GREAT MULTIMEDIA
Gasoline continues to be a front-page story, but rarely (if ever) does the coverage go deep to explore the path from the well to the pump. A recent investigative project launched as a four-day series in print attempted to do just that, but the online presentation is where the story really shines.

Mark Briggs, editor of newstribune.com and a regular contributor to APME.com, details what Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Salopek and photographer Kuni Takahashi did to extensively document the many factors that influence gas prices.

Briggs also highlights excellent multimedia projects recently launched by The Dallas Morning News, Roanoke Times and the Ottawa Citizen.

TRACK POLITICAL ADS ONLINE
An ambitious project at The Washington Post lets you track the mud as it slings. A database breaks down those 30-second spots we'll be seeing more and more of as Election Day nears, noting the tone, the music, the gender of narrator, the issue, the characters and more.

A NEW APPROACH TO YOUNG READERS
The Minneapolis Star Tribune has launched a new website aimed at that ever-elusive younger market. It's called vita.mn, and, according to Ken Riddick, is "an interesting new twist on reaching new audiences: part publication, part application."

"While we will be utilizing some of our tried-and-true publishing of StarTribune entertainment stories, the true success of the site will be demonstrated by the audience's participation," said Riddick, vice president for Interactive Media. "We invite them to write reviews, create lists, tag stories with their own keywords, even re-write guides. They can save stuff that is relevant to them, like favorite venues, restaurants, etc. And, hopefully, they will communicate among themselves in many valuable ways, too."

A FLOOD OF RESEARCH
Reports on a variety of newspaper-industry topics are ever more frequent. Mark Briggs highlights three of the most important released recently: "Newspaper Next: Blueprint for Transformation," "Newspapers Are Successfully Extending Their Audience Online" and "The Future of the Internet II."

HOT BLOGS
Mark Briggs catches up with Jonathan Dube's attempts to maintain the authoritative list of newspaper blogs, as well as highlights three new blogs from The New York Times, Spokane Spokesman-Review and St. Petersburg Times that are gaining attention.

TIME RUNNING OUT TO REGISTER FOR NEW ORLEANS CONFERENCE
There are only a few weeks until the APME annual conference in New Orleans, and while registrations will be taken up to the start of the conference on Oct. 25, why not get the paperwork out of the way now?

Register for the conference with a click here.

Reserve at the hotel by calling (504) 962-0500 or 1-800-980-6429.

Baquet added to conference lineup: New Orleans native Dean Baquet, vice president and editor of the Los Angeles Times, will deliver the keynote speech during Thursday's awards lunch at the APME conference Oct. 26. Baquet was promoted from managing editor in July 2005 to succeed John S. Carroll, who quit in part because of cost-cutting pressures from the newspaper's ownership company. Baquet has been in the news lately after he and recently departed Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson publicly refused the company's requests to make cuts they considered drastic.

Click here to see the full conference schedule.

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