six weeks, and I’m really excited by what I see: It’s a Tuesday (they publish Sunday, Wednesday and Friday), but there are five new stories on the Web not in the print.

When I was there last summer, there were definitely occasions when we published on the Web before print. I covered one meeting in Pinehurst, and we went Web first with it because The Fayetteville Observer reporter was there, and we didn’t want our readers to have to wait an extra day for the story because we knew in the time between, they’d just skip us. I wrote another, more in-depth story for the print edition.

Publisher David Woronoff said that he realized waiting to break news in paper to avoid tipping off competitors was “stupid.” That was something I emphasized this summer at my internship at The Salisbury Post, and something community journalism guru Jock Lauterer grilled in my head: Your newspaper’s Web site is not a different entity/brand/whatever than your print. You’re not scooping yourself by publishing online.

It sounds like The Pilot’s already done a lot to increase online readership, but I thought of a few other things they could do to make the Web site more user-friendly:

• Make the video and multimedia more prominent on the homepage – the blogs and multimedia are listed way down the page.
• On articles, provide dates for when they were published.
• The navigation bars on the left and then lower down the page on the right are bulky and confusing.
• Link to reporter’s e-mail addresses in the end taglines.
• Add a widget so that readers can share stories. Now you can e-mail it, print it, or e-mail an editor, but what about del.ici.ous? digg? etc.
• For stories that also have multimedia, link back and forth between the article and the media. The Pilot did this slideshow of photos to go with this story about a fire at the mill John Edwards worked at back in the day. But you have to search the archives to find the story, and it doesn’t link to the slideshow anywhere, and the slideshow doesn’t link to the article.
• Show related stories. It looks like they’re doing this for the latest stories for the most part, but this later story about the investigation into the fire doesn’t mention the previous articles. This story about a town facing trouble after digging up illegally buried homes does have links to related stories.
• Allow comments on stories. Make folks register, create a comments policy and enforce it, but let the space become a forum. 
• When new articles are published in between print editions, stick a time stamp on them so that people who have been going to the site will be reminded that this is new information.
• The photo gallery has hundreds of photos from community events all over. Give the readers the option to buy copies of the photos. And while you’re at it, give readers a chance to submit their own photos. 

My internship at The Salisbury Post ended last Wednesday. I came courtesy of the Peggy Allen community journalism scholarship through the J-school at UNC, and I had a wonderful summer working at the Post. I couldn’t have hoped for more. My time there made me further appreciative of the type of journalism community papers provide.

The newsroom wanted to hear from me about the future of journalism and what I learned at the editors conference I went to at UGA in July, so we brown-bagged it and talked shop during lunch. 

I don’t think anything I talked about was particularly revolutionary. I talked about tools journalists are using to help them with their work – RSS readers, Twitter, social networking sites, SproutBuilder, Dipity and a few others. I talked about my goal for the DTH – buying multimedia kits with audio recorders, microphones and Flip video cameras for reporters to use. 

I couldn’t have been happier with how the conversation went. It was the perfect example of how newsrooms can utilize those with different skill-sets to teach others within the newsroom. As an intern, the reporting and writing skills I learned from watching and working with these journalists couldn’t have been beaten. And they can learn from the technological skills I have as a 20-year-old. 

All around the table were journalists who recognize the industry is changing and who want to learn the online skills now needed. There were no curmudgeons at this table. 

After lunch, the Post’s online coordinator, Brad Thomas, and I helped nearly everyone in the newsroom set up a Twitter account. I helped Managing Editor Frank DeLoache set up his Google Reader with RSS feeds. Sports editor Ronnie Gallagher set up a Facebook account.

The atmosphere in the newsroom was electric. Everyone (@frankdeloache, @kathychaffin, @RonnieGallagher, @gayparee and @DeirdreBPS) spent the rest of the afternoon updating Twitter and learning how to use it. I tried to answer questions best I could, and I promised I would type up a glossary of Internet terms and programs they can use. Brad even created a Twitter account for the paper itself. 

