From Carole Tarrant, Roanoke Times editor: Mike Gangloff, our federal courts reporter, has been the point man twice on our breaking news blog -- with the William Morva and Virginia Tech shootings. We asked him to share his blogging tips with the Associated Press Managing Editors group, which had its annual convention Oct. 3-6 in Washington, D.C. The convention included a panel on "Multimedia Lessons from Virginia Tech." I was joined on the panel by RT photojournalist Josh Meltzer, Collegiate Times online editor Chris Ritter and Richmond Times-Dispatch managing editor Peggy Bellows.

Continue reading "Posting breaking news: Keep it fresh, keep it clear" »

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• Posted by john jackson in Editorial process ::
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Just a few more thoughts about the previous post on covering the Virginia Tech shootings:

Ads: As the story developed on Monday, April 16 and the site started to get overwhelmed, I spoke with my boss, Director of Digital Media Dan Wheeler, and got his OK to take the ad spots off of the roanoke.com index page. As it turned out, that was a good thing. Those ads were making calls to our respective ad providers (Open Ad Stream, Tacoda, Tribal Fusion and Advertising.com), which increased demand on their servers and hindered their ability to serve ads efficiently. Once the demand on roanoke.com eased off, we quickly restored the ad spots to the index page.

Special sections online: Early on, we started to post each PDF version of the special section that ran in the paper. Despite efforts to keep their file sizes manageable, each PDF was still pretty large. Users didn't seem to mind, however. To date, we've recorded more than 15,000 clicks to download them. A pdf of the April 17 front page alone has garnered more than 12,000 clicks to date.

Continue reading "Footnotes to the Tech coverage post" »

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• Posted by john jackson in Editorial process ::
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Here are some notes about roanoke.com's coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings:

Traffic: Our traffic on Monday after the 9:40 e-mail was sent surged to some of the highest levels we've ever measured. We had to work with our Internet Service Provider and our traffic monitoring software vendor to relieve overloaded Web servers and keep the site functional. We also removed a lot of pieces on the roanoke.com index page (including ads for a while) that would have otherwise hindered the page's load time. Still, there were times when the site was inaccessible.

How we updated the story: For past breaking news events, we adopted a blog-style format that featured time-stamped updates. We adopted that format quickly and used it for the remaining week. Traffic to that page surpassed 250,000 page views on the first day and remained high throughout the week. (Note: The Poynter Institute discusses this format in more depth.)

Continue reading "Covering the Tech shootings" »

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• Posted by john jackson in Editorial process ::
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Roanoke.com picked up the best overall news site award from the Newspaper Association of America's New Media Federation in Las Vegas on Jan. 28. I got the text message from Dan Wheeler, director of digital media at The Roanoke Times, a few minutes before 10 p.m. Sunday. (See a list of all the winners.)

The award entry that we submitted last fall cited specific examples of efforts to connect with the community and provide comprehensive news and information. The entry mentioned the coverage of William Morva's escape around Blacksburg in August; our coverage of the Roanoke City Council election and Victory Stadium demolition; and other site features such as Gas Tracker, Fearless Forecasters, the TimesCast and blogs.

Continue reading "Roanoke.com wins NAA best overall award" »

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• Posted by john jackson in Editorial process ::
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A few events this past week show the importance of blogs as ways to relay news and information, as well provide a means for readers to interact and comment.

This past weekend, the region witnessed its first winter storm. Its first mention, approach and day of arrival were covered by Kevin Myatt and his Weather Journal blog. Kevin's blog provided the cornerstone of the coverage for Sunday, and made several updates throughout the day as the storm progressed. Traffic increased and stayed up throughout the storm. Kevin fielded several comments, too, from users who had been in the storm or were reporting its impact on their area.

Continue reading "Blogs as news tools; homepage multimedia" »

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• Posted by john jackson in Editorial process ::
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I 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.

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• Posted by john jackson in Editorial process ::
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Rob Curley, the brains behind Lawrence and Naples News' Studio 55, said his favorite newspaper site in the U.S. is roanoke.com.

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• Posted by Patrick Beeson in Editorial process ::
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Roanoke.com has won the General Excellence in Online Journalism Award for Medium Sites from the Online News Association and the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. The awards were announced at the annual ONA conference, held this year in Washington, D.C. The award recognizes the site for extending the mission of The Roanoke Times. Finalists in the category included the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., the Orlando Sentinel and New West.

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• Posted by john jackson in Editorial process ::
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I just finished reading a book by Malcolm Gladwell that deals with how a trend can go from a small fad to a larger social movement. Gladwell talks about topics from crime prevention to the Airwalk shoe trend. All of these social phenomena seem to reach a critical “tipping point” (the book’s name), passing from the minds of a few trendsetters to broader society. He calls these trendsetters “Mavens” – people who “have the knowledge and social skills to start word-of-mouth epidemics.”

How does this apply to what we’re doing with the TimesCast? We already post our videos to YouTube and are thinking about establishing a MySpace page in an attempt to convince everyone that they ought to be watching our program.

But I think we’re going about this the wrong way.

All we need are a few opinion leaders to pick up on the TimesCast. MySpace is a large forum for all things social. What will make our message stand out?

If more people who are “in the know” about Web trends find out about the TimesCast, they will reach more people on a deeper level than any MySpace page could.

So now I’m thinking about how the TimesCast can look beyond the masses to reach the people who matter most – the Mavens.

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• Posted by Amanda Hicks in Editorial process ::
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I guess a good way to kick off the “Editorial process” category would be to explain how the site gets updated every night and, why if you’re visiting roanoke.com in the wee hours of the morning, some things may look askew.

The stories, photos, graphics and other elements that put the actual newspaper together reside in a database that uses software called DTI. Every night the editors and designers put the paper together using Adobe products (InDesign, InCopy, etc.) through the DTI interface. As each section is completed, all locally written stories slated for online publishing are given a status of done/publish. This places the story in a queue. At 1:30 a.m. a script goes into that queue and transfers the stories that reside there into the roanoke.com database. Headlines, bylines, body copy and subheads are broken out into their respective fields and stories are placed in a particular section based on the categories they were assigned. An e-mail goes out at 2 a.m. to all who subscribe that contains the day’s headlines broken into a category that they’ve chosen (News, Sports, NRV News, Business, Politics, columnists, etc.).

A dot-com staffer, usually yours truly, gets online around 6 a.m. to update the photos you see on the front of roanoke.com and the various sub-index pages. We also hitch up any links to features such as message boards, polls, multimedia elements and the like; and kill out or change things that should not have come over during the sweep. Hopefully, this process will change soon so updates are made during or right after the sweep occurs. Stay tuned.

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• Posted by John Jackson in Editorial process ::
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No, you haven't landed on a 404 error page. Rather, you've arrived at The Roanoke Times' newest blog, "404 Not Found," whose name is derived from the infamous Internet error page.

The reason for this odd-titled blog -- I think it’s catchy -- is to both guide users through new and exciting changes for roanoke.com, and to discuss related issues that will better your experience browsing our site.

And we'll even throw in a general Web tip or two via our ToolTips category (seen in the sidebar).

Other categories up for discussion -- these range from editorial decisions about online content, to spotlighting new multimedia pieces -- are listed to the right of this entry. If there's something you want us to address, post a comment and let us know.

Dot-com folks, as we’re affectionately known in the newsroom, will be posting the majority of the entries, with occasional contributions from elsewhere in the newsroom. But we'd like for you, the readers, to drive much of the discussion.

And if you find a real 404 error page, please let us know. Those aren't intentional!

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• Posted by patrick beeson in Editorial process ::
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