December 26, 2006NAA finalistI received word late last week that roanoke.com is a finalist for Best Overall News Site in the "Edgie Awards" given by the Newspaper Association of America. I haven't been able to see what other finalists are in our category (75,000 to 250,000 circulation), but past winners have included Modbee.com, SpokesmanReview.com and PilotOnline.com (our sister site in Hampton Roads). Roanoke.com won the multimedia storytelling category for our circulation group last year. This would be a great way to repeat. It's great news and everyone involved in the site's daily production should be proud of the recognition. December 21, 2006Holiday treatsAs we enter the Christmas weekend, I'd like to point out a few packages that will hit the site over the next few days. Once the presents are exchanged, meals eaten and kids put to bed, you may want to check out some of these features. The multimedia feature on Capoeira debuts on Dec. 23. This Afro-Brazilian martial art has gained a small following in the Roanoke area. The package features video, demonstrations and an interactive graphic. Seth Gitner conceived the idea and produced the package. Grant Jedlinsky, one of the print graphic artists, created the drawings for the interactive animation. Marques Harper reported the story. Some of the video was shot in our multimedia studio, but Seth also went to a club meeting at Roanoke College to get some footage. The interactive graphic follows a training session by Alberto Cairo, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Cairo visited The Roanoke Times in early November and trained the graphic artists and a few members of the online staff on ways to turn print info-graphics into interactive, online presentations. We've experimented with a few graphics since then, but Capoeira presented the first real chance to try the interactive drawings. December 8, 2006The TimesCast: A 'Casters' take
One of my early TimesCast episodes, circa Dec. 12, 2005. Being a TimesCast host, or 'Caster as we can ourselves, used to be a sweaty, stressful job -- literally. But this was back in the early days spent toiling in the makeshift studio, which used to be somebody's office. And as we all know, small offices without windows or ventilation trap heat quite effectively. Especially when you throw three constantly running computers (with monitors), a couple studio lights and a multimedia editor -- Seth Gitner generates a lot of heat -- into the fray. The TimesCast: Evolving from the early daysIf you go back through our archives -- which are all online -- you’ll see just how much the TimesCast has evolved in other ways. When we started the TimesCast, we were almost painfully simple, and sometimes just painful. Most ‘casts consisted of a single presenter speaking into the camera for three to four minutes. We just hoped we had enough photos to flash onto the screen to make things look interesting. Then, we worked out of a closet that wasn’t exactly in the basement, but was on the way there. Now, we have a fancy studio with a green screen. And now we parade several staffers through that studio each day to cut various segments. Continue reading "The TimesCast: Evolving from the early days" » The TimesCast: How it comes togetherMagic, mostly. The TimesCast is set up so that it's a side job for almost everyone. I say "almost," because our producer Daine Vineyard spends most of his day working computer magic. It's pretty much his full-time job -- along with some of the other video projects we have going. For the rest of us, well, here's more or less how it works. For the print newspaper, I'm assistant managing editor for content and planning. Increasingly, that content and planning now includes online. I don't have a specific title with the TimesCast -- I'm not sure anyone does, really -- but if I did, it might be along the lines of executive producer. That's what online editor John Jackson called me once. One year later: The watchersWho’s actually watching the TimesCast? In the absence of any true market research on the subject, we’ve done our own guerrilla research. In the fall, we launched a MySpace page, which we’ve intermittently plugged on the webcast. We’ve quickly added more than 300 friends. Now, I can’t tell you that our MySpace friends are representative of our overall viewership. On the other hand, I can’t tell you they’re not. What I can tell you is that on some days our traffic coming through links on MySpace pages has been our second-biggest source of traffic (people finding the TimesCast on our own website ranks first, of course.) And here’s something else I can tell you: Our MySpace friends tend to be single Roanokers in their late 20s. They skew somewhat female, with the women being about 26; the men just under 30. In other words, our webcast has built a core following of exactly the type of people the print newspaper finds hardest to reach -- that fabled 18-to-34 market. It’s also helped us make some changes to the TimesCast. We’ve added more entertainment. We’ve also added more news headlines -- on the theory that this is not a newspaper-reading audience. And it’s helped inform our choices on what type of news to include. Happy Birthday, TimesCast
From left (back): Seth Gitner, Orr Shtuhl, Marques Harper, Tad Dickens, Patrick Beeson, Daine Vineyard. From left (front): Dwayne Yancey, Jenny Kincaid Boone, Lindsey Nair, Cindy Porter, Tamara Gaskin. It was a year ago today that the TimesCast made its official debut. Below is the first of several postings by Dwayne Yancey, who's worn many hats in this first year: director, writer, creative mind, scheduler, teleprompter runner, background sound effects, grim reaper on Halloween ... you get the idea: "How’s it going, one year later?" When The Roanoke Times launched its daily webcast, The TimesCast, a year ago, the feedback was immediate: "Better than the Naked News,"one viewer wrote in. Don’t say we don’t listen to our audience -- because this week, as our year-anniversary approached, we featured a naked weatherman. Well, OK, he was clothed. But he was formerly naked -- the meteorologist for one of the local TV stations had been fired recently when a nude photo of himself turned up on the Internet. And this week, he was our featured guest on the TimesCast, making fun of his predicament the same way some bigger celebrity might make the rounds of the late-night talk shows to explain away some indiscretion with a few laughs. December 7, 2006'Twas the night before ...Tomorrow (Dec. 8) marks the one-year anniversary of the official TimesCast launch. There have been several big changes since its launch: The TimesCast moved from a confiscated small office to the studio in June; Daine Vineyard joined the team to be its producer in April; and on-location TimesCasts have included the woods on Mill Mountain, Steppin' Out in Blacksburg, Victory Stadium and Dr. Pain's Haunted Asylum, to name a few. Like most anniversary shows, there'll be our fair share of clips and cameos of the past year since its debut. Be sure to watch at 3:30 p.m. for special appearances by past TimesCasters and other surprises. In the meantime, vote for who should be the TimesCast Santa and Santa's Helper by checking out the Holidays page on roanoke.com. |
.....Advertisement.....
|
...Advertisement...
...Advertisement...
