Beyond Shovelware

Today and tomorrow, Adam Glenn and I are at the annual conference of the New York Publishers Association -- an organization for community newspapers in the state of NY. All day tomorrow we're hosting a "web site clinic," where newspaper publishers and staff can sit down with us for a free half-hour consultation about their web site.

Here's one of the handouts we're offering:

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BEYOND SHOVELWARE

A strong online presence can enhance your bottom line, as well as the quality of your news, features, and commentary. Why not actively leverage the web to build productive, positive mutual relationships with your readers?

The key to success is to view your site as a vital complement to your print publication -- not a mere sideline or echo. Then, consider how to make your site findable, usable, and interactive.

Currently, most community news sites are little more than “shovelware” (straightforward, unenhanced online republication of print-edition stories). While shovelware is better than having no online presence at all, it’s generally not very engaging.

Here are six examples of creative approaches that could be applied to improve any community news site...

1. Simple content management. We created the web site of the brand-new community newspaper The Hudson Independent (serving Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, NY) using an inexpensive user-friendly host service called Typepad. This and other popular content management systems offer many handy features, such as fast and easy posting, comments (with or without moderation) automatic archiving, easy photo insertion, versatile advertising options, ready-made design templates, RSS feeds, and much more. For another approach using a similar tool see the Washington Post's post.blog.

2. E-mail alerts: Don’t expect people to remember your site -- send them a reminder when you’ve posted fresh content. Just post a simple form on your site so people can supply their e-mail address, then use a service to distribute the e-mail alerts to your list. Service options range from the free Feedblitz to the moderately priced CoolerEmail.com and more.

3. Audio library or show: Hear the best of what your community has to offer. Create simple audio tour guides of your local shopping district, parks, museums, hiking trails, and more. Or record interviews with local personalities with a simple digital voice recorder, or even highly polished news programs or headline summaries. Save that in MP3 format and post it to your site so people can download, listen, and even follow along with their portable media player in hand. Supply an accompanying printable (pdf format) map of the route, with listening points marked. SoundsForSights offers walking and “soundseeing” audio tours for New York City. The Denver Post offers a daily podcast of its top stories.

4. Citizen journalism: Get your audience involved with covering local news – everything from contributing photos, to expanding upon your paper’s stories, to entirely original reporting. Brattleboro, VT, has a lively and popular citizen journalism site, iBrattleboro. Its policies are simple, clear, and useful for enhancing the quality of the citizen journalism they publish. Also, a Boston-area chain of community papers has an innovative citizen journalism effort called Wicked Local.  For larger-scale operations, see YourHub and BackFence.

5. Slideshows: Rather than just publishing individual photos, why not assemble them together into slideshows? The production tools are simple to use, and you can even add audio. The Spartanburg, SC, Herald-Journal’s site, GoUpstate.com, recently published this audio slideshow about a local baseball star. Article by Steve Klein about how that slideshow was made.

6. Interactive maps: The simple and versatile new Gmaps tool from Google lets you easily build online interactive maps that you can annotate with text, data, links, photos, audio, video, and more. ChicagoCrime.org combines Gmaps with a crime database to generate searchable maps. You also can use Gmaps to create maps where visitors can post their own pictures or annotations. One such participatory use of Google Maps is GarbageScout, where people post photos and descriptions of discarded objects currently available for the taking in New York City. The Google Maps Mania blog covers a broad range of examples of how various organizations are using Gmaps.