Leaderboard for week of 11-3-08: virtual government edition
This week’s leaderboard is an eclectic bunch.
We’ve got a large newspaper represented and a new media blog in the same week. What this week’s edition is really about is finding innovative ways to cover beats. Some of those beats, like state government, aren’t new, but that shouldn’t stop us from finding new ways to cover those beats.
Other beats, well they are very new. And those kinds of beats can’t be covered by traditional means.
Jon Ortiz | The Sacramento Bee
- Ortiz got off to a blistering start this year on his beat blog thanks to his great coverage of the California budget crisis. Covering a crisis well is a great way to drive traffic. In Ortiz’s case, it was a great way to get people interested in his new beat blog.
- Ortiz is asking simple questions that help speak truth to power. In this instance, that power is the State of California and its workers who have access to loads of sensitive data. He wants to get a dialogue going about this issue and is using his blog to do so.
Matt Neznanski | Gazette Times
- Neznanski is using his blog to solicit reader feedback for future stories. He specifically wants to talk to users about economy related questions. Neznanski wants to hear from his users about how the economic crisis is affecting their lives.
- One of the great strengths of blogging and social media is the ability to interact with users.
- It doesn’t take a lot of effort to make a blog post asking users for their feedback. We do the same thing on BeatBlogging.Org. A simple blog post will result in several people e-mailing us, posting comments on our site and sending us messages on social networks like Twitter.
- Also, by being open about what you’re looking for, users will often suggest you look at other related areas as well.
Anne Laurent | The Agile Mind
- Laurent covers the mysterious world of virtual government. Yes, the U.S. government is active in online worlds like Second Life.
- And what better way to cover how the government is using virtual worlds for government purposes than to join those virtual worlds? That’s one component to Laurent’s coverage.
- She also blogs and uses multimedia to cover her beat. This is a difficult beat to cover, and Laurent does it very well by harnessing a variety of online tools. Her embedded YouTube videos on her blog are very helpful for explaining what exactly governments do with virtual worlds.
