Maybe it’s a Daily Dish after you Rise & Shine or a stop by from the City Hall Monitor, but whatever the name and theme, these posts almost always start in the morning. Their purpose is to give readers content to kick off the day and read throughout the day (some link journalism posts contain enough links that it would take hours to read through the contain being linked to).

Beatbloggers are already reading a myriad of sources, and many have a bunch of RSS feeds in a program like Google Reader and Google Alerts set up. The primary purpose is to keep up on one’s beat and to find potential stories, but it doesn’t take much work to make a post linking to the best content a beatblogger finds through this process. The very best news and information will most likely make for full-fledged posts (or for a topic to be researched further), but the best of the rest is still going to be very interesting to readers too.

These posts are either constructed with left over stories and news from the day before or with new stories that show up in a journalist’s RSS reader in the morning. A new trend is starting to emerge, however, where journalists are adding a nightcap of link journalism to their work. It’s something for fans of a blog, for instance, to read as they unwind at night, and if the curation is done well, it can provide a lot of content even after a blogger is done for the day.

Gotham Schools has the standard link journalism post first thing in the morning, Rise & Shine, but a few months ago it added a new bit of link journalism called Remainders. Content on Gotham Schools is bookended by link journalism posts. One contains tidbits of news at the start of the day, while the other contains links to stories to round out the day, and in-between users are treated to original reporting.

Gotham Schools covers a massive beat: New York City schools. There is plenty of quality content and documents to link to every day about a massive school district like that. How else could two beatbloggers cover a school district with thousands of schools without linking to other content?

“Since our goal is to be a one-stop-shop for New York City school news, we decided to run two daily aggregation posts,” said Philissa Cramer, one of the two writers for the site.

Cramer generally does the Rise & Shine post for Gotham Schools, while Elizabeth Green usually does the Remainders post. The two of them have a different set of news sources and Google searches that they use to build each post (with some overlap of course). This means that the sources for each link journalism post are often different, and it helps give their link journalism a bit more variety and uniqueness.

Link journalism can be a great way to add a lot more content to a blog without a lot of additional work. Cramer was already looking over a myriad of sources for news and information about the school district. While some of what she finds may make for a full-fledged post, link journalism allows her to put the best of the rest out there for her users to read.

Why waste a resource like that? Cramer and Green are two of the most knowledgeable and well-read people about the school district. Their ability to curate the best content about it is a major selling point.

Rise & Shine takes about 45 minutes to put together, according to Cramer. She and Green have gotten good feedback about the link journalism posts, and the Department of Education uses the two posts to monitor the city schools.

Well-known political blogger Andrew Sullivan also ends his daily blogging with a roundup of leftover news, The Daily Wrap. It’s a wrap up of the most interesting political stories of the day.

NYU Professor, PressThinker and BeatBlogging.Org founder Jay Rosen called Sullivan’s “The Daily Wrap” a “smart, incredibly simple blogging practice for a busy, newsy blog.”

And it’s a very simple post that any journalist can do. It doesn’t take much time, can drive serious traffic and provides additional content and insight for readers. With sites/tools like Publish2, link journalism has become incredibly easy.

Most journalists and bloggers eventually call it a day (except, it seems, for a few tech bloggers). But people don’t stop consuming content just because content producers have gone home for the day.  A daily roundup post can give a blog hours more of quality content.

And, as Cramer pointed out, if a blog wants to be a one-stop shop for everything about a beat, the only sensible way to do that if with a mixture of good original reporting and quality link journalism to fill in the gaps.

They are all pushing the practice.

Innovation is not the sole province of big organizations with lots of resources. Some of the best, most innovative journalism is being done by people at non-traditional organizations. There are new media news organizations popping up all the time, and if traditional news outlets aren’t careful, these new outlets will eat their lunch.

But rather than fighting each other, we can learn and figure out best practices.

It is worth noting that our Leaderboard winner this week from a traditional media outlet is at a newspaper with less than 100,000 daily circulation. Size and age don’t matter when it comes to innovation.

Alexander Russo | District 299

• Russo’s blog, District 299, covers education much differently than a newspaper beat reporter would. Instead of District 299 being a place where Russo talks at people and reports in a one-way style, District 299 is a place to have conversations. It’s a place to discuss how to make education better in Chicago.
• Russo brings a different concept to beat blogging. He says his blog is “hosted by Alexander Russo.” By that, he means he has created a space to get people talking about education issues in Chicago.
• If the Chicago school district releases a press releases about school closings, Russo would throw the press release up on his blog in its entirety for users to read, rather than summarizing it like a newspaper reporter would. Russo’s goal is not to make the press release his own, but rather to get it up on his blog to get people discussing the contents of it.
• Russo’s blog is a gateway to all things Chicago schools related. The best way to make his platform the destination to be for discussion of issues surrounding Chicago schools is to link heavily to other people’s content.
• Many traditional journalists are so focused on producing content that they don’t take any time to create a quality space for people to discuss issues. Russo, a Spencer Fellow at Columbia University, is interested in more than just covering education — he wants to help create change. He is not a dispassionate spectator like most newspaper journalists aim to be and instead uses his blog to get people talking about ways to improve the under-performing Chicago school district.

Philissa Cramer | GothamSchools

• Rise and Shine is a daily link journalism post that sets the agenda each day for GothamSchools. GothamSchools is a new media operation that wants to be an online community for discussion about New York City Schools. That would be impossible if GothamSchools didn’t link out. Rather, GothamSchools offers a blend of original reporting and curation.
• GothamSchools has a similar mission as Russo. It wants to be more than just a news outlet. It wants to be a place for serious discussion, and it wants to help make education better in New York.
• From the about page, ” … a news source and online community for teachers, parents, policy makers, and journalists interested in learning about what works and what doesn’t in NYC schools. We seek to provide a clearinghouse for school news and commentary, connect teachers and parents with resources, highlight effective practices in policy and pedagogy, and build a participatory knowledge base about education in New York City. By offering a critical eye on education research and reporting, and by creating a forum for conversation, GothamSchools is helping New Yorkers create better schools.”

Ron Sylvester | Wichita Eagle

• Ron Sylvester has been reinventing court coverage with Twitter. Follow along as he tweets live updates from a trial of six accused gang members. Sylvester’s tweets what is happening during the trial with succinct 140-character bites. He also provides insight into the trial itself.
• We have chronicled Sylvester’s efforts before, but he continues to refine his coverage. Sylvester is using social media and his blog to transform how newspapers cover trials. No longer is Sylvester being beaten by broadcast media. Instead, his live updates from the court room beat everyone. And unlike live TV coverage of a trial, which can be overwhelming, Sylvester’s 140-character tidbits make following a trial very easy.
• Sylvester’s Twitter use also proves that Twitter can be a valuable tool for journalists in less-populated, less-tech savvy areas. Many of the people that follow Sylvester’s court room tweets are not on Twitter. They’re not that interested in Twitter itself, but they are really interested in the content that Sylvester produces on it. These people either follow along on Sylvester’s Twitter page or on blog where his tweets are embedded.