We thought we’d end this year with some of this year’s pace setters in the world of beat blogging.

These are some of best beat bloggers out there, and these people are constantly trying new ways to innovate. We do try to present a diversity of beat reporters on this blog, but on any given week, any one of these beat bloggers could be on the Leaderboard. Every week they are pushing the practice.

If you’re a journalist and you want to learn how to harness social media and other Web tools better, I strongly recommend you follow these beat bloggers every week.

DISD blog | The Dallas Morning News

• This award goes to both Kent Fischer and Tawnell Hobbs. They have produced one of the best beat blogs around.
• Who said that people don’t want to read about topics like education? The DISD blog is on track for more than 1,500,000 page views in its first year. That easily surpassed expectations. Just think of the page views that this blog could get if Fischer is able to build that blog on steroids that he is planning.
• Keep in mind that both Fischer and Hobbs also write for the print edition. This is a pretty impressive start for these two reporters, especially since their beat isn’t the easiest to get page views with.
• Perhaps the greatest success of the DISD blog is how active the community is around it. It has really spurred conversation and given people almost a public town hall where they can discuss the Dallas school district. 
• You know how you surpass expectations? You provide in-depth coverage, including live blogging big events. You also provide a fantastic place for people to express themselves. And finally, you provide a community where people want to help you out.
• When you do that, your community can help you uncover big stories. They can also act as a truth squad by fact checking what public figures say.
• People will be more likely to be active in your community if you acknowledge when they write something smart. That’s why Fischer started hoisting comments.

Eric Berger | The Houston Chronicle

• The SciGuy is one of the most innovative beat reporters around. Some of the things he does aren’t exactly social media or Web related per se, but they rock nonetheless. He is the master at building a community.
• No, technically conducting random drawings for science books does not count as beat blogging, but it is one hell of a way to build a community and build user loyalty. 
• Berger is sent many science books over the course of a year for review purposes. He thought it would be a good idea to conduct a random drawing for the five best books he received this year.
• Want to enter the drawing? All you have to do is leave a comment on his post about the book. So, not only is Berger finding a good way to recycle these books, but he also managed to get people talking about science topics. Check out all the wonderful comments left on that post.
• Plus, these posts might be a way to get people who have never commented before to start commenting. Why not do something like this?
• Berger does other innovative things, like asking his readers to be his assignment editor.
• Berger also understands that his users know more than he does.

Monica Guzman | Seattle Post-Intelligencer

• Want to know how to get a conversation started? Just follow what Guzman does. Her job is centered around getting people talking. 
• One of Guzman’s core jobs is to analyze posts to cultivate conservations. She reads what her colleagues write and tries to find interesting jumping off points for discussion. 
• For Guzman, cultivating conversations is a great way to build a community. Ultimately, building a community is at the core of beat blogging. 
• We often call beat blogging a sort of Rolodex 2.0. It greatly expands the number of available sources that a beat reporter has access to. But the only way to meaningfully expand that network of sources is to cultivate a community. 
• Guzman is also one of the most active beat bloggers on Twitter. 

Jon Ortiz | The Sacramento Bee

• Ortiz has only been beat blogging for about six months, but he has easily been one of the most innovative and adventurous around. Perhaps because he is new to blogging he is more willing to take risks and try new things. 
• Whatever the reason, The State Worker blog is a most follow. He has developed several distinct features that help break up the flow of his blog. 
• His “Blog back” feature is something every beat blogger should copy. 
• Ortiz has launched another new feature recently. This one he calls “From the notebook.” This feature is extra tidbits of information that don’t make it into columns or stories that Ortiz writes. 
• This is another one of those features that Ortiz created that doesn’t take a lot of time, but it provides his users with something of value.
• Ortiz launched his blog early so he could cover the budget crisis in California as it broke. It turned out to be a momentous decision for Ortiz. Timing can have a big impact on the success of a blog.

The Sacramento Bee’s Jon Ortiz recently launched a new feature called “blog backs” that has quickly become a hit with users on his State Worker blog.

It’s similar to hoisting comments, but it’s more in depth than that. Both features are ultimately about community building and help foment better and more sensible comments from users.

Blog backs are a combination of hoisting strong comments from users, and of clarifying of points of fact that people didn’t understand in posts from bloggers.

“People really need some amplification on points that we were making in the blog,” Ortiz said about starting the feature. “We also have some people who put some time and effort into their comments and we want to recognize those.”

This new feature doesn’t take long to create. His first week it took him about two hours, but he has streamlined the process since then. In his third week he was able to put this feature together in 20 minutes.

“Instead of waiting until the end of the week to review the comments and the blog entries, as the week went along I took would take note of comments that I thought were particularly blog back worthy,” he said. “I got everything done ahead of time as the week went along. It’s pretty much then just a matter of pasting that into Moveable Type.”

