... into the digital age

It's regatta weekend in Saratoga Springs and sports reporter Stan Hudy w/ the help of his wife Reda and Web editor Steve Shoe are going all out to bring readers the latest results from the Scholastic Rowing Association of America National Championship Regatta.

They've been planning this coverage for months and it's pretty amazing. Here's what we've got:

-- Twitter updates with results from each race on the @saratogian_spts feed
-- A live video feed so fans near and far can watch the action as it happens
-- The video feed also features a live chat so viewers can talk to Hudy & Shoe about the races and the coverage
-- Hudy's also been doing a little blogging about the event
-- And, of course, we've got our traditional written coverage online and in print
-- Oh, don't miss this it's my favorite part of our coverage: Rowing for Dummies. I love a good diagram and this one uses another newish-to-us online tool -- Scribd. That website allows us to upload a pdf file and embed it inside a story.

Here's the set-up at the Regatta, that's Hudy keeping cool under the umbrella
(photo by Steve Shoe)


We're pulling out all the stops for crew coverage this weekend, I hope you'll check it out, even if you don't know anything about rowing. I think the Hudy/Shoe coverage of this event, really exemplify what we're trying to do with our Ben Franklin project. We want our coverage of everything, from regattas to robberies, to be comprehensive, creative and meet our readers' needs.

I tried to find a Ben Franklin quote about boats that might fit... here's what I got:
"Vessels large may venture more, But little boats should keep near shore."
The Saratogian might be a relatively little boat, but we're still venturing as far out into the digital age as we can get. Are you coming along for the ride?


-- Emily

A little... if everyone else helps me.

The plan for the Saratogian's latest blog (which will be shared by all the news reporters and editors) is to share with you, our readers, the steps we are taking toward bringing our newsroom into the future.

This week we embarked on a new endeavor as a newsroom, the Ben Franklin Project, (the brainchild of our parent company's new CEO, John Paton) that we hope will bring our readers into the reporting process.

(i have no idea what this cartoon is about... but it makes me laugh)

The basic gist of the project is this: rather than use the (expensive) proprietary software like Atex, Quark, Photoshop etc. etc. etc. we currently use to put the paper together everyday, we will put out our July 4 edition using only free tools available online. Additionally, rather than judge our readers' interest in stories after the fact, by the number of hits it gets online or comments/letters to the editor/phone calls it generates, we will go the readers first and see what you want us to report on.

We're still working out exactly how this is going to happen (we've attended several hours of brainstorming meetings this week) but two of our sister papers — a daily, The News-Herald in Lake County, Ohio, and a weekly, Montgomery Media’s Perkasie News-Herald — already pulled it off. (One component of their project was using a free service to host the paper's website for one day, here's what that looked like for The New-Herald)

We know that the way people get their news today is a lot different than it was even a few years ago, let alone in Ben Franklin's day. Our recent forays into twitter (follow us: @saratogian_news and @saratogian_spts and @BFranklinTweets) and facebook are only the beginning of what we hope is a cultural shift toward "digital first" journalism.

The days of spending hours reporting and then sitting down to write a definitive story that readers will see for the first time the next morning when a paperboy throws it onto their front steps are looooong gone. We're still going to do good reporting, we're still going to take pride in our writing and photography and we're still putting out a print product... but we're also focused on getting the news out there as it happens. Our coverage will adjust as the story changes throughout the day.

The "digital first" mantra is also intended to impact the way we do our reporting and what we report on. We want to hear from you (well, not you, anonymous blogger with multiple personalities... I've heard enough), we want to know what issues are important to you and what stories you'd like us to tell.

We're also using new tools to do that reporting. Reporters now carry Flip cams to every story in addition to the good ol' pen and paper. This week Mareesa Nicosia used Skype — a free, online video chat service — to conduct an interