Managing Editor Carole Tarrant helped the new crew, which also included online producer Melissa Worden (recently from USAToday.com), by building in more than a month of production time for the online development. A smart move and it shows in the quality of the online feature.

"The response has been wonderful with readers offering up clothing and other donations for the refugee families," Tarrant said. "We got quite a few letters from people who said the series was an eye-opener — they'd driven by this apartment complex hundreds of times and never realized it was the epicenter of refugee families in Roanoke for three decades."

Seen a great multimedia package lately? Send me a link: mark.briggs@thenewstribune.com.

POWERFUL PHOTOS ANCHOR BREAKING NEWS PRESENTATION
The Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune recently felt the impact of online for enhanced coverage. The Tribune, which publishes in the afternoon, sent a photographer and beat writer to a voluntary workout by the Missouri football team. The photographer, Jenna Isaacson, noticed Aaron O'Neill struggling with the workouts and started watching him and photographing him more closely, according to managing editor Jim Robertson.

An hour later, the newspaper learned the player had died.

"When an athlete at a major university dies during drills, it's important news nationally as well as locally," Robertson said via e-mail. "Jenna called me at home to tell me the situation, and I returned to the office about 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday. With our next edition not due on the street until 2:30 the next afternoon, we decided to publish an initial bulletin and a series of photographs edited to 13 images that demonstrated the intensity of the workout as well as the apparent physical condition of the athlete and the degree of his effort."

Robertson and photo editor Brian Kratzer decided to lead with an image of O'Neal collapsed on the field. It was a powerful decision — by 2 p.m. the next day when copies of the paper started hitting the streets, the online story and photos had clocked 12,000 page views (see the story here: www.columbiatribune.com/2005/Jul/20050713News005.asp; he photo gallery here: www.columbiatribune.com/2005/Jul/0712slideONEAL/01.asp).

Reaction was mixed; some people posting on message boards called it insensitive and exploitative.

"We have traditionally been aggressive in our use of photos that some might say push the limit in content," Robertson said. "A couple of callers promised to drop their subscription, but for the most part I think there wasn't much negative reaction by our regular readers."

TIME'S 50 COOLEST WEB SITES
I guess we shouldn't be surprised that no newspaper made Time's list of the 50 Coolest Web sites, released last month. After all, "cool" isn't traditionally in any editorial mission statements. Still, the list is worth combing for resources. Among other sites of note are publicagenda.org, a "nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that conducts public opinion surveys on a variety of hot-button issues," and blinxtv.com, where you can search TV news clips and other video bits from more than two dozen sources.

The only news Web site to be mentioned was Korea's OhMyNews (english.ohmynews.com), the citizen-powered news site that features more than 30,000 correspondents contributing news stories, opinion, photos and video. It's a model that several newspaper companies are watching closely as they hope to add some "cool" to their content — especially online — in the hope of stemming ongoing circulation and readership declines.

In the past, newspapers didn't have to compete with cool. Those days, unfortunately, are over.

Today's installment was written by Mark Briggs, online editor of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash.