I made a few updates to my online breaking news checklist today.

Download the updated PDF here.

Last week, Mother Nature dumped 16 inches of snow on Des Moines. And while most of the town simply shut down for a day or two, the Des Moines Register didn’t have that option. We went into breaking news mode and tried to compete with the local TV stations for readers’ attention.

And as usual, we learned a few things. Here are some tips for covering breaking weather news online:

Promote your mobile site

We saw a nice bump in traffic to our mobile site while readers were stuck at home (or elsewhere). We used Twitter, Facebook and our own web site to remind people that the mobile site was available for latest weather news and closings.

In severe weather, there’s also the possibility of people losing power – so your mobile site may be their only way to access important information.

Take the news to the people

If people aren’t at work, they’ve not on their computer. So they’re probably not spending as much time on your site. We used Twitter, Facebook, text alerts, e-mail alerts and RSS feeds to draw them in as important news broke throughout the day.

Ask readers to submit specific photos

We’ve had modest success getting people to submit weather photos, but one small tweak seemed to really help this time. We asked readers to specifically send us photos of their big snow drifts – and we promised we’d run the best in print the next day. And it worked – we got more than 80 photos (and not all were snow drifts).

Create a Twitter hashtag

Create a Twitter hashtag and use it for all your tweets – or better yet figure out what hashtag your local Twitter users are already using and join in. Our local community was using #winterdeathstorm. Considering that people actually die in such storms, we decided to go with the safer #dmweather. We saw quite a few others joining in, so we’ll certainly use that again in the future.

Check Google Trends to see what people are searching

When it comes to severe weather, people turn first to their local TV station – even online. Google Trends shows this:

What was hot on Google Trends during the height of our storm on Dec. 8? The call letters from local television stations (KCCI, KCRG, KWWL). All three showed up for hours as hot trends. These terms also made appearances: KCCI school cancellations, Iowa DOT road conditions, Des Moines public schools, KCCI weather, Iowa road conditions and winter storm.

Local newspapers – Des Moines Register, Waterloo Courier and Cedar Rapids Gazette – never showed up.

But that doesn’t mean we should give up on winning the search war. We clearly could rate high for terms like Iowa DOT road conditions, Iowa road conditions and winter storm with a little SEO finesse. Or simply buy keywords for those words.

Create a live chat for readers

We set up a CoverItLive chat and asked readers to share info about their commute, what their business was doing because of the storm, etc. We got a little bit of that, but also found that the chat was a great way for members of our staff to instantly post the little updates they were getting throughout the day.

Create a severe weather page

We’re still working on this, but it became clear there are certain things we always need links to during a storm: road conditions, traffic cams, airport delays, snow routes and energy outages.

So, we’re creating a severe weather page that combines those links with a twitter feed, stories, radar, blog posts, video, photos and traffic cameras. It will be a one-stop shop during severe weather.

Dig into your archives

We have hundreds of great photos from past snow storms. With more time, it also would have been great to bring back stories from previous huge storms and historic front pages.

We don’t have pro sports teams in Iowa. We don’t host Superbowls or NCAA Final Fours. But every year we do get one game that captures our local sports audience like no other.

Iowa vs. Iowa State in football. We call it the “Big Game.” (Clever, huh?) And here’s a look at all of the coverage we do leading up to the game.

Big Game Fan Map: Our attempt to determine what areas of the state prefer Hawkeyes and what areas prefer Cyclones.

Big Game Challenge: Readers get to pick various prop bets on the game – with a $500 prize for the person who gets the most correct.

Jokes: Readers share their favorite Iowa and Iowa State jokes.

Field goal game: It’s hard to actually work the week of the game, so this helps readers slack off.

Past photos: Hugely popular. People love to look at old photos (even ones that are only one year old).

Posters: Readers can print out these posters to decorate their cubicle at work – or their neighbor’s cubicle.

Bars: Sometimes people watch games in bars, we hear. We help them figure out where to go.

Of course, we also cover all of the “news” of the week with stories and videos. But those are the main components that make up a successful “Big Game” week around here. You can see all of our coverage right here.

And GO HAWKEYES!

I stumbled upon a great resource from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the other day. Their Packers bar map helps readers find a place to drink with other Packers fans (almost) anywhere in the world (apparently not South Dakota).

Naturally I wanted to do the same for the sports teams we cover at the Des Moines Register. Digital projects editor Mike Corey was able to one-up the Packers map by making our map completely user-generated. Readers can upload bars directly to the map. The Green Bay example sends bars to a staff member who then adds them to the map.

Here’s our map of Iowa Hawkeyes, Iowa State Cyclones, Northern Iowa Panthers and Drake Bulldogs sports bars.

The great thing about our map is that we simply have to watch it to make sure nobody is abusing it. The great thing about the Packers map is that is uses ZeeMaps, which means that it doesn’t require knowledge of the Google Maps API (full disclosure: I now nothing about any APIs).

I have to admit that I’m pretty impressed with the work the Journal Sentinel has done using ZeeMaps, including this map of dining reviews.

Here’s a fun little interactive that the Indy Star put together for the Big Ten men’s basketball tournament.

It’s a good idea for any city that hosts some sort of post-season basketball tournament.

I’m sure you’ve heard stories about Twitter beating traditional news media on breaking news. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that traditional news media have certain standards for verifying news.

But another factor is that we still feel the need to post a full story. Instead, we should get in the habit of posting just a headline quickly – and adding more details as they develop. Here’s a good example from chicagobreakingnews.com. Notice they started with the most basic of info and grew from there.

If you work for a newspaper, please take the time to watch this:

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Obviously the Rocky was in a different situation than most newspapers (being in a two-newspaper town). But I hope this opens a few more eyes to the fact we have to adapt to survive.

The way people consume information is changing. And so we must change. It’s as simple as that.

Or be prepared for more videos like the one above.

Need some online inspiration? Just take a stroll through some other web sites and learn from what others are doing. With that in mind, here are five ideas that could benefit almost any news web site out there:

The azcentral.com live module. Nothing complicated here. Just a continuous stream of reader comments as they come into the site. Another great way to get people into the conversation.

NewsOK’s live page. A one-stop shop for current live videos and chats. All in one place, so I always know where to look.

The Miami Herald’s news grid. A clever (and straightforward) way to show the top news in several categories at a glance.

The Austin American-Statesman’s Twitter page. Sure, this promotes the Statesman’s many Twitter accounts, but the best part is that it promotes local Twitter users worth following.

The Des Moines Register’s business blog aggregator. Instead of trying to get the best local business bloggers to post using your blog tools, simply add links to their latest blogs and make them a part of your local blogger network.

]]> http://chrissniderdesign.com/blog/2009/02/15/web-feature-you-should-steal/feed/ 0 http://chrissniderdesign.com/blog/2009/01/12/what-if/ http://chrissniderdesign.com/blog/2009/01/12/what-if/#comments Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:09:00 +0000 Chris Snider http://chrissniderdesign.com/blog/?p=365

What if our number one goal was to publish a great web site? How would we do things differently?

Would our daily news meetings be structured differently? Would our planning budgets look different? Would people sit in different places in the newsroom?

Would we still have a separate online department? If so, would it be bigger? Smaller?

Would we post stories at a different time of the day? Would copy editors read stories before they went online? Would designers work on the web site?

Would we pay more attention to our mobile site?

Would we look for a different content management system?

Would we have different revenue streams online? Would we realize that craigslist isn’t anything special, but that it’s still much better than anything we currently offer?

Would we participate in our own story chat? Would that elevate the discussion?

Would page views go up? Visits? Unique visitors? Time on site?

Would circulation of the print edition go down? Was it going to go down anyway?

Just got an e-mail about the St. Cloud Times’ holiday yule log.

During these dismal times, we decided to offer the online readers a relaxing moment:  A Yule log burning in a fireplace with local holiday music.

The page doesn’t even contain an ad. Holiday spirit, or missed opportunity?

Who says you need a staff of developers and tons of time to make a great web site? These tools are easy to use and easy to add to your site.

1. Coveritlive.com
CoverItLive allows you to blog live from an event (you can even do it from your iPhone). It’s also a great tool for hosting live chats on your site.

