Leaderboard for week of 1-12-2009: Pharmalot memorial edition

It’s a new year, and it’s time for a new Leaderboard.

Remember, you can join our Publish2 group and submit nominees whenever you want. You can also DM us nominees @beatblogging. You can also e-mail us nominations as well.

The first Leaderboard of the new year is a mix of the old with the new. We’re sad to see a departing beat blogger, but we’re excited for the new beat bloggers popping up all the time. 2009 should be the year that beat blogging really takes off as a mainstream practice.

Ed Silverman | Pharmalot

• Silverman will be sorely missed. He is moving on from Pharmalot and The Star-Ledger. He was one of the original and best beat bloggers.
• Pharmalot was one of those sites were the individual posts didn’t wow you but the whole package did. Each individual part and post worked together to cover an industry with incrediblw depth. The conversations and link sharing that took place after each post by users was also impressive. Silverman was amazed at how long discussions would last after posts.
• The strong community that formed around Pharmalot became a major selling point for the site. Those people helped Silverman cover the industry and exchanged information with each other.
• Pharmalot and Silverman eventually became synonymous. It’s hard to imagine the site continuing on without him, and if it does, it won’t be the same site. It might be a pharma blog, but it won’t be the Pharmalot that helped bring the practice of beat blogging to the world.
• There are far too many lessons to list here that Silverman gave us, but this podcast is a fantastic place to start. We hope to do a follow-up interview with Silverman. Listen to that podcast and let us know any additional questions you’d like us to ask.

Stephanie De Pasquale | Quadsville

• De Pasquale is an excellent example of synergy. Her best content from her blog goes in the newspaper once a week. That’s a smart way to get more mileage out of existing content.
• She is an entertainment reporter and mostly deals with the under-30 crowd. Social networking has become a key part to covering her beat.
• MySpace in particular has allowed her to cover the local music scene better. She has about 300 friends on MySpace and almost all are local musicians. MySpace is a great social network to join for those looking to tap into the local music and arts scene. De Pasquale says that she wouldn’t have discovered most of these musicians without MySpace. Social networking simply allows her to cover her beat in ways never before possible.
• She uses her blog to find stories and develop sources. She also gives the community a chance to submit questions for the people she interviews. Here is an example of her using user submitted questions to interview a subject.
• She has also organized monthly recording sessions with local bands. Now that’s utilizing the medium well.

Tannette Johnson-Elie | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

• Business columnist Elie uses Twitter to help her report. She asks questions and taps into the collective intelligence of her community. She also asks her Twitter users if there are any questions they would like her to ask when she interviews experts. That’s a great way to get people involved and also help you do your job better.
  
• She focuses on how small businesses and start-ups are using networking to grow. A big part of modern day networking is utilizing social media. Elie has simply gone where her readers are going — to social networks.
  
• She engages in social media to help understand a phenomena that is impacting many of the people she covers. The lessons she and other people learn could be very helpful for small businesses and startups.
• Elie is part of an emerging breed of reporters where it just makes sense for them to jump onto social networks. Many of the people she covers use social media, and the only way for her to truly understand social media is for her to utilize in her daily work too.