Leaderboard for week of 4-13-2009: Kent Fischer memorial edition

It’s not the best time to work for a newspaper: lay-offs, buy-outs, pay cuts and more

Against this backdrop, one of our favorite beatbloggers, Ed Silverman, left newspapers last year. His former employer, The Star-Ledger, may not survive the year. Another one of our favorite beatbloggers, Kent Fischer, announced that he’ll be leaving journalism too.

Fischer had survived several rounds of lay-offs, buy-outs and pay cuts at The Dallas Morning News but wondered how much more his employer could keep making big cuts, while still delivering a quality product. Fischer’s partner in crime on the DISD Blog, Tawnell Hobbs, will carry on the torch by herself. She’ll be expected to run the blog and be a major contributor to print.

Kent Fischer | The Dallas Morning News

• Fischer was one of the first beatbloggers to begin hoisting comments. He realized early on that it was important to acknowledge readers when they contributed something worthwhile to the conversation. Each week Fischer has been picking a comment of the week.
• Fischer also began accepting guest posts from community members last year. His blog is read by many insiders, and the majority of the comments left on his blog are from insiders. He wanted to tap into that network and give some of his top contributors the chance to have a bigger voice. Also, Fischer scheduled his guest posts around summer vacation, a time when education coverage is usually light. The summer is the perfect time to start discussions about bigger issues in education.
• Fischer was one of the first journalists I studied that really got that user comments add value to a news Web site. He understood that not only are comments something that attracts users, but they can also be a great place for thoughtful debate. And they can even be a place for beat reporters to discover stories.
• The comments left on the DISD Blog were usually quite good. Fischer took care to make sure a comment ghetto did not form. A strong comments community requires a journalist who is willing to cultivate a community. It takes a journalist who is not afraid to regularly enter the fray, and Fischer genuinely respected the opinions of his users.
• Fischer wasn’t afraid to try anything. He said that he regularly tried new ideas and features and saw what caught on. If something didn’t catch on, he would move on to something new. It was that ethos of experimentation that really allowed Fischer to shine.
• We’ll have more on Fischer, the lessons he learned from beatblogging and why he left journalism in a podcast later today.

Brian Krebs | The Washington Post

• Krebs was nominated this week for using his blog to provide context to a series of print stories. He explains why the stories are worth reading, what’s new about them (the topic of cyber terrorism is not new) and he provides background and context. Krebs also provides some nitty gritty details that may be too minute for the print edition. And, as always, his blog is the perfect place to provide links to resources.
• Krebs also did some quick checks on the Internet and found some compromised U.S. utilities. These companies have computers that were recently infected with bots and backdoors. His blog post does an excellent job of explaining what the threats are and how they could be harmful to U.S. citizens.
• Again, it’s the comments where this post really begins to shine. Krebs has built up a knowledgeable user community. In the comments you’ll find users asking questions about how easy it is to become infected, what precautions should be taken, etc, and you’ll find other users providing detailed answers.
• Krebs did not write the print stories he linked to, but he did provide excellent context around them. His blog post was a strong compliment to the print content his paper product.

Brian Christopherson | Lincoln Journal Star

• Life in the Red, a joint, staff blog at the Journal Star is one of the better sports blogs we’ve seen. The beat is all things Nebraska Cornhusker related, and a team of five bloggers shares the responsibility.
• One of the things we really like about this blog is the interaction. Sports fans are often a very passionate bunch and sometimes quite knowledgeable. They would love the chance to get to interact with sports writers they follow. On this seemingly simple post, Christopherson and users are discussing safeties for the Nebrasks football team. It all started with a simple post about redshirt freshman P.J. Smith and a quote from head coach Bo Pelini saying Smith could push for playing time with senior Larry Asante.
• This is the kind of little nugget of information that probably wouldn’t make a good print story. Even if it were a print story (or part of a “news an notes” kind of feature) it wouldn’t be nearly the same as doing it online. Each nugget of information gets its own blog post (good for SEO and segregating conversations to individual topics). Breaking these nuggets into individual posts increases visits and comments.
• Also, the Life in Red blog provides the perfect opportunity for beat reporters and fans to discuss minute topics like this. All of the sudden this seemingly small nugget of information becomes a launching pad for debate among writers and users.