Covering urban design in the Midwest – An Update from Affiliate Beat Blogger

Below is an update from: Mary Louise Schumacher. 

As I think I mentioned in my introduction as an associate beat blogger, the architecture/urban design part of my beat is quite new.

I have made one decision — to create my network around the subject of urban design. A subject that’s about the literal fabric of the community seems so suited to the beat blogging approach and it lends itself to a wider breadth of voices than, say, a network around visual art would.

In any case, I have been going about the business of reaching out to new sources the old fashioned way, by grabbing quick meetings over coffee and lunch. But, as I make these connections, I’ve been sharing
my vision for a network, which would include architects, city planners, academics, artists, developers, neighborhood association leaders, and so on.

The response has been whole hearted enthusiasm and offers of help. The take away: some face-to-face chats with the would-be network has been a great source of ideas for how to build the network. And it’s
building buzz, too. Key people are on board, some are recruiting others and I’ve got a notebook full of topics for discussion. One architectural firm offered to host a reception for the group on their roof top overlooking Milwaukee’s river and skyline.

I realize that today’s excitement may not result in tomorrow’s participation, but I believe it may help give the network a proper launch.

In the meantime, I continue to send out a weekly email newsletter that provides links back to my Art City blog, which is one-stop shopping for all of my art and architecture content, recommendations for the
weekend, previews of what’s ahead and so on. I’ve been doing this, I think, for nearly two years now and have nearly 2,000 subscribers. I promote this newsletter when I can in my tag line at the end of stories and in the blog. I’ve also (thanks to Dave’s advice!) recently started using Twitterfeed to send automatic updates from the blog out to Twitter and Facebook.

For such a sizable list, I don’t get as much direct communication as I’d like. But I’m realizing I need to more consciously set out to engage people.

Two other very quick things. Several reporters at the paper are looking at ways to innovate. We’ve been producing proposals for several months now. Last week, we produced a proposal on beat blogging
(with a lot of support material from the efforts some of you have made and from the Beat Blogging Blog) and solicited specific proposals from the newsroom. The hope is to get more people experimenting with these
tools and to raise awareness about how they can improve our reporting and connections to the community.

Lastly, I wanted to share a project with you that I cooked up before I joined this group. It’s very much in its beta phase still. But I’d love your feedback. It’s not precisely beat blogging, but the core
concepts are there. Here it is: http://www.jsonline.com/links/inthemaking.

So, there’s my update. I’d love to hear more about how all of you are doing. Has anyone come up with some new strategies for incorporating all of these things into the day?