It’s only been a few days, but they’re still using their accounts. They’ve even gotten other Post staff to set up accounts. I’m really excited to see as they realize what I realized earlier – how helpful Twitter can be, and the sense of community it creates.

And it’ll help us keep in touch now that I’m back in Chapel Hill, where I’ll spend this year as managing editor for print at The Daily Tar Heel. I’m looking forward to the year and watching the paper grow under Editor Alli Nichols.

The last part of our day included a tour of UGA’s independent student paper, The Red and Black. I have a friend who used to be on the R&B and it’s one of the college papers I follow the most, because of the similarities between UNC, UGA and our two papers, but I’d never seen the office.

They own their own building, which is great, but of course presents its own challenges (taking care of maintenance work on your own, for example). It’s a pretty two story building that’s slightly off-campus at the top of a lovely hill. Their ad staff works on the first floor, and editorial staff is on the second floor. You can see the newsroom here.

What amazed me is how clean it was. At the DTH we have Halloween/Christmas/Valentine’s decorations from 2+ years ago that have never been taken down. This in addition to piles of papers (often trash) and general junk. Also, our well loved couch that has had oh so many sleep on it. Even just the individual decorations desks put up, whether it’s cutting out good articles and hanging them, or pictures of staff or whatever. The DTH feels very lived in, and there’s no mistaking it for a college newsroom. Still, I’m sure The Red and Black, when it isn’t the middle of the summer (when even the DTH looks lonely), is a much, much livelier place (is it even possible for a college newspaper to not be?).

The sad news of this endeavor was the disappointing news about College Publisher 5 from Ed Morales, the Red and Black’s editorial adviser. College Publisher 5 has basically been promised to us (and all the other college newspapers who host with them) as a sort of Web Jesus. It’ll post stuff for you! You can click and drag! It’s so flexible! It’s amazing.

Apparently not (No surprise – they also said we’d be switched over this summer … which is now this scheduled for the fall … which surely will be pushed back even later before it’s all over). But everyone was so excited about CP5 because really, there is a lot of room for improvement. From what he said, their experience testing it out, they found that it took almost 4 times as long to post because all of the automation has disappeared. The automatic posting apparently isn’t there yet.

Only one paper in the country, as I understand, is on CP5 now fully, and I’d really be interested in hearing their experiences. Most of the papers here are on CP, and as Morales pointed out, that’s really because there is no other good option now for college papers. Juliette Mullin, the Daily Pennsylvanian managing editor and I talked about this, and we’re both frustrated, but also don’t see switching away from CP as an option. The DP has talked about switching to Drupal, but her concern is continuity, and finding staff year to year that can maintain a site on their own without the system in place with CP. And as Andrew learned, learning Drupal isn’t easy either. The Savannah Morning News Editor, Susan Catron (a DTH alum!), said their paper has been hosting on Drupal and is very happy with it, but again, I don’t see our staff now having the skills to build and maintain our own site. And hosting on WordPress, as some papers do with great success, isn’t practical for a paper like us in the event we get huge traffic one day (Taheri-azar, Eve Carson, etc).

So for anyone who’s working with it now, how’s CP5? Is it as bad/good as we’ve heard? Can it walk on water, or does it sink?

So my mom handed me the CLT observer this morning and told me that there was a “very sweet piece” about an elderly lifeguard that I should read. So I picked up the paper – the story ran on the front of one of the inside sections, I forget which.

It’s a really nice article – Ed McCarthy is an 83-year-old lifeguard at the YMCA. He’s the world’s oldest lifeguard, and he didn’t pick up swimming until his 60s. The other lifeguards and people who swim at the pool say he’s quite the hottie in his Speedo.

There’s video to accompany the article. I watched it online early last week. Nice video, too. McCarthy talking about his job and why he enjoys it. The hottie lifeguard is interesting to listen to.

If you look at the article online, it links to the video.

