2012.06.04
Features poll results: You like our bloggers & stories. Plus, your turn to share 1 story idea.
As of last week, we had 55 respondents to our poll on features content. Thanks for the responses!
Here are some of the highlights of the results:
1. The three most important topics to readers are: Features bloggers, features stories, and upcoming shows & concerts. This pretty much aligned with what we on the features team want to highlight in the redesign. It’s helpful to know that upcoming shows and concerts ranked so high — that’s something we’ll keep in mind as we move forward.
2. Coming in after these top 3 were restaurant reviews/news and comics/puzzles. You can currently find reviews here, and leave your own.
3. National celebrity news ranked last, and that’s understandable. You want local feature stories, and that’s what we aim to provide.
Some readers also left comments, and here are some we can help with:
- Some asked for local arts reporting: Please visit Mike Allen’s “Arts & Extras” blog, where he extends his arts coverage beyond what he writes for the paper. He also writes a weekly column for the Sunday Extra section that’s full of local arts news.
- For upcoming local music shows, visit music reporter Tad Dickens’ blog “Cut ‘n Scratch.” He’s constantly posting show news and updates throughout the week.
- Some mentioned they like the weekly Retail Roundup column and business news: You can currently get your business fix at the Ticker blog and retail fix at Amanda Codispoti’s blog, “Storefront.”
- It was also good to see several of you mention you like local news, traffic news, and hard news. That’s what we highlight on roanoke.com every day.
- Finally, for the person who said “I love it when the spotlight is on local musicians, crafters, or places, . . . . . things that make our region so unique and special!” — that is definitely our newsroom’s goal: to bring to light the stories that make our place in the world special.
So that leads me to the question: Share one story idea that you have for the features team. And if you’d like to vote in our features poll, please do so!
What happened to the hunting/fishing blog?
Comment by Dennis Chandler — June 6, 2012 @ 3:44 am
Dennis, do you mean Mark Taylor’s Wildlife blog? You can find it here: http://blogs.roanoke.com/wildlife/
Comment by Kathy Lu — June 6, 2012 @ 8:26 am
I think what he’s meaning is that the link that used to be on the front of the RT main website was replaced by the gardening blog link.
That is one of the more significant gripes I’ve had with the website, that the blog links on the main page are in some weird random rotation, so that they sometimes disappear, and then they are either ‘out of sight, out of mind’, or have to be dug up through either an old bookmark, or loading the Blogs page to find it.
The other thing I have asked for several times, is that like on the Blogs page, the blog roll on the main page allow a person to click the name of the blog to load the main blog page, rather than the only link being the most recent post.
Comment by Other John — June 8, 2012 @ 11:41 am