NAA Digital Edge Blog

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.

Connecting Facebook, Newspaper Site Comments in Cedar Rapids

A group of Medill graduate students, working on a project for the Cedar Rapids Gazette, have created a new Web site giving Facebook users a number of ways to comment on the news. The site is at www.newsmixer.us.

News Mixer feeds news stories and other content from the newspaper's region. Readers can both read stories there and comment in one of three ways - by asking a question (which the reporter or other readers can answer), by commenting (called a "quip") or by sending a letter to the editor. Readers can login with their Facebook username and password, and let their News Mixer comments appear on their Facebook page, or they can share stories through Facebook. The system takes advantage of Facebook Connect.

Editor & Publisher reported the Cedar Rapids Gazette has applied for a Knight News Challenge grant to continue developing the project. The project came out of Medill's Team Crunchberry, which includes computer programmers as well as graduate journalism students.

Oakland Press Trains Citizen Journalists

The Oakland Press is training citizen journalists through its own Oakland Press Institute for Citizen Journalism.

The newspaper is "offering anyone who is interested - from high school students to retirees - instruction in news writing, videography, basics of reporting for news and sports, and still photography. For those who complete the instruction, we offer the opportunity to get your work published online or in the print edition." Some institute graduates may even join the newspaper's roster of freelance journalists.

The classes will be led by Oakland Press newspaper and online editors and will be scheduled based on interest and demand.

The Lawrence Journal-World started a similar initiative in 2007.

Update - 2:05 p.m.: I just heard from Glenn Gilbert, executive editor at the newspaper. Gilbert said this:

"In some ways it will be a step back to what readers still want: extensive calendars of events, police and fire calls and local government and school information. A lot of this information has been historically provided by the print media, both daily and weekly. But there is also a desire for social networking outlets locally and information pertaining to status -- i.e., senior citizen, Baby Boomer, youth, parent, pet owner, shopper, investor and worker."

He continued, "We are looking for citizen journalists to provide blogs, expertise in particular subject areas, videos of sports and other events, government meeting coverage, human interest stories and even police blotter coverage in a more extensive way than we now provide it."

Gilbert said part of the move to incorporate more citizen journalism is driven by the economic downturn. But this new initiative also provides a real opportunity for the newspaper.

"Often, ordinary citizens are better positioned to tell us what is actually happening in their community and how people feel about things, and what is important to them. We are hoping they are increasingly interested in telling those stories. There is a fascination with the news-gathering process that we are hoping to tap into."

Spokesman.com Relaunches

The Spokane, Wash. Spokesman-Review launched a new Web site this week. In a welcome note posted during the primary beta period earlier this month, Ryan Pitts wrote, "So what you see here isn't a simple cosmetic redesign; it's a complete overhaul of our web technology - from the servers to the database to the framework we're building on. We chose all these things because they give us a flexible platform that helps us build new things quickly. Yes, we need a flagship site with a little bit of everything, but we also want to give you smaller, more focused sites that inform our community, and help people who live here interact with each other." (The framework, by the way, is based on Django.)

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