As promised, here is a quick critique on how we did today promoting our "only online" content today:
On one hand:
1A: Video icon on hunting story was included. Perfect.
1B: A Varsity refer in the rail was a must on this football championship day.
On the other:
4A: The story on the shooting in Point has a gallery (although a couple of days old). Despite the fact that this gallery has been posted for a bit, we could promote to it as coverage of the shooting continues (see my note about the new furniture piece below).
3A: We missed an opportunity to promote a video interview with the winner of the Altrusa award. This wasn't on the multimedia plan part of our online budget, but was included in the budget line for the story. The good news is we did include an embedded link to the video in the online story, and kudos to whomever added it.
GO! page 4: Ann Liebmann's columns and tips are collected in a special section on our site. We should refer to this special section and her blog using the new furniture each time she writes for us (along with the reference in her column tagline).
GO! page 6&7: We missed an opportunity to include an icon promoting a gallery of photos from a 'Nickel and Dimed' rehearsal.
Finally:
1A: The Edgar football story is a good example of a place where the newly created online furniture could be used (I've dropped a copy on everyone's desk). This furniture (glorified factbox/referbox) could point readers towards the existing galleries, planned updates, user gallery or any number of additional "online only" elements.
The 3A feature obit is another good example. We have a somewhat neglected Remembrance special section online. Let's plan to use the new furniture each time we publish a feature obit and promote to obits online and the special section. See the example above.
The question is, how do we communicate what online components we want to promo to each day?
It isn't reasonable to believe that the desk will have, in their heads, a catalog of every video, gallery or extra available online. Is the answer a comprehensive online plan portion of the budget? Is the answer more detailed story budgets that include ties to as many online components as possible? We don't need to refer to, for instance, the Point shooting gallery with every related story, every day. So maybe members of the desk spend fifteen minutes digging for one item to link to on each of their section fronts on the sites each day? Maybe I need to look over the final budget each evening and make suggestions. I'm not sure.
Let me know what you think.
2 comments:
From Mark T.
Seems to me that the person who was responsible for creating the online content should be expected to make a special, easy-to-see note about it on the online budget.
In cases where there's standing online elements such as the Remembrances page or Varsity, I think that should be the desk's oversight to ensure we're consistent in promoting those Web features in print.
Makes sense to me on new content. It's the stuff that's been hanging around for a few days that gets into some gray territory.
— Brian O.
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