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Need for Speed |
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Lost in Myspace Need for Speed
By Kathy Miedema
In many ways, the news that Read This!, the teen page at the San Jose Mercury News, was losing its space in the print publication wasn’t much of a shock. It’s been a year of tumult and rejiggering for many newspapers, but especially those formerly owned by Knight Ridder.
Still, we weren’t prepared. And we had only two weeks to figure out a whole new presentation for our teen program – one in which we were almost exclusively online.
The three of us who work on the Read This! program – main coordinator Natalie Martinez, designer Jeff Hindenach and I, copy editor Kathy Miedema – realized that we had to move fast. But before anything else, we needed to find a Web platform. The Web site where our content was published was never the primary place to find us, the address was complicated and we knew our readers wouldn’t follow us there.
We found an ally in the newsroom, someone with Web savvy, know-how and power to help us accomplish our vision. He registered ReadThisonline.com, our new online platform, and found a program with a simple, clean design that was user-friendly.
Our teen staff reviewed a long list of Web sites, and Jeff helped them develop a wish list and set about implementing it. He taught himself Flash and began learning Java, so that he could handle more technical and design aspects of the new site as we got going.
Natalie led the drive for content. In addition to the regular articles that appeared in print, we now had the opportunity to expand our blogs, do podcasts and create audio and video files. She just needed to convince the kids – tech-savvy or not – to give these new mediums a try. While many of them were certainly familiar with watching or listening to video and audio files, they had never created such content themselves, at least not for publication by a newspaper.
I began a marketing push to get the new URL out there. Letters went out to every journalism program and school in our circulation area. On my home computer, I created decals for T-shirts, bumper stickers, smaller stickers and fliers. Natalie bought a button maker on the Web, the kind one would use for a political campaign, and got her husband in on the action, cutting a design from Jeff that read “ReadThisonline.com” into circles.
All of this was done on the cheap, because we were paying for it ourselves. But we were determined to succeed in leading the frenzied drive to launch the site and get things rolling quickly.
The kids were a big part of the marketing push. They all took stickers, buttons and decals to make T-shirts. We also schooled our staff members on how to post the new URL on classroom chalkboards, morning announcements and message boards in local coffee shops. The kids also posted the new address on their MySpace and Facebook pages, and former staff members joined the push as well. Anyone with a blog wrote about what was happening, and many of the kids got family, friends and even former sources to write to the Mercury News to question the decision to make our program online only.
While it was too late to change the decision, their letter campaign helped spread the word about the change. One girl sent an e-mail to her entire school – 1,500 students – inviting people to check out the site for our “hit” party on the launch day, when we all invited everyone we knew to visit ReadThisonline.com.
It’s been a mad rush, and ReadThisonline.com is definitely a work in progress. Natalie continues to build on the content, and convinced some staff members to try out the video camera. Jeff continues to chip away at that wish list. And I’ve been working on copy-editing all of the content, because it no longer runs through the Mercury News copy desk now that it’s online. Much of our work happens away from the office, because we all have other jobs in the newsroom that demand most of our attention.
But as every youth section editor knows, a project like this succeeds because of the people leading it. And as we’ve told our kids, we're not about to give up because of this change in direction for the program.
So until we hear otherwise, we consider our program a success – still – and the response we get from readers who offer feedback on our site seems to support that. In April, we’ll celebrate our program’s third anniversary. That will be a good time to remind Read This! readers, Mercury News readers and our fellow staff members – many of whom seemed to think we’d go away quietly and quickly – that we’re still here, and we’ve come a long way in just a few months.
Kathy Miedema, a copy editor at the San Jose Mercury News, assists with the paper’s Read This! program for teens. She can be reached at miedema94587@lycos.com.
Issue and Answers
By Bill Norton
TOPIC: What are things to think about when considering a Web site for teens?
Find out specifically what you will be doing and when you will be doing it, and if it adds one more minute to your work day.
Meanwhile, who has say on what goes where, and when, on the page? Will you do it? Will your page be the responsibility of a Web page builder? What priority will your page have with that person? Will that person be working for you, with you or for the Web only?
Will the page update daily or weekly? The workloads are vastly different.
Will you blog? Will you have any form of reader feedback? Will any of this need to be monitored? And if yes, by whom?
How will the content get from print to the Web? Will computers automatically transfer your work to the Web in a preset design, or will you have to go back into the design system and resend work to the Web? How about illustrations and photos? How much more will you be engaged in this?
