NYTimes.com has launched the Polling Place Photo Project, its bid to document the election year with photos taken by its readers.
The Times is asking for submissions of every polling location in America during the 2008 primaries and general election, so that it can compile an archive of voting in the US.
Images of the New Hampshire primaries have already been uploaded to the developing site.
Wall Street Journal Online launched today a multimedia feature for Chinese readers called ‘Beautiful Country’ – the Chinese name for America.
Li Yuan will write a column and provide video commentary describing how American business culture differs from that in China.
Both will appear in English and Chinese on wsj.com and chinese.wsj.com
Interactive maps and graphics will supplement the commentary.
More on the PR.
Mirror Group Newspapers digital head Paul Hood wants to add a ‘personalised and localised’ service to the revamp and development of the news Mirror.co.uk site.
Hood revealed details of his digital strategy to NMA. The plan to catch up with rival tabloid newspapers, like the Mail and the Sun, who have shot away in the race of online popularity, is to use the national newspaper site as “a starting point for web usage”.
The Guardian may be adopting strategies to make itself more Facebook-friendly but the lack of truly local geographical networks on the social networking site makes it more difficult for smaller papers to make great use of it.
The UK currently has 17 regional networks that users can become part of, here they are:
The regional networks, which unsurprisingly centre on larger towns and cities, offer reporters a great ‘in’ to the online community on their patch. A reporter working for the Manchester Evening News, for instance, or one of its smaller titles in the Greater Manchester area is at a distinct advantage over a reporter working on a paper in a smaller town:
Just a brief, cursory glance at the Manchester group throws up leads for several potential stories amongst its 500,000 plus members. The ‘See what’s popular’ feature and the discussion board make it a simple place to seed stories as well as one in which to ask for information and pick up leads. But where would you go if you lived in Burton on Trent?
Burton is a town in Staffordshire that – if you’ve defining it in terms of Facebook regions – is slap bang between Nottingham and West Midlands. Not much use then if you’re a reporter on the Burton Mail.
Burton has 103 groups related to it on Facebook – a lot of ground to cover for any hack – but like many other towns across the UK it has no network and Facebook doesn’t allow users to establish there own networks. Users have to make that request to the site:
If Facebook gave it’s users the ability to create these networks themselves it would solve a lot of headaches, but don’t expect that to happen in a hurry. So come on reporters on papers in Burton, Derby, Reading, Cardiff, Norwich and the like. Get a campaign going to get your town recognised as a network on Facebook. It can make the day job a hell of a lot simpler.
World’s shortest post…
Nearly three quarters of online publishers see the benefit of developing vertical search engines as a way to claw back online communities from Google, a study published last month has claimed.
E-consultancy – with Convera – conducted a survey of search behaviours with over 500 professional and business internet users.
(Vertical search report – register here to get sent it)
As part of the study it asked 116 online publishers what benefits vertical search would bring.
Nearly 75 per cent of respondents to the question suggested one advantage of offering vertical search across their websites would be to reclaim online communities from Google. Forty two per cent felt this would be a major benefit.
Nearly 94 per cent of publishers felt that vertical search would also benefit sites through improving authority and enhancing brand awareness.
Keeping users on site (87 per cent) and potential to monetise though advertising (83 per cent) also ranked highly as benefits.
The online publishers felt the major disadvantages of vertical search were the hassle of support and maintenance – 71 per cent of respondents saw it as a downside – and that it may point users toward competitors – 69 per cent.
Times Online will tomorrow launch the Times Health Club, its new community website for people wanting to stay fit, loose weight and eat well. Here’s a screen shot of the new site:
The community aspects will allow members to enter profiles, contribute to forums and send messages to one another. The Health Club will also carry editorial on living well, offer advice and allow members to keep diaries on food, exercise, weight loss and other issues.
The site has been developed with the team behind the Saturday health section Body and Soul, and will contain content from the supplement.
Thanks to Cybersoc for drawing attention to Tweet Scan, a site that allows you to keyword search public Twitter messages – another useful addition which makes it even less arbitrary and more newsworthy.
Twitter’s credo as a mainstream news device has been growing over the last few months. In September it launched a tracking service that allowed users to follow phrases on mobiles and through IM and it was used to good effect to follow real time reports of last year’s fires in East London and the Californian bush.
Robin makes the point that it’s a great resource for journalists looking for firsthand accounts from people close to events. To that I’d add it’s ability to mix professional and non-pro accounts around a topic. It’s short nature also lends particularly well to reporting traffic problems and other necessary travel information.
How I really want to see it used though is by a UK news publisher, be it national, regional or local, on a breaking news story. Be bold, I say.
Get an RSS feed from a Twitter search term embedded into a blog or on the news pages updating the user with alerts from the public and other news sources about breaking news events.
Spare a thought for the staff at The Post in Cincinnati. The local paper had been publishing for 126 years but on New Year’s Eve it printed its last edition and by New Year’s Day a web-only version had risen from the ashes to replace it – although staffed by just a smattering of former employees.
Just two reporters are expected to work fulltime on the new website from a former staff of fifty. With the shortfall in stories being made up by freelancers, the wires, the public and the local TV station.
So you’d think, given the time of year and the circumstances the paper found itself in, there would be call for a bit of a wet New Year’s wake? Not even that.
Gawker has a memo from management to the staff detailing the grim realities and processes they have to go through as the newspaper shuts down. It details how staff are even unable to drown their sorrows at their own leaving do:
“John Vissman will arrange for food, beverages and treats for all as we get the last editions out, clean out our desks and say good-bye. But . . . tempting as it may be . . . please do not bring any alcoholic beverages into the newsroom. Let’s go out like the professionals we have been these last, difficult weeks.”
Pro or not, I don’t think one for the road would have been too much to ask…