A post that takes Ortiz 20 minutes to create significantly increased traffic to his blog. Not only do the blog back posts themselves get a lot of page views, but the old posts that are linked to in the blog back see on average of about a 10 percent boost in traffic.

“The hit counts to the page are very high and I think it gives people a way to quickly look back and see what they’ve missed,” he said about his new feature.

Some other topics discussed:

• Have other newsroom bloggers adopted this feature?
• Are there certain kinds of blogs this feature makes more sense for? Do some blogs not work with this?
• Why should other bloggers look into doing blog backs?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

Timing has been good to Jon Ortiz.

The Sacramento Bee had originally planned to launch his blog about California state workers later, but realized that it would be wise to capitalize on the state budget impasse between Governor Schwarzenegger and the legislature. That fateful decision instantly made The State Worker one of the most popular blogs for the Sac Bee.

Schwarzenegger laid off some state workers, reduced the pay of others and instituted a hiring freeze, which he hopes will force the legislature to provide him with an acceptable budget. State workers do not like being used as bargaining chips, Ortiz said.

Ortiz has been all over one of the biggest stories in years for California state workers.

Ortiz has several issues to figure out with the blog, however. He writes a weekly column, and is still sorting out how to best utilize his new blog with his popular column. Ortiz believes his blog will allow him to cover his beat better by allowing him to report on more stories and in new ways.

Ortiz says the blog is the first step. He hopes to incorporate more Web technology in the future for his beat. For him, it is about learning what the Web can do to help his beat.

While California does have a lot of state workers, 125,000, Ortiz has found more than just state workers find his blog interesting. He hopes his blog can help educate the public about what state workers do and help dispel some wife’s tales about state workers.

He says he spends about half his time on the blog and the other half on working for print. Like many other beat bloggers, Ortiz is spending more time working now than before. Maybe in the future this will change, but it can be hard to convince editors to cut down on the amount of print copy produced.

The State Worker is still in its infancy, and will have to change dramatically once the state budget impasse is over. Ortiz is hoping to make his blog into a  community for state workers.

“Ultimately, I’d like to see the blog become the clearing house for state workers’ issues and debate,” Ortiz said. “I’d like for it to elevate the discussion amongst state workers about their jobs and the public they serve.”

Ortiz also discusses how blogging has changed his column, how the blog will allow him more direct access to his readers and how the blog will allow him to find new sources.

Click here to steam the interview. Or download the mp3.

Content isn’t everything.

Timing is important too. Jon Ortiz and The Sacramento Bee recently launched a new beat blog ahead of schedule, The State Worker, because Governor Schwarzenegger announced he would fire some state works and reduce the pay of the rest unless he was handed a new state budget.

The Bee realized they had to launch The State Worker immediately, instead of on their original timetable. This was one of the biggest issues for California state workers in years, and the Bee wanted to get ahead of it:

Our well-crafted plan was to debut this blog and an accompanying print column next week. Events dictate otherwise, and we’re opening up the blog today.

In its first week, The State Work became one of the most popular blogs for the Bee, attracting tens of thousands of page views a day. Ortiz attributes the timing of the blog’s launch as one of the major reasons why his new beat blog is so popular less than a month into its existence.

Launching a blog for the presidential election, for instance, would make a lot more sense to do so in the run up to the primaries, instead of right after the presidential election is over. Capitalizing on events in the world is a way to generate traffic to a blog and establish relevance. The Bee picked a great time to launch a blog for state workers.

Ortiz wants his new beat blog to be a place for California state workers to come to and learn about issues impacting their jobs. He also wants his blog to be the place to have conversations about those issues.

There are also best and worst times to launch content during the day:

Luciani’s conclusion: between 1pm and 3pm PST (after lunch) or between
5pm and 7pm PST (after work) are the best times and Thursday is the
best day. The worst time to post? Between 3 and 5 PM PST on the
weekends - nobody cares.

These recommendations are for national sites, but they also are applicable per time zone as well. If the majority of your users are in the Eastern Time Zone, launch content between 1 pm and 3 pm Eastern and between 5 pm and 7 pm Eastern. Monday-Thursday are the best days to launch content, and Friday evening is a very poor time to launch content.

There are always exceptions. however. A college football blog should update on Saturdays. A blog for a major league baseball team could update any day during the season. But a blog like The State Worker should follow these guidelines to insure maximum traffic and visibility for posts.

The issue is simple. Late at night, early in the morning, etc are not a prime surfing times for many people. If content is launched then, it will sit for hours before traffic begins to pick up again. By then a lot of new content will get launched, pushing that content down in RSS readers and off of homepages.

Obviously, anytime there is breaking news, that content should go up ASAP. But for general content, timing can often be just as important as content. Good site analytics (Google Analytics is a good, free solution) can help content producers understand the best times to launch content.