Will your program be expected to publish more content, now that Web space is more or less infinite? Where will that content originate? Who will track it? When? Will your students be expected to generate more content? How will your students react to this a few months down the road when the newness wears off?
If you generate more content for the Web than what goes in print, who will copy-edit? If your students are doing more for you, will that create friction with high school journalism advisers?
If you go daily, what are the bosses’ expectations? How much content has to be fresh?
Can you archive on the Web? How much? Can you, for example, create a hyperlink in a byline that will direct the reader to an archive of that reporter’s earlier work? Or a photographer’s portfolio?
If you add photo galleries or slide shows, who edits the photos? Who builds the gallery/slide show? Who posts? How are the cutlines written? How are they posted?
Will you add video? (If so, ask yourself the questions in the previous paragraph.)
Will you add audio? (Again, ask the same questions.)
Will you link to high school papers? Will you link to a social networking site (MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, etc.)?
Who will be responsible the first time one of your links leads an adult to a site that provokes a call to your editor?
Bill Norton is editor of TeenStar at The Kansas City (Mo.) Star. He can be reached at nortonb@kcstar.com.
Lost in Myspace
By Amy Robinson
Ah, MySpace, Facebook and Xanga. If you work with teens, you probably know them well.
Or maybe you have heard some troubling things about social networking sites – Internet stalkers, cyberbullying and nasty viruses.
Social networking sites can be used for good, though, as long as you apply common sense. So if you have a youth product, don’t just sit back and ignore this powerful tool – embrace it.
The teen fellows at the 2006 NAA Foundation Young Reader Conference in St. Louis emphasized the importance of such sites. They and all of their friends have a page on one of these sites, they said, and noted that some teens check their pages more often then they do their e-mail.
As a result, social networking sites are a valuable addition to your arsenal even if your product already has its own Web site. Use social networking to connect with your staff members or to promote your product.
“It's an innovative way to contact the staff if they don't regularly check e-mails or ignore mailings,” says Whitney Burdette, a writer for FlipSide at The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette and a 2005 teen fellow. “It also keeps us informed if we can’t make it to the meetings.”
It’s easy to set up a page on one of these sites, even if you’re not the most tech-savvy person at your newspaper. And if your newspaper is like mine and has a ban on using social networking sites at the office out of concerns about computer viruses, talk to your tech department about installing a browser like Firefox on your computer. That’s what my tech department did for me, and we haven’t had any problem with viruses since then.
Once you sign up for an account on one of these sites, it will help you do the work. Here are some tips on the different categories you may cover:
• Privacy settings: It’s crucial to turn on “Comments – approve before posting.” That way, you’ll see everything before it goes on the page, and you can deny posting of anything offensive or inappropriate.
• Graphics: Adding art will definitely attract more visitors to your page. If you want, choose a static image, like your product’s logo, or add several from your print or Web product and rotate them. If your program sponsors live events, like a battle of the bands or a teen day at a local hangout, take photos and post some on your page.
• Interests: You can leave these fields blank, but some youth products, like Voices at the Reading (Pa.) Eagle, have used them to promote reviews that teens have written for their sections.
• Schools: There is no limit to the number of schools you can have, so if the schools in your coverage area are listed, add them.
With the basics done, your page is ready for viewing. But if you’re so inclined, there are several other things you can do to make it more appealing.
First, change the background. The default color scheme is boring and pegs you as such. Do an Internet search and you’ll discover plenty of resources to help you fix this.
Use the blog if the site offers one. If you have a small weekly section with just a few articles, you can post stories from your section in the blog. If you have a larger section, use the blog to promote content and to let people know where they can find the product.
A calendar is another helpful feature, especially if the main intention of your page is to communicate with your staff. The calendar can be an additional place to spread the word about deadlines, staff meetings, product distribution dates and special activities.
Next, if the site has a “friends” function, change your top friends. Forget “top eight” – expand yours to include any staff member who chooses to add a profile and image to your page. Staff members may return the favor by adding your icon to their “top friends,” so viewers can click on it to visit your page.
“Once I had a friend over and I was checking my profile,” FlipSider Sarah Abbott recalls. “She noticed FlipSide on my top eight and asked to see the page, so now she’s spreading the word.”
Plus, a large friends list has some nice benefits for your staff.
“It's a wonderful way to get in touch with anyone we work with,” FlipSider Alisha Bentley says.
Amy Robinson is editor of FlipSide at The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette. She can be reached at flipside@wvgazette.com.