2. Blip.tv
There are a lot of tools that can embed video on your site (YouTube.com Vimeo.com, qik.com), but I’m starting to be a big fan of blip.tv. It create a nice-looking index of your videos and make it easy to offer your videos as an iTunes podcast.

3. Mogulus.com
With just a video camera and an internet connection, Mogulus lets you broadcast live video. Also try justin.tv and ustream.tv.

4. Animoto.com
Don’t just post photo galleries. Turn your best photos into a music video.

5. Vuvox.com
Create slideshows, timelines and more that include photos, music and videos. See an example here (below the scroll).

6. Soundslides.com
Easy-to-use tool for adding slideshows with audio to your site.

7. Slideshowpro.net
Another great tool for creating slideshows and embedding on your site. Indystar.com uses this to let reader embed slideshows on their sites.

8. Google maps
We all understand the value of maps and map mash-ups. That doesn’t mean we all have the skills to create them. Fortunately there are some tools that help. Such as umapper.com, mapalist.com, mapbuilder.net, quikmaps.com and fmatlas.com.

9. Polldaddy.com
Creates polls that you embed on your site. I also just discovered Polls Boutique.

10. Response-o-matic
Creates a quick online contact form, or use it to make surveys and multiple-question polls. Also check out surveymonkey.com.

11. Mypodcast.com and gabcast.com
Think podcasting is hard? Think again. Mypodcast records your podcast directly to the web. Gabcast turns a phone call into a podcast.

12. Flickr.com groups
Your readers are already posting photos to Flickr. Why not start a group and embed those photos on your site?

13. YouTube reader videos
Your readers are already uploading videos to YouTube. Create a custom player to put those videos on your site.

14. Slideshare.net
You’re a wiz with Powerpoint and/or Keynote. Don’t you wish you could add those presentations to your site? You can.

15. Wordle.net
Text can be boring. Turn speeches into word clouds.

16. Issuu.com
Want to replicate the “print experience” online? Issuu helps your put your publications actual pages online so readers can flip through them.

17. DocStoc.com
Don’t make your readers download documents and PDFs. Let them read them directly from your site with embed codes from docstoc.

18. 4info.net
Send text alerts to your readers’ phones – and make money for doing it.

19. Feedburner.com
Sure, you’ve got RSS feeds. But can you track how often they are used? Or allow readers to subscribe via e-mail? Or put ads on your feeds? Feedburner can.

20. Widgetbox.com
Create a widget from your RSS feeds and encourage others to add your content to their sites.

21. Sproutbuilder.com
Creates even cooler widgets than widgetbox. Cool enough that you will want to put them on your site, too.

22. Sharethis.com
Make it easy for readers to share your content across social media platforms (see example at the bottom of this post).

23. Mofuse.com
Create a mobile version and an iPhone version of your web site in minutes using RSS feeds. See previous post on mofuse here. Also check out wirenode.com and mippin.com.

24. Odiogo.com
Reading is hard. Listening is easy. Odiogo turns your text into audio.

File this under cool ideas from media websites. The Indianapolis Star now lets you embed slideshows of their photo galleries on your web sites.

Here’s the gallery from Sunday’s Colts victory:

I checked out thepoint.com a few months ago. And while I thought it was a pretty good concept (individuals combine their influence and make things happen they can’t achieve alone), I didn’t see its full potential until I saw it in action this weekend.

Some pretty influential members of the newspaper design community were trying to raise $2,500 to save the portfolio web site newspagedesigner.com. So they turned to thepoint.com.

I learned about this from @mattmansfield via Twitter. Turns out the group was able to make its goal in less than a day.

I was impressed with the ease involved in donating to the cause at thepoint. And impressed by the ability to embed campaign promotion on other web sites.

Here’s the campaign widget (goal is met, but you can still donate until Dec. 15):

Another item of note: This campaign had a goal of $2,500. If you donated to the campaign, and it didn’t reach its goal, the your donation would not be processed.

