Here are my choices for top digital tools that every newsroom should be familiar with:

1)      Storify – A great tool that you can use to gather tweets, photos, Facebook posts and tons of other media on any subject or hashtag you can search for. It’s also great because you can pull only local tweets and each “story” is can be embedded on your site. We use it a lot for displaying extensive live coverage.

Examples:

Troy voter fraud trial - http://storify.com/troyrecord/troy-voter-fraud-trial-jan-2012

Current coverage of murder trial in 18-year-old case - http://storify.com/troyrecord/murder-trial-of-george-mott-iii-jan-2012

Coverage of NY Gov. Cuomo’s state budget proposal - http://storify.com/troyrecord/gov-cuomo-s-2012-2013-proposed-nys-budget

More at http://storify.com/troyrecord

2)      iMovie – I find iMovie to be invaluable if you’ve got a Mac around that you have access to (most JRC dailies have at least one desktop in their newsrooms, from what I understand). The software is more powerful and comes with better options than editing video in FlipShare or through Syndicaster.  It also makes slideshows ridiculously easy to put together and upload as a video file to our sites.

For anyone who doesn’t know how to use iMovie, I wrote up this tutorial recently for my staff: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Mb2o23112DodfQiRdrnjHXImXsKLB7FYqsdHWJ9q3AY/edit?hl=en_US

Some examples of slideshows, videos, made with iMovie:

http://www.troyrecord.com/articles/2012/01/24/sports/doc4f1e3edee644f770049195.txt

http://www.troyrecord.com/articles/2011/12/15/news/doc4eea50267d094137129398.txt

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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:

It's been far too long since I've updated this blog, so let me start by catching you up on the digital projects that we've been working on at The Record over the last month.

First off, I'd like to update everyone on the success we had with live-tweeting our first murder trial in Rensselaer County Court last month.

Reporter Dave Canfield spent more than three weeks sharing details from inside the court room, attracting a large number of new followers and helping change the way local trials are covered in the Capital District. The Albany Times Union also began to tweet the trial, along with local television station anchors who were camped out at the courthouse, but only after our reporter got the OK from the judge to start doing so from inside the courtroom with his laptop.

Here's a recap from the reporter's point of view:

Covering a recent murder trial on Twitter as I sat in the courtroom with a laptop proved more engaging with readers than anything else I’ve done here at The Record.

We asked for special permission to cover a long-awaited double-murder trial on Twitter, breaking the usual rules of no cell phones—let alone computers—in the courtroom. It increased the number of followers I had on Twitter by a third by the time the trial had ended.

It got the most important revelations about a well-known 9-year-old murder case out there faster than any other means I can think of could have. The added followers aside, putting our hashtag feed on our main page at troyrecord.com put it out there to people who do not use Twitter as well. I heard from some of those people.

I also heard from various followers asking about the testimony or sharing their thoughts. The mothers of both prosecutors began to follow me. Family members of both victims did as well.

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There is big news in the city of Troy this week with the start of a double murder trial built on a 9-year-old case that was built for years against two men and nearly went to trial in 2010 before a third suspect was named and linked to DNA evidence at the murder scene, causing the original charges to be dropped against the two former suspects and Michael Mosley to be indicted for both murders.

Opening statements began in the case Monday, May 9 and The Record is providing as much coverage as possible throughout the proceedings.

In addition to a installing a widget listing prior articles on the case going back several years on our TroyRecord.com homepage, we also decided to take a lesson from our sister paper The Daily Freeman and attempt to live-tweet the courtroom proceedings complete with witness testimony.
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From editor Lisa Lewis' blog earlier this week:

"For more than a decade, Record Sports Editor Kevin has worked hard to get Major League Baseball to acknowledge the Collar City for its contributions to America’s national pastime.
On Thursday, the city of Troy gets that recognition when the San Francisco Giants bring their 2010 World Series championship trophy to the Joseph L. Bruno Stadium for a public viewing from 5 to 7 p.m.
The visit is the result of a collaborative effort between Kevin and the Tri-City ValleyCats. Team owner Bill Gladstone and general manager Rick Murphy used their contacts to reach out to the Giants about a possible visit to upstate New York after Kevin and his staff launched a petition drive to get the Giants to bring the World Series trophy to Troy."
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The day we had been waiting for finally arrived Thursday as a ceremony was held at Bruno Stadium to welcome the World Series Trophy to Troy.

Hundreds of Giants fans from the Capital District and beyond lined the stadium waiting to get their picture taken with the historic trophy belonging to the team whose roots began in Troy more than 100 years ago.


Click here to view a special commemorative publication The Record produced to showcase the history behind the visit.

Check out the recorded stream below of the trophy unveiling press conference and a sampling of the line of fans waiting to be a part of the event.
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Over the weekend I was able to once-again attend the New York Press Association's annual convention at the Gideon Putnam in Saratoga Springs, a meeting of staffers from mostly weekly publications across the state which gathers a number a great presenters each year to talk about a variety of topics in the field.

On Friday I attended a great session on the effective use of Social Media by Regina McCombs of the Poynter Institute (here are all of her links from the presentation) and walked away with some great tips that I hope to soon be able to incorporate into The Record's newsroom.

One of these was that journalists can develop relationships with their audience via their personal Twitter accounts. This was not new information, as I had heard it and tried to stress it to our Record reporters in the past. However, the example she provided - journalist Jason DeRusha (@derushaj on Twitter) - was especially interesting since he posts the stories he’s working on every morning and gets user input, not worrying about other news outlets competing for the story first.
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An amazing crowd of just over 50 individuals attended The Record's community-driven forum on Irish Genealogy in our newly-opened Community Media Lab, showcasing what is possible for these types of events in the future.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we kicked our promotion for the Irish forum into high gear after the poor results we had with our initial attempt at a tax forum Tuesday evening.

Using updates on The Record's website, social media accounts, blog posts, and the online event-planning website, Eventbrite, we were able to attract a fantastic crowd of interested individuals for last night's presentation.


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The Albany Times Union, a Hearst Corporation newspaper, announced Wednesday in an article that it plans two close its bureaus in Troy and Saratoga Springs and "embrace an industry trend toward mobile journalism."

The article went on to state that the change could increase the presence of Times Union journalists in New York's Capital District due to the fact that their personnel would "be equipped and trained to work as mobile journalists who can report and file stories from outside a traditional newsroom".

Further down, they bring up the notion and benefits of "coffee-shop" journalism, mentioning how Journal Register Co., which owns The Record in Troy and The Saratogian in Saratoga Springs, has been "experimenting" with the additions of coffee shops and Internet cafes to its newsrooms.

First off, good for them. It's nice to see media companies come to the realization that having physical remote offices are a thing of the past.

However, the article is a tad misleading in its structure.

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Thursday was an unusually busy day for the news media in the Capital District, considering it was the day before Christmas Eve and most people were either already off work or checking out early for the three-day holiday.

Around 8 a.m. we got word of a hostage situation happening about 15 minutes away in downtown Albany. We sent a photographer and reporter down to cover what was happening from the scene and waited for news updates.

Unfortunately, the reporter forgot his netbook at home when he raced out to cover the story, but did manage to call in regular updates as police remained in a standoff with an armed man holding a woman hostage.

While we waited for further updates and photos from the scene, the magic of Twitter helped us keep up with what was going on down there as it happened.
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My ideaLab goal for the month of November is going to deal with metrics, metrics, and more metrics in an attempt to use what I learn to increase our overall page views on TroyRecord.com going forward.

So far, we've been looking at web stats on Omniture a few times a month (usually at the beginning or end of a week) to see how we've been doing, but that's about to increase exponentially.

Over the next two weeks, and continuing going forward, I plan to work with staffers at our parent company, JRC, my fellow ideaLab members, our local digital team (more on that below), as well as do my own research and experiments to determine the best ways we can use the feedback we get from web analytics to increase our traffic.Read more »

When it comes to Internet traffic, providing up-to-date, quality content is a key factor in driving the amount of page views that you can get. Being able to do that requires some kind of modern mobile technology - a resource that can be extremely valuable if you know how to utilize it.

Take last Saturday for example, when I loaned my ideaLab iPhone to our high school sports reporter Will Montgomery to cover a regional football game being played down in Kingston.

Will has always tried to keep up with his blog just about everyday and put as much useful information for readers on there as he possibly can.

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After weeks of meetings, shooting videos, interviewing both staff members and bloggers, and other extensive planning efforts, we held our first Community Media Lab event last night, welcoming a handful of community bloggers into our new space and starting the first of many discussions to help better our products.

Myself chatting with our roller derby
blogger Marcie Pry.

The night kicked off shortly after 5:40 p.m. on Nov. 10 with a turn out of about seven bloggers – a small gathering, but still good considering this was the first time we had an event like this and a few others couldn’t make it down because of illness or other events that came up in their own schedules.

After welcoming everyone who showed up and offering up some snacks and refreshments, we started the night by showing a video I put together of our staff explaining how our newspaper and the industry itself has changed with the push towards digital. This covered what we’ve seen over the last few years, as well as in recent months with the Digital First initiatives being pushed by our owner, Journal Register Company.

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First off, I regret that I haven't updated this blog in about two weeks. Things have been rather hectic around the office as we prepared to launch The Record's Stimulus Tracker, a week-long JRC project which showcases the impact the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has had on the nation.

I've also been working to set up and manage a few photo contests that we're hoping will attract a decent level of reader participation throughout the rest of 2010.

Our Halloween contest, “Fright Night”, is currently accepting entries for anyone in the Capital Region who wants a chance at some restaurant gift certificates and a larger grand prize we hope to soon announce. Click here to check it out.

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After having success with my first ideaLab project of getting reporters to go mobile when filing their articles, which I'm continuing to encourage around the office, I've chosen to make my second ideaLab project focus on developing uses for our on-site Community Media Lab.

Our media lab at The Record is a mid-sized room located off of the main entrance to our building at 501 Broadway in Troy. At the moment it is set up with several long tables to host meetings and presentations, but we hope to soon bring some technology such as a netbook computer and television display into the environment as well.

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When we first set our ideaLab goals, I wanted to tackle having all of our reporters (news and sports) file their content from the field. My goal in this, besides just getting everyone familiar with the technology, was to help everyone realize that adjusting their work flow in this way could actually save them a fair amount of time and be more productive in their day-to-day schedules.

With our new reporters, this was a slow process due to the limited number of devices we have. I loaned out the netbook and iPad to reporters who were covering various court cases, town meetings, press conferences, and election parties – anything where they were out of the office and could take advantage of filing from the field while working on most of their articles remotely.

All of them have done this at least once now and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. They loved being able to use the netbook to take notes and write their articles as they went, rather than having to transcribe and try to read their own messy handwriting. They also like the immediacy of the process and how that especially helpful when reporting on deadline.

Sports reporters have been doing this for a while now and understand the benefits, as they spend most of every week out of the office covering their games, practices, and other events. Sometimes, such as when they're at high school games, they do not have traditional WI-FI to take advantage of or a real press box, so I'm lending them my ideaLab tools to help conquer that challenge.

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Many have that question today, across the news industry as well as at Journal Register Company.

I don't have the exact answer myself, but as I've watched our progress in recent weeks, I can safely say that I am witnessing its creation.

Thanks to the addition of high tech tools in the newsroom, we at The Record have made the digital side of news more a part of our everyday routines, as opposed to the former thinking that it was just extra work on top of print preparation.

Take this morning for example. We had an editorial board meeting scheduled with Steve McLaughlin, a Republican candidate for state Assembly, at 10 a.m. In addition to the usual group of bodies (editors, a reporter, photographer, and myself to handle social media/web updates), we were recording video from two different setups.

We had our traditional Sony HD camera on a tripod with a microphone on the table close to the candidate to record the meeting so that we could edit down and upload a video later in the day. But, for the first time locally, we also gave live-streaming a try using my ideaLab iPhone.

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In line with my goal of getting our reporters and photographers to file their content from the field over the next month, I thought I'd take a few minutes to explain some of the benefits I see coming out of this at the local level for The Record.

First off, I'm not envisioning that we are going to be the ones who report every bit of local news faster than our competition. It'll be great when it happens that way and I certainly encourage our staff to strive for that when possible, but, being realistic, we won't be doing something new in the industry so much as catching up to the numerous other news outlets across our area and the country that have been doing this for years now. They've already developed mobile journalism as part of their normal reporting routines (something I hope to see happen over time locally as well).

That being said, I think it's a great benefit to be able to provide the news as we learn it at the office, whether it's some large breaking event like a shooting or bank robbery, or simpler events like the outcome of a city council vote on local legislation.Read more »