With three websites already launched on a new CMS platform, last Thursday (Nov. 4) marked the fourth. And number four was The Blue Mountain Ealge located in John Day, Oregon.
The platform is with TownNews, and so far, so good. We have five websites left to redesign and launch. Our Daily Astorian site is next in line at the end of next week. This will mark the final daily, with only weeklies left to do.
The interactivity should increase greatly on the sites from our old platform and we are surging ahead into the current century by finally having mobile sites. The sites will play up the great multimedia that our company produces and should engage our community on a higher level.
But, like with any new site, we are having our share of glitches and so far the Eagle community is embracing the new site.
Once a year there lies on the calendar the longest week. It’s not officially named that, but to those that have the pleasure of enduring it, know this to be the law. It’s Round-Up week in a northeastern Oregon town of Pendleton. It just so happens that one of our paper’s, the East Oregonian, call this rustic town home.
We were knee-deep in the smells and sights of a good ol’ rodeo. From Indian horse races, to saddle bronc, to Main Street and carnival festivities, to world-record making parades of horses, Native American pageantry and dance and not to mention we sported the look. Yes, complete attire of cowboy hat, button-down collar shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. We all put long hours, retired to our hotel rooms caked with dirt, sweat and exhaustion.
I will through in the side note, that I truly believe that when in comes to the Round-Up, I am a jinxed individual. This is the third year in a row that my back has gone out right before Round-Up. Last year, I had to miss the festivities as I was under the knife instead getting my back operated on. This year was no different. We left on Monday, back went out just prior on Saturday.
Our most popular video
Through some mis-adventures at the Wendy’s restaurant the first night in town, that we were seriously thinking we needed to go straight to urgent care and get a round of antibiotics after eating there, to the grumpy old couple that nagged and waved their fist at us for setting up our camera to the right side of them to shoot the Westward Ho! Parade and we were blocking their view of the street which they were sitting on the curb, to catching on film the true spirit of the famous Let’er Buck phrase on Main Street Friday night, just to name a few.
I will admit a pretty miserable week, where my stubborness had the better of me and I pushed myself too hard. Which landed me the opportunity to sit in my hotel room during the championships and edit video on Saturday, instead of partaking. I was never so happy for Sunday to come when we were able to leave.
This year was the centennial celebration for the Pendleton Round-Up. So we had to go big. We brought on board four freelance photographers (Joe Duty, Cody Duty, Joe Tierney and Hollis Officer) from around the nation, two multimedia members from Astoria, two interns, an IT person, a couple more to help with a post-round-up book and the many talented staff members of the East Oregonian to pull off some pretty amazing coverage for a small newspaper company.
A little national exposure doesn’t hurt anyone. Neither does tooting your own horn from time to time.
I’ve written about our use of the GameChanger application during our state baseball championship coverage in June and on our discovery of this cool app back in May. But this time we got a little plug in the trade publication News & Tech for our use of the app. In the July/August 2010 edition, tucked away on page 49, “New Services Changes Game for Ore.Publisher,” gives a good overview to what this app has done for us.
A link is below to a pdf of the article. Unfortunately, the story is only available through the e-edition on the News & Tech site, so I downloaded just that page to make available.
We hope to use this app to a greater extent next spring and summer. Since we discovered the platform near the end of the spring sport season, we didn’t have a lot of time to really play with it or market it well to our community.
We continually look for great partnerships and resources. It’s always a treat when we are able to implement our great finds.
They say things come in threes. Don’t know if that is necessarily a good thing. In this case, it may be a blessing in disguise or a headache of great proportion. I tend to lean towards the later.
Launching a redesign of a website on a new Content Management System (CMS) is an enormous task in itself. Taking on two of them will nearly drive you insane. We went for the trifecta last week. Not only did we launch three websites in the matter of four days, but two of them were on the same day.
I now plead insanity. Temporary at the minimum.
The biggest lesson? We are taking a new approach for the remaining five sites that we have and working solely on one at a time. The biggest relief? Three sites are launched. Minus the tweaking, fixing the glitches and swimming in the flood of user feedback and frustrations of parts not working properly. Just responding to those that don’t like change is a full time job in and of itself.
One of the things that chips away at the ol’ headache is finding all the little things that need to be done on each site. Stumbling upon all the different nuances of each site that you somehow forgot about. Changing feeds, double an triple checking links, mobile pages, etc. Trying to figure out how to get something to work on the new platform that you had to find a ridiculous work around on the old site and you shake your head in disbelief of how in the world you were able to get it to work. Not to mention still learning how to work (or muddle) your way through the new CMS, all the while crossing your fingers you are performing the tasks right.
So yes, it has felt like I should be committed or at least heavily medicated the last few weeks from the work world. Throw on top of it, my son started kindergarten in the middle of last week and I’m getting ready to head out east to play cowgirl for a week while helping with online and multimedia tasks for the East Oregonian during the Pendleton Round-Up. Just finished out the Round-Up section and the planning of coverage. There’s my cherry on top of that smooth white canvas icing of the straight jacket I now find myself in.
I’m proud of my online team for taking home three awards at the annual Better Newspaper Contest organized by the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association for work published in 2009.
Not only did we get second place for best website (www.dailyastorian.com), the newspaper earned two other online awards. Jason Nagy’s video of Seaside’s giant pumpkin weigh-off placed second for best multimedia element and his coverage of the Sixth Street house fire placed third for online coverage of breaking news.
Overall The Daily Astorian earned 19 awards, and placed second in the general excellence category. The Daily Astorian competed against other Oregon daily newspapers with circulations of 10,000 or less.
Photographer Alex Pajunas earned four awards, including two first-place trophies. His coverage of the plane crash involving Edith Henningsgaard Miller won first place for spot news and his photo of pelicans surrounding a canoe earned first for feature photos. His shot of cross country runner Leah Vargas spattered with mud placed second in the sports photo category and his photopage from a U.S. Coast Guard flight to a remote lighthouse placed third.
Reporter Deeda Schroeder also earned four awards. Her story about the Coast Guard’s work on the remote Tatoosh Island lighthouse earned second place for feature writing. She placed second in the education writing category for a two-part series on alternative school students and third in the lifestyles category for her coverage of the Fisher Poets Gathering.
She teamed with Cassandra Profita to earn first place for enterprise reporting for coverage of the housing authority’s Section 8 voucher scandal.
Profita placed third for business reporting with a feature on Christmas crab.
The entire newroom staff contributed to a two-part series on the economy that won first place for business reporting. The newspaper’s five-part series on the North Coast Hispanic community placed second for enterprise reporting.
Reporter Sandra Swain earned two awards. She teamed with Joe Gamm to place second in spot news reporting for coverage of Miller’s plane crash. She teamed with Deputy Managing Editor Sue Cody to place third for lifestyle reporting for a feature on the Astoria High School Class of 1959 reunion.
Managing Editor Patrick Webb placed second for column writing with a portfolio of three columns.
Max Charlton placed third for graphics for a design demonstrating the North Coast’s regional highway hazards.
The Lives They Lived, the newspaper’s annual tribute edition featuring people who died during the prior year, placed third for special sections. It was coordinated by Coast Weekend Editor Kathleen Strecker and designed by Prepress Manager John Bruijn.
The East Oregonian earned six first-place awards. The EO competed against other Oregon daily newspapers with circulations of 10,000 or less.
Top honors were given to the EO staff for its 2009 Round-Up magazine, “Women of the Round-Up,” and photographers E.J. Harris, Joe Duty and Joe Tierney for their four-page Round-Up photo essay.
First-place awards were presented to the EO for best feature story, “Switched at Birth” by senior reporter Kathy Aney; best column, “Home Front” by Terry Murry; best sports story, “Healing, One Yard at a Time” by Owen R. Smith; and best spot news coverage, Kathy Aney and Phil Wright for Fleetwood closing stories.
Second-place honors won by the EO included best feature photo, “Into the Fog Below” by E.J. Harris; best graphics, “Who Will Survive?” by E.J. Harris and Daniel Wattenburger; best photo essay, “Risky Business,” by E.J. Harris; and best coverage of business and economic issues, “Who Will Survive?” by Eric Florip and Kathy Aney.
Taking home third-place for best sports story, “I Play for Him,” was EO Sports Editor Matt Entrup.
The Blue Mountain Eagle (: Weeklies, 3,500 or less circulation) took first place in Best Special Section or Issue (staff), Best Coverage of Business and Economic Issues (Angel Carpenter, Scotta Callister), Best Editorial Page (Scotta Callister) and Best Writing (Scotta Callister). They nabbed second place for Best Headline Writing (staff) and third place for Best Coverage of Business and Economic Issues (Scotta Callister), Best Editorial (Scotta Callister) and Best Enterprise Reporting (Scotta Callister).
The Wallowa County Chieftain (CircGroup F: Weeklies, 3,500 or less circulation) took second place for Best Feature Photo (Kathleen Ellyn) and Best Sports Photo (Hector del Castillo) and third place for Best Feature Story: General (Elane Dickenson).
The Capital Press competed in the Associate Member Publication contest. There were no circulation divisions in this contest. They took home first place in Target Audience (staff), Photography (Mark Rozin), Writing (Mateusz Perkowski), and Graphics (Will Koenig). And second place in Writing (Mitch Lies).
The town of Astoria recently went gaga for Goonies in celebration of the movie’s 25th anniversary. Goonies from all over invaded the town, including some of the original cast. It was definitely Astoria’s time.
We tried to do the event justice, but had competing elements that weekend. My digital media crew was at the state baseball championships covering three teams for the company. But over all we created a great variety of multimedia, posters, commemorative tabs and stories from the Goonies event. Below are links to all the goodies we got. We posted everything on our Daily Astorian facebook page, offered the posters on craigslist – after someone was trying to sell our special edition tab on there for $9 the morning it came out.
The Digital Media Handbook Part 1 was compiled by members of the SPJ’s Digital Media Committee, amongst them Jennifer Peebles, deputy editor of non-profit online newspaper Texas Watchdog and Jeff Achen, multimedia producer and online editor of US community newspaper website Thisweeklive.com.
The guide covers tips for livestreaming on a news site, writing headlines for the web and using social networks as reporting tools. Topics such as handling user-generated content, working with PDFs and creating interactive maps and slideshows are also included in the 48-page guide.