If you look at the print version, at no point does it tell you anywhere (before or after the jump) that there is video if only you go online. No where. There are multiple photos, there’s a brief section of bio, and no where is there a “Hear Ed McCarthy talk about life guarding at charlotte.com.”

Why is there no online refer? Why?! You have this great online content, and you aren’t selling it! Don’t assume your Sunday reader is the 40+ thinks-the-Internet-means-going-”on the line.” If print papers want to get readers to the Web site, they have to point them there. They can’t – and won’t – find that content on their own. Give them a reason to, and maybe they will.

I still read The Pilot, where I interned last summer, online occasionally. Last week I saw this moving story about an Army medic who died after abusing computer cleaning aerosols. The continuing coverage, by the Pilot and by the various outlets that have picked up the story highlighting post traumatic stress disorder, is hopefully drawing attention to the private hell Dwyer (and other soldiers) face upon their return from Iraq.

I wanted to tag The Pilot’s stories on my del.icio.us account. But has only these options: a printer-friendly view and e-mail a friend or the editor. I have a soft spot for the local paper, sure. I can (and have tagged) stories and columns about Dwyer by other newspapers.

But the Pilot’s missing out on the fun part of the Internet – allowing readers to bookmark and share what’s important to them. Simply letting readers e-mail a story isn’t enough anymore.

What about Digg, or Facebook, Mixx and Yahoo Buzz, options The New York Times lets readers share stories with? The (Raleigh) News & Observer, whose column by Barry Saunders about Dwyer was one that I tagged, has 34 options that include Digg, MySpace, Reddit, Furl, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Google and Facebook for readers to bookmark and share stories.

Giving readers options isn’t a nicety anymore, it’s a necessity. Online newspapers that ignore this are missing out on ways to draw people to their Web site and increase their readership.

Update: The office copy of the Observer’s Wednesday paper has gone missing, so I haven’t had a chance to see what this article looked like in print. Anyone else see it? What did you think – what does the online reader miss that the print reader saw?

My mom has a recently acquired taste for boxed Sangria, and I was thinking of her when I read Charlotte Observer Food Editor Kathleen Purvis’ story on boxed wines and how they hold up.

I read the story online, and I haven’t seen the print edition yet, but I can tell that some things weren’t translated to the Web. For instance, the results of their taste test. So I know that the wines were “pretty good” and cheaper and tastier than the wines tested last year, but I don’t know which one of the seven contenders came in top.

Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the story.

I love love newspapers, but I read most of my news online. And this isn’t the first time that something hasn’t made it on to the Web after it’s been alluded to in the text, usually a stand-alone graphic. Sometimes it’s not that the other component doesn’t make it online, but it isn’t packaged with the article, or isn’t easy to find.

But the end result is that it leaves the reader with questions and doesn’t tell the story the way the writer and editors intended (and did, in the print edition).

How does this happen? There needs to be more communication on all levels. Making sure these extra elements get attached to the story isn’t any different than making sure the right photo gets posted with the article.

Today’s a slow news day in Salisbury (the highlight so far was a report on the scanner of gunshots in a home … that turned out to be fireworks). The newsroom is basically empty – just education reporter Sarah, county government reporter Jessie and me.

Sarah came to the Post a few weeks before I did. Now, her old roommate is leaving the paper they worked at for a job (with a higher salary) in PR. This weekend, another friend (who is getting married and moving to Charlotte) announced her plan to leave newspapering for a PR job. Sarah’s a lot like me – hard news junkie – and says she’s in newspapering for the passion, not the money. But we like to eat and sleep under a roof, too.

Sarah: Jessie, have I told you how all my friends are leaving newspapers to go into PR?
Jessie: I would say that they’re smart.

I’ve spent most of today fixing up this blog and adding new things. I joined LinkedIn and del.icio.us, and re-examined my Twitter account. Social networking, beyond Facebook, is new and while I get its importance, it isn’t something that is thrillingly exciting. I’m trying to get the hang of things, so bear with me.