It’s not all about raising money. Other campaigns include:

• Trying to get KFC to be less cruel to animals
• Trying to get “Two and a Half Men” off the air
• Getting womens’ magazines to stop airbrushing

The Chicago Cubs opened what I hope will be a long run in the 2008 baseball playoffs Wednesday night. Which gave me a chance to check out how a couple of my favorite newspapers handle big, live sporting events online.

Chicago Tribune

Live coverage: The core of the Trib’s live coverage was it’s From the Cubicle column (which has been around for at least a couple years now), offering entertaining play-by-play of the game. Photos from Trib photographers were posted during the game. And a live scoreboard was added to the home page.

Reader interaction: Readers could add their comments at the bottom of the Cubicle column.

My thoughts: The Tribune appeared to pretty much play this straight – offering the same experience it did for Cubs games all season long (but with a bigger splash on the home page). Maybe they’re waiting for the World Series, but it would have been nice to have at least seen some updates from Colonel Tribune on Twitter.

Chicago Sun-Times

Live coverage: They offered a live chat for readers using CoverItLive. They promoted blog updates and Twitter updates from the home page, but neither were being updated as the game was in progress (only saw one Tweet). There was a live scoreboard on the home page, but it stopped working halfway through the game and appeared to be replaced with an ad (see image below).

Reader interaction: The live chat allowed readers to chat, read what others had to say and vote on in-game polls.

My thoughts: Even though I am a big fan of CoverItLive, this chat didn’t work for me. It felt like there were too many people commenting, so it was difficult to follow along. Maybe having a sportswriter or columnist in the chat offering thoughts/analysis of the game would have helped (or maybe they had that and I missed it amid all the comments).

Maybe the Sun-Times felt the same way, because they didn’t leave the whole chat online, just some excerpts.

My favorite thing was that they quickly wrote and posted a story about the fan who caught DeRosa’s home run ball.

—

For fun, I looked at boston.com and latimes.com to see what they were doing live for the late game. They weren’t doing much, but both have partnered with Jacked to offer live scoring of games. I had never head of Jacked, but I was impressed. I already have an email into them to talk about a partnership with DesMoinesRegister.com.

Today, we celebrate simple.

The web site Umbrella Today breaks your weather report down to one simple questions – do I need an umbrella today?

Type in your zip code, and you’ll get a giant NO (you don’t need an umbrella) or a YES (you do need an umbrella).

You can even sign up to receive a text message on days you do need an umbrella – so you don’t ever have to go back to the site again.

We had visitors from Apple (yes, that Apple) in Des Moines this week to demo their Podcast Producer software. The Apple folks wanted to show us (and some representatives from Gannett) how media outlets could use Podcast Producer to speed up their workflow for video and audio programs.

Whether or not we ever decide to use Podcast Producer, it certainly was interesting to spend three hours of my day with people from Apple — not something that happens all that often here in Des Moines.

The most interesting thing in their presentation (to me) was a slide that asked the question: “Why Apple?”

Then they gave their answer: innovation, integration and simplicity.

It’s intriguing to me that they are able to boil the answer to that question down to three words. If I were answering the question “Why DesMoinesRegister.com,” I’m not sure I could give an answer in three words. I’m not even sure I could give it in three sentences.

My initial thought would be, “Authoritative, interactive, breaking.” But I’m already thinking of important things we try to be that aren’t on that list. Like “local.”

I do like the ideas of focusing what you do very narrowly – and making sure you filter your work through that narrow filter. I’ve been through that process for at least a couple newspapers before – and never come out with a filter that stuck.

Back to Apple: We also were getting a glimpse into their “three-screen” focus. Apple wants people to be able to create things once and easily deliver to three screens: mobile, desktop and TV.

I got to see Apple TV in action for the first time. It was impressive, although I think I would save $300 and just plug my computer into the TV.

The Chicago Tribune has the best presence I’ve seen of any newspaper on Facebook, Twitter and Digg.

The paper created a persona based on former Tribune owner Robert Rutherford “Colonel” McCormick.

See them here: Twitter | Facebook | Digg

Creating accounts based on Colonel Tribune as opposed to simply creating a “Chicago Tribune” account humanizes the paper. It lets readers know that there is a real person (or maybe four real people) behind the account, not some RSS feed blindly posting stories.

But the most important part of this entire experiment is that Colonel Tribune actually interacts with people on those social networks. It’s not enough to just throw your name out there and expect the general public to participate all on its own. Social media uses are smarter than that.

If your newspaper is serious about using social networks, you have to realize this is not the place for a one-way conversation (that’s what the print newspaper is for).

You probably don’t need a clever name like Colonel Tribune to do this. The Des Moines Register has done fairly well interacting with readers on Twitter (with fewer resources than the Tribune, I am sure) under the boring old name “DMRegister.”

(Full disclosure: We used to have our account simply hooked up to Twitterfeed, but some local Twitter users showed us how we could do it better.)

Many other papers have had success as well (see a list of newspapers on Twitter in Erica Smith’s blog).

Inspired by the Trib, we are currently brainstorming ideas for a human (or perhaps a dog named “Reggie”) persona as we expand into using Digg to share our content.

Last night, this blog went mobile. And it only took about five minutes to set up (I even threw in an iPhone version for good measure).

I already had an account with Mofuse, a free service that lets you create mobile sites using RSS feeds and manual links. You don’t have a whole lot of creative control, but you can choose a color palette and upload a logo for your blog. You can even pick your own little icon for your iPhone version.

If you think you’re going to get enough traffic, you can set up mobile ads using AdMob.

I’ve got a little experience with this site, having created a Des Moines-based iPhone site using whatever RSS feeds I could think to use.

Mofuse does have some pretty cool features:

• You can create an automatic redirect for anyone who comes to your normal URL from a mobile device
• You can create a widget that sends your mobile link to someone’s phone
• You can set up a QR Code
• You’re able to track traffic to your site (an upgrade to this is happening right now)

Overall, it’s a very simple, enjoyable experience. I’m not 100 percent pleased with how the site looks on a mobile device or iPhone, but it’s better than anything I could create on my own.

For a smaller newspaper or media company, it’s an easy way to get your site on mobile devices (and even make some money off of it).

For bigger sites, it’s a way to quickly create a site around an important topic (especially one that takes people away from their computers – like a hurricane). The Houston Chronicle created a mobile site during Hurricane Ike.

Paltalk is a web site that offers instant messaging, group video calls and chat rooms – all for free.

How do I know this? Certainly not because I was searching for a solution to my instant messaging and group video needs. I know because I received this video via email:

Notice the video doesn’t mention Paltalk. But when you decide to forward the video to a friend, you find out about Paltalk.

The video was created by a “buzz and communication” company called Vanksen/Culture Buzz. They offer a 100,000 view minimum guarantee on their videos, and they say their campaigns are 269-times more efficient than video banners.

So has it worked? I would argue it has (since I’m writing about it). But I’m more interested in the advertising agency. I poked around on their site for a little bit, and came across this great presentation on marketing 2.0.

If you do nothing else, jump to slide 28 to begin their list of 8 best practices in word of mouth marketing:

Ultimate Shawn Johnson Gallery

One huge advantage newspapers have over all of the competition is the quality of our photographs. So how do we take better advantage of that?

Obviously producing daily or weekly or monthly “best-of” photo galleries makes sense. But here’s another idea: Tap into our vast archives of photos.

Two photo galleries at DesMoinesRegister.com have accounted for more than 4.5 million page views in the past two and a half months. That’s more than 8 percent of all traffic to our sites in that time.

The galleries: Best of Flood Photos and Ultimate Shawn Johnson Gallery.

A couple things made these successful:

• They were popular topics where we had a lot of great photos.
• The galleries included A LOT of photos – more than 200 flood photos and 300 Shawn Johnson photos.
• They were promoted well – and promoted often.

And I would argue we are not yet doing enough to take advantage of this success. There are plenty of areas where we can see similar success. Iowa Hawkeyes and Iowa State Cyclones football comes to mind right away.

In those areas, we have an archive of thousands of photos going back decades. It would take some work to scan them all in, but clearly there would be page views to be found.

This is clearly a lesson learned for us. We will continue to look for ways to use “ultimate” and “best of” photo galleries in the future.