HOW TO CREATE MULTIMEDIA THAT PAYS OFF

Editors at papers of every size are wrestling with how to push the online agenda while maintaining quality daily newspapers. But the smaller the paper, the bigger the challenge. It's harder to find the time for training, for producing multimedia packages and for selling the concept to the staff.

Bob Stover, managing editor at Florida Today, visited with editors of three papers ranging from 7,400 daily circulation to 34,000 to get some insight on how they address these issues. All three have reputations for good online reports. All three have young staffs who have bought into the importance of online news delivery. Each stressed how important it is to have high aspirations for multimedia while maintaining a practical view of what has the most payoff for the time they invest.

Rob Humphreys is managing editor of the Culpeper (Va.) Star Exponent, circulation 7,400. His paper won APME's small newspaper convergence award last fall with a package about a 1918 lynching.

Despite the accolades, he said, "We're doing it by the seat of our pants" and his staff has to be selective because he doesn't have the resources to hit a homerun everyday.

"If a 747 crashes into city hall, we'll staff that and have systems in place to put it on the Web and alert readers at any time of day," he said. "But for papers our size, I think 24/7 really means knowing your readership and responding to them when they want news. In our case that has been morning, lunch and early afternoon."

Some tips:

■ Look for help from other sources.

If a television station is covering the story, ask for clips to post online. "When we had a police officer killed, we asked them to give us their six-o'clock segment. Beg, steal, borrow. This is a good approach for a paper this size when you have almost no resources."

■ Don't throw anything away.

Photos that used to hit the archives are now used in online galleries.

■ Emphasize audio

Combined with photos, it can add significant impact to an online report and is cheaper. It takes less training and less time than video.

■ Let readers add to your content.

The paper added a story chat function that allows readers to talk about the stories and community dialogue "has totally exploded." It's added a sense of place to the Web site, he said, and the comments are often used to direct discussion on the commentary pages.

■ Stay local.

"Who goes to StarExponent.com to read about Iraq?"

Find Culpeper's winning APME entry by clicking here.

This week's second guest adviser is Andrew Small, design editor and art director of the Dothan (Ala.) Eagle, circulation 34,000.

"Not long ago we had a man walk into a local doc-in-the-box and shoot the place up. We had a breaking news item, a slide show and video up all before the noon news," he said. "We were able to advance the story, put five or six stories up that day and turn reporters loose on the next day's story for print. That's how far we've come in developing a story online."

But the Eagle staff has to keep its enthusiasm for multimedia in perspective. For starters, that means evaluating the time it takes to produce certain online components. For instance, they don't use Flash graphics and they don't do much video because both are so time consuming.

Small's tips:

■ Be selective about what you do and what you're doing it about.

■ Have patience.

The turnaround time to see customers respond to what you're doing is about 18 months. "People have to be trained to come to your Web site."

■ Get your whole staff as much involved online as they are in print.

"Getting them to buy in to the idea that your web site is a 'live' version of the paper helps them understand the importance of being an immediate news and information provider for the community."

Check out Dothan's extensive coverage of a recent killer tornado. The site includes lots of extras – blogs, a song, info about how to help, video and obits on each victim. Click here to read it.

Our final guest contributor this week is Bob Davis, editor of the Anniston (Ala.) Star, circulation 27,000.

One of the Star's biggest successes has involved putting public documents online.

"It's not at all fancy, but I'm a big proponent of it," Davis said.

"This takes practically no effort and no time and even I could probably manage to get these up."

When the paper is in a dispute over public documents, it posts its letter asking for the records, any replies and copies of appeals.

"This isn't video, it's not a cartoon and it doesn't move around," Davis said. But readers like it anyway, and it helps push the paper's First Amendment mission.

In one high profile case, the paper had documents that implicated a person in the killing of a civil rights worker in the 1960s. They wrote about the documents and a prosecutor asked to see them, saying he wanted to reopen the case. Not wanting to look like an arm of the law, Davis decided there was "nothing to prevent us from making them a public document. We scanned them in and put them on line and told the prosecutor he could see them as well as anyone else – they're public now."

Davis has adopted a "pick and choose" approach to online work. Audio and slide shows usually take priority over video, for instance. When it did a story about a historic neighborhood , the paper had a local resident narrate a slide show.

"Something about his voice added a real level of authenticity to it," Davis said.

When a local African American church celebrated its 130th anniversary, it included a performance by the Miles College Choir. The paper decided it needed video and sent a camera with the metro reporter covering the event.

"Reading on the printed page that the Miles College choir performed does not begin to do justice to the performance," Davis said. "It doesn't capture the joy. A couple of minutes of video tape enhanced that story in a way that just having a good solid news story could not."

Find Anniston's web site at www.annistonstar.com

HOW TO COVER BREAKING NEWS IN A SMALL NEWSROOM

Rob Humphreys, managing editor of the Culpeper Star Exponent, said a recent news event in his area showed how things are changing for small newspapers.

"For a long time, Culpeper has been a pretty sleepy market in comparison to our big-city neighbors to the north. But as the competition ramps it up and people expect immediate online coverage of their hometown, we're turning to breaking coverage on the Internet as a way to maintain ownership of local news and fuel Web site traffic.

"A school fire Feb. 1 was somewhat of a turning point in Culpeper media history in that both of our competitors (a free Culpeper weekly and a daily in Fredericksburg that's seven times our size) took the same online approach we did.

"Everyone was racing to post the story first. In fact, the Free Lance-Star played it as the lead story online, linked an audio clip from its radio station to the story and broke the news about the same time (or maybe a tad before) StarExponent.com. It was like all three media outlets had turned a page and were entering a new age of news."

To address that new world, Humphreys has given his staff these instructions for a breaking news story:

1. Reporter and photographer respond to scene.

2. They call in updates on cell phone early and often to editor.

3. Editor types up quick-hitting, newsy updates for Web.

4. Online person posts immediately and sends out e-mail blasts to subscribers.

5. Editor alerts radio and TV partners.

6. Story for print product takes a "second-day" approach different than Web updates.

7. When video or audio is available from media partners, it is posted online with our coverage.

GET INVOLVED WITH APME

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