Leaderboard - by Patrick Thornton on Monday, October 20, 2008 11:54 - 1 Comment
Leaderboard No. 1: week of 10-20-08
Welcome to the inaugural Leaderboard. Each week we highlight the most innovative beat reporters. The leaderboard changes weekly, and we’ll have new nominees up on our homepage starting today. Continue sending in your nominees.
Kent Fischer | The Dallas Morning News
Why?
- Kent Fischer and Tawnell Hobbs (both work on the DISD blog) have taken their beat blog to another level ever since a budget crisis broke out on Sep. 10.
- The DISD blog’s traffic has spiked through the roof since this crisis broke out, largely due to the incredible coverage that Fischer and Hobbs have done.
- Fischer was put on the leaderboard this week in particular because of his coverage of recent layoffs. Before layoffs occurred, he got a hold of a list that had all of the cuts at each school. He redacted the names from the list, but it was still a powerful tool for people to see which schools would be hardest hit by the layoffs.
- What really took Fischer’s coverage over the top was not only his ability to report hard numbers before anyone else, but also his ability to provide people with a voice. His open letter to those laid off or affected by the layoffs received a lot of powerful and heartbreaking responses. On October 16th alone, the DISD blog received 343 comments, and that was with the blog software being down for about three hours.
Beat blogging lessons from Fischer:
- Beat blogging allows reporters to concentrate on core reporting
- Guest blogging from community members
- Audio interview with Kent Fischer about building a blog on steroids
- Kent Fischer debuts new feature to hoist user comments
- Blog readers lead to A1 story for Dallas Morning News
- Interview with Kent Fischer about his readers helping him uncover a major story
Eric Berger | Houston Chronicle
Why?
- Berger has long been one of the most innovative beat reporters. He is a master of user engagement.
- Recently he asked his readers to be his assignment editor and to tell him if there were any stories they would like him to cover. Berger got a lot of responses, and he took the best ideas and put them to a vote on his blog.
- Berger’s latest efforts haven’t required a lot of time on his part but have resulted in a lot of user interaction and engagement. His readers are actively debating which topic makes the most sense for Berger to tackle and why. People are even giving Berger tips for how to cover each story. For instance, “Also, since solar arrays are typically installed atop buildings, spread across vacant fields or built as parking lot shade structures, it might be useful to explore the maintenance requirements/costs that will be incurred to actually collect energy for many years beyond that needed to replay the initial investment.” Yes, Berger’s readers add a lot to his blog, and that’s because Berger actively encourages participation.
Beat blogging lessons from Berger:
- Dispelling FUD on news Web sites and blogs
- Harnessing the wisdom of users at the Houston Chronicle
- Berger back at his conversation starting ways
- Audio interview with Eric Berger on building an online community
- Using a survey to take the conversation to the next level
Ron Sylvester | Wichita Eagle
Why?
- Sylvester is being put on the inaugural Leaderboard because of his use of Twitter. Not only is Sylvester one of the most innovative beat reporters with Twitter, but he also embeds his Twitter feed on his blog and on pages on the Eagle’s Web site. Not many of Sylvester’s readers are on Twitter, but a lot of people view his feed because of how visible he makes it.
- This one of the biggest lessons Sylvester has taught me. You don’t need the youngest, most tech-savviest audience to effectively harness a social media tool like Twitter. You just need to know how to put it in front of people’s eyeballs.
- Sylvester has used Twitter to revolutionize how he covers court trials. Readers can get continuous updates from trials in succinct 140-character bites. But Twitter also functions as a notebook that allows him to quickly write summary blog posts and stories. Not only has Twitter allowed Sylvester — a print reporter — to cover trials in real time, but it also allows him to write his print stories quicker too because he has found that Twitter makes a better notebook.
Beat blogging lessons from Sylvester:
Monica Guzman | The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Why?
- Guzman’s job is to foment user engagement, and unlike the other people on this list, she is an online only reporter.
- One of the things that stands out about Guzman’s work is her ability to draw people into other content, even print content. This past week Guzman highlighted a thoughtful letter to the editor from a small-business owner in response to a PI editorial that suggested the government may need to help create jobs. She used this exchange to get users interacting with each other by asking, “Seattle small business owners: Considering the fragile economy, should government stay out of the way?”
- It’s a pretty simply concept: Guzman highlights thoughtful comments from users and asks people for their thoughts on those comments. She actively looks for ways to get people talking.
Beat blogging lessons from Guzman
Subscribe to BeatBlogging.Org via RSS.
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
I am so happy you reached out to Ron after I passed along his name. He is definitely a Rock star. Congrats Ron. Keep up the good work. And congrats to the others as well. We need more of this. A lot more.