DigitalEdge

Welcome to the Digital Edge Blog! The Digital Edge Blog focuses on developments, trends, best practices and more in newspaper digital media. The blog launched in 2006 (archives before August 2008 are here). We look forward to reading your comments and contributions to the Digital Edge Blog. Questions? E-mail Beth Lawton at beth.lawton@naa.org.

Detroit Covers Detroit

Have questions about the newspaper delivery changes in Detroit? Both newspaper Web sites have a ton of information on them, and they seem to be doing well communicating with their readers about the changes.

Both newspaper sites, at freep.com and detroitnews.com, have large buttons on them to click on for information about the changes, streaming video of this morning's news conference, blogs, and places for readers to submit questions.

Unlike the Christian Science Monitor's switch from daily to weekly, the Detroit model is much more hybrid. Single copy sales will continue every day, home delivery will continue some days and the Web will get a boost. Read Rick Edmond's Poynter column on the math.

Telegraph Power Outage Map

With the massive power outages in New Hampshire, Vermont and western Massachusetts - thousands are still without power five days after the ice storm - the Nashua Telegraph has launched a map-based commenting platform.

The feature on the Telegraph site allows local residents to report outages (or power restorations!), map them and leave comments. Here's a sampling of some comments left today:

• No power in Milford NH on Savage Rd and parts of Mason Rd with no signs of any PSNH trucks since the storm
• Here we are on day 5, and Route 122, the main north/south road through Hollis, still has no power north of Silver Lake. PSNH uses the analogy of a tree when describing how they prioritize repair work, giving attention to trunks before twigs. In case they're wondering, Route 122 is not a twig.
• I got the call at work yesterday afternoon... we got power. Around 9:30 last night we were back in the dark. We're now the only street off Dracut Rd in south Hudson without power. Uggg!

Click here to see the map.

No word yet on whether the power company itself has been reviewing this feature on the newspaper's site.

Update 3:03 p.m. -- We just heard back from Damon Kiesow, managing editor - online for the Nashua Telegraph. Here's the e-mail he sent:

We have a few different things going on:

Twitter stream: http://twitter.com/nashuatelegraph

Tell us if you have power:  http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081216/NEWSBLOG/812169184

Live news updates: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=newsblog

We are re-tweeting updates from readers and also sending out reader submitted updates that come in via e-mail and to our comments section. Our power company is also very actively tweeting at twitter.com/psnh and they do follow us. But at the moment, they have doubled the number of followers we have. They went from 112 to over 1,000 in the past few days. So I am monitoring their stream and pulling updates and retweeting from there as well.

We have been using the feedback from reader comments and our Twitter followers to deploy reporters and photographers as well as a tool to generate questions for PSNH representatives when we get them on the phone.

The Google map was created and sent to us by a reader @blalor. We embedded it in a breaking news page and it has 30 or so updates so far. Not sure by how many different readers. We are not adding that many ourselves mostly because the stream of updates from readers (over 200 comments or e-mails today) is just far too many to keep up with. Not to mention the power/no power situation is changing so quickly that it is impossible for any report to be very accurate.

Overall, we have added 30-40 Twitter followers in the past few days and traffic to the two (Mon & Tues) "Tell us if you have power" articles and comments area alone has been about 5 percent of our traffic the past two days.

New Blog!

I'd also like to point you to the new NAA Public Policy blog. Public policy work is a major component of what we do, and this new blog will keep you updated and informed. Please add it to your RSS reader.(Note: You must be signed in to the NAA Community to access this blog.)

About Beth Lawton