5 months of work come together for me today.

Starting at 9AM this morning, we’ll migrate http://www.wspa.com from ExpressionEngine over to an in-house built, Django-based CMS called Duke.

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Witness the madness that is Josh.

I’m only putting this photo up because he told me not to.

So there.

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I have a fun weekend planned. NewsML Feed Format Specification and HTTP Gateway Specification reviews. Awesome.

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I’m updating a high school football package for some of our sites this morning. As I was reading through the audit that details how the old package is being used, I saw this:

“the link takes you to an AP video page, which unfortunately is now running a story about the slaying of a woman believed to be a prostitute”

Murder and hookers. Yep. Sounds like my high school football team. How about yours? I’m guessing someone is getting a phone call this morning to correct that link.

[image from http://www.sportsactionfigure.com/blog/—If you’re into sports figure collectibles, check out this site. Although the last update was in 2007, it’s well written.]

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A joint study from Ball State University and the University of Nevada, Reno says that newsrooms aren’t making commitments to their blogs and their efforts may be a waste of time.

The study found that “most newspaper staff-produced blogs contained a small number of postings, failed to create much interaction between the blogger and the audience and attracted few audience comments.”

Ball State journalism professor Lori Demo goes on to suggest that a reporter’s time may be better spent elsewhere. In light of the lack of audience participation, “Newspapers might consider spending staff time monitoring blogs as sources of news rather than trying to re-create the blogosphere on their Web sites.”

I don’t fully agree with the study’s findings, although it did focus primarily on political blogs.

Over the past 5 years, I’ve had a hand in setting up 100s of blogs for Media General’s properties throughout the southeast.

While I’m not at liberty to share our actual traffic stats, I can say that some have been very successful in terms of audience loyalty, traffic, comments and ultimately, brand equity.

Two better examples include Otterblog, written by Ken Otterbourg, the Managing Editor at the Winston-Salem Journal) and Barticles, written by Bart Hinkle, Deputy Editor of the Editorial Page at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Another, now defunct blog, was Melissa Ruggieri’s IdolChatter, which covered American Idol. Talk about traffic spikes!

Of course, not all of the blogs have been successful. Who can forget the kind words that the Richmond bloggers so eloquently bestowed on the Times-Dispatch’s “Community blogs” when they launched them:

• http://richmond.mytimesdispatch.com/
• http://henrico.mytimesdispatch.com/
• http://chesterfield.mytimesdispatch.com/
• http://hanover.mytimesdispatch.com/
• http://goochland.mytimesdispatch.com/
• http://powhatan.mytimesdispatch.com/
• http://tricities.mytimesdispatch.com/

[I wish those would just go away. Now. Forever.]

John criticized them back in Feb. ‘07 with these words:

As for the paper’s new community weblogs, I fall back to my go-to move—with a few exceptions, there is no voice there. A bunch of regurgitated press releases does not a weblog make. I have a mild impulse to remind myself to give them a chance to get established, but you know what—a news organization that has put a lot of thought and energy into launching a new product should get it right the first time. And the TD doesn’t get it right. Not by a long shot.

In fairness though, we’re not the only ones with bad blogs. Other local media outlets have them too:

richmond.com’s RBlog - No offense meant to Jon and the rest of the team at richmond.com but how you guys were voted as having Richmond’s best blog in Richmond Magazine’s annual “Best & Worst” issue two years in a row, I’ll never understand.

WTVR’s Weather Blog -  Ah, good ol’ WorldNow. If there’s no RSS feed and no way to comment, is it still a blog?

NBC12’s Weather Blog - Is it a blog? Or a forum? Or just the forecast? I can’t tell but if they ever decide to connect with the audience on there, they’ve got a lot of potential.

WRIC - Yeah, no blogs here but they do link to others and that’s a good start.

So what makes the good ones good? I’d say the top two factors are commitment and voice. Add to that a dash of humility, some transparency, and a little personalization and you’ve got something going.

But even with a winning formula in hand, does that mean that media outlets should?

A recent report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism suggests that blogs reach and attract much smaller audiences than expected. Despite their proliferation, blogs are not used by most Americans as news sources.

What’s more, a Zogby Poll released at the end of last year showed that blogs were at the bottom of the list as a source of important news for most people. Interestingly enough though, the results of the same poll showed that “55% believe blogging will be an important aspect of journalism in the future. An overwhelming number (74%) saw amateur citizen reporters, as opposed to established media outlets, playing a key role.”

Should media outlets ditch the blogs and get back to solid reporting and re-establish their space in the media ecosystem?

Your thoughts?

Related: The Lost Art of Reporting

[photo credit: Sister72]

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I just talked to a co-worker, Ryan Squire, the Managing Editor at NBC-4 WCMH-TV, our NBC station in Columbus, OH. Ryan and his crew recently fired up a Twitter account for the station.

Ryan understands the value of Twitter as a communications tool for the station but he and the staff are taking it one step further by maintaining personal accounts which let you look in on the inner working of the newsroom.

Recent staff tweets include:

LaurenDiedrich: Is working on a super secret sweeps piece!
NBCSquire: Working with the desk to cover several afternoon shoots, including a cat stuck in a tree for 5 days!
Jason_WCMH: Getting details regarding a Washington County deputy that has been shot in the face with a .22 caliber rifle. Suspect is on the loose.

They’ve also received some praise on the270, a central Ohio resource site.

Channel 4 twitters! Much like the Dispatch does.

But what’s so much cooler, is that so does some of WCMH’s employees. I follow them, and it seems like I’m ease dropping a bit as to what’s on tap for the evening news. But that’s a good thing. Because they’re *building a relationship* with me (whether they know it or not). When they say they’re sending the feed of some report for editing, I want to watch it. Thus, I’m going to watch Channel 4’s newscast over the others.

Cheers to Channel 4! Now I’m off to see if the other stations are a cool as them.

Nice work Ryan!

I wonder if we’ll see any other outlets adopt Twitter soon.

Would you follow them?

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Yay Kristen!

After stints at both the Newseum and Discovery Communications, a former co-worker at Media General’s Interactive Media Division landed a job with USA Today. She’s now working as “a design developer building rich media interactives”. Right on.

You can check out her latest work here: 5 keys to the Democratic primaries in Ohio and Texas

Nice pie charts, eh?

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We’re going gangbusters around work with ExpressionEngine these days. Almost everyone here, from the PMs to the developers to the support team, has something on their plate related to EE. Some people are busier than others though, especially Clayton.

Want to guess how I know he’s super-busy today?

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I found this on one of our printers at work today. I knew Media General was doing some belt tightening but come on.

That message was followed by this one:

Ghosts in the machine. We haven’t seen Ray Bayly around here in years. Perhaps he’s come back to haunt us.

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