When it comes to digital projects, it can be sometimes be hard to evaluate progress. Sure, you can check the growth in your page views, number of visits, and reader comments, but it can still be difficult to know how much of an impact you're really making in your community or the journalism industry as a whole.

Because of this, I have to say I was surprised to take a look at results of the 2010-11 New York State Associated Press Association Awards. In addition to noticing The Record pick up a few awards for writing and photography, I quickly saw that, for the first time in years, if not the first time ever, Journal Register Company newspapers took all three prizes in the awards for Online Content for publications with a circulation under 25,000.

From the AP Award website:
Online content
1st, Daily Freeman, Kingston, Live tweets from the Kingston murder trial, Patricia Doxsey, Ivan Lajara
2nd, The Saratogian, Saratoga Springs, Road to the Title: Saratoga Springs High School Ice Hockey team, James Sherrill
3rd, The Record, Troy, Bringing the World Series trophy home, Kevin Moran, Ed Weaver, Brian Bouyea, Bill Passonno, Tom Caprood, Chris Fitzgerald


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The Record has an exciting new feature for our political coverage - regular interviews with Troy's mayoral candidates Lou Rosamilia and Carmella Mantello answering questions submitted by our readers.

Every two weeks we ask our readers to submit what they would like us to ask the candidates. After the submission deadline passes, we scan through the submissions and select three questions to ask the candidates on camera (we select these only so that we don't repeat a question from week to week or air any personal attacks that may get submitted).

Once the election season kicks into high gear after Labor Day, we plan to make these videos an integral part of The Record's election website.

In addition to providing great video coverage of the election, we think that this will be an excellent way to help build stronger relationships with our readers and encourage them to interact with us more in the future.

FYI, we are currently accepting questions today for the fourth round of candidate interviews in case any of you readers are located in Troy.

Here's a look at our past interviews to date: