Digital First newsrooms will hit the road in mobile community media labs

We’re getting ready to take some of our Digital First Media newsrooms on the road.

Four newsroom vans will roll into neighborhoods in the coming months, loaded with the equipment and people of community engagement projects.

We will launch the Mobile Community Media Lab projects in Connecticut, the San Francisco Bay area, the Twin Cities and York, Pa.

Digital First Media announced plans today for 12 community newsroom projects that will engage our communities in a variety of ways. In addition to the four mobile labs, we will be launching university partnerships, remodeling newsrooms to provide space for the community and planning special projects in our existing space.

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How an update and a tweet brought new attention to a story

Thanks to Lisa Fernandez of the San Jose Mercury News for sending along this example of an update and a tweet by editor Mike Frankel giving an extra boost to a story (lightly edited from Lisa’s email):

We’re all trying here at BANG (the Bay Area News Group) to figure out how to extend the life of a story. And then, voila. Something happened by happenstance today, that made a story dropping in clicks turn into the No. 1 “most read” story today.

On Monday, we wrote about a PayPal executive who was killed after he was struck by a train. Turns out he was suffering from bipolar II, and we had gotten a statement from his family. Colleague Mike Rosenberg wrote the first version, which ran online Monday evening and in the paper on Tuesday.

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Lisa Fernandez shares a crowdsourcing (or fetching) lesson

I enjoy watching journalists grow and learn about our profession. I recounted last month how Lisa Fernandez of the San Jose Mercury News tried live-tweeting after a webinar I led on using Twitter to improve your journalism.

Lisa tweeted and emailed recently about another lesson she learned about engaging with the community:

I "crowdsourced" and found my perfect Christmas story for all of you who knew I was on the hunt. You'll have to wait till Christmas to read.—
Lisa Fernandez (@ljfernandez) December 16, 2011

I also once vowed NEVER to use the word "crowdsourced."—
Lisa Fernandez (@ljfernandez) December 16, 2011

Lisa’s email to me last week told the story:

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Newspapers’ Original Sin: Not failing to charge but failing to innovate

A mistaken matter-of-fact statement in an Associated Press story launched Chris O’Brien on an insightful blog post that had little to do with the original story.

In the same way, a statement in Chris’s post launched me on this post, which will start out in a different direction from his blog.

The AP story, about Microsoft, said, “If it doesn’t make the right calculation, the software maker could find itself in the same position as newspapers that gave online content away and now are struggling to replace print revenue.”

Chris, contributing to the MediaShift blog, wrote: “That second line is almost a throwaway, written with no attribution. That means that the notion has officially entered into conventional wisdom: Local newspapers screwed up by giving away for free the content everyone used to pay to consume.”

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