What is your newsroom doing to engage your community this month?
Fall offers a wide range of engagement opportunities:
- Halloween is a time of fun for children and adults. You could invite people to submit photos or videos of costumes, then have community vote for the best costume (perhaps with awards in different categories: funny, scary, homemade, age groups, etc.). You could invite submissions for recipes for Halloween parties. You could map community haunted houses, Halloween events and lavishly decorated homes and yards.
- Football provides engagement opportunities: seeking photos and videos from high school (or youth) games and/or from tailgate parties; fantasy leagues; predictions (high school, college and/or pro).
- Maybe your local major league team is in the baseball post-season and you’re engaging around baseball.
- Fall colors provide engagement opportunities: Inviting photo submissions, asking nominations for the best route for a leaf-peeping drive, seeking recipes for apples and other fall produce.
- Did you do some sort of back-to-school engagement?
- If you’re one of the Digital First newsrooms with a mobile newsroom project (MoJo in Oakland, Calif., NewsVroom in York, Pa., or TC Rover in the Twin Cities), how are you engaging out in the community this fall?
- Did you engage your community in some way around the finale of “Breaking Bad”?
- What else? Maybe your engagement isn’t tied to the season, but just happens to be going on now. Maybe it’s tied to an event or issue in your community.
Tell me in the comments here what you’re doing right now for engagement. It can be a seasonal project that’s under way right now. It can be something that’s already wrapped up (let’s say September or later, plus back-to-school engagement that might have been in August). It can be something you’re planning but won’t launch until later in October (such as a Halloween project) or November (though we won’t include Thanksgiving in this contest; we’ll do holiday engagement in a later contest). If the project is already finished or under way, include relevant links. Otherwise, tell us what your plans are.
For Digital First newsrooms, I’ll launch a contest, with voting later in October. I’ll recognize the non-Digital First engagement ideas, but for Digital First Media newsrooms, I’ll send a Priority Mail box stuffed with Halloween candy to the winning newsroom.
For inspiration and ideas, you might want to check this year’s or last year’s Valentine contests or this year’s spring engagement contest.
So how are you engaging your communities this fall?
The Buttry Diary 
Steve, we’re having a lot of success with a pretty simple concept. No one just ‘watches’ a football game anymore. Now, through Twitter, everyone is a color analyst. We’ve set up chats for both Friday night high school football games and Sunday Eagles games. We suck in comments to our chat with hashtags – #Delcofootball and #Eagles – and we have raging discussions both nights. We’ve found this is getting much bigger audience then some of our live-stream shows, with the exception of when we do a show actually during a game. Again it’s this desire that people have to comment on the game and second-guess the decisions being made.
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At the Daily Freeman in Kingston, N.Y. we are currently covering the Woodstock Film Festival, using traditional reporting mixed with help with the community, tools and social media, through stories and a live blog, ongoing since Wednesday and running through Sunday
http://live.dailyfreeman.com/Event/Woodstock_Film_Festival_live_coverage.
The festival and the Freeman (in print and online) are encouraging people to use the hashtag #wff2013 to feed our blog and our curated photo album:
http://yourpics.dailyfreeman.com/1195721934?fb_ref=g1195721934
We also have Rebelmouse page that also compiles the rest of the web. I shared the code with the festival, so they have it on their site also. Full screen page is at https://www.rebelmouse.com/woodstockfilmfestival2013/ but we are using the embed in ours site.
With Tout, we’re piling up Video highlights and interviews at the scene with stars, directors, and revelers http://www.tout.com/hashtags/wff2013
On Saturday, the Freeman’s Community Media Lab meets the film festival’s Youth Initiative and Google Glass (today we had a Glass photo on the front page!)
We’ve partnered with the festival, http://www.woodstockfilmfestival.com/press/releases/2013_08_socialmedia.htm; and on top of the partnership, we’re using their social media team to feed our blog so that it can be constant.
On the side, we’re also playing with Zeega, because why not: http://dailyfreeman.blogspot.com/2013/10/woodstock-film-festival-continues.html; and http://zeega.com/156340 and we live-giffed Paul Rudd http://gifboom.com/x/6659a0c1; because gifs, obviously.
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In Marin County, Highway 101 is the road everyone loves to hate. It’s akin to a four-lane Main Street through the county — a freeway that everyone depends on in their daily lives, but is frequently infuriating with wrecks and roadwork that bring traffic to a standstill. It happens anytime and often — not just during typical commute times.
Lifestyles Editor Vicki Larson invited readers to share their 101 stories in 101 words, whether it be in fiction, nonfiction, prose or poetry. She received some two dozen responses, which will make for a fun presentation in a couple weeks. Here’s a link to her short story inviting reader submissions:
http://www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_24177537/share-your-slice-life-stories-about-highway-101
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The Associated Veteran’s Club in Loveland is honoring Vietnam Vets this Veteran’s Day, welcoming them home since the Vietnam war was not a pleasant war to be part of. I am writing a weekly series on Vietnam vets, highlighting a few local ones, and inviting the community to call a Google Voice number and leave messages of thanks to Vietnam vets. Those calls will be posted online with photos and transcribed in the paper for a Veteran’s Day story.
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[…] in October, I sought nominations. Now it’s your turn to vote for the best. Please read all the nominations, then come back up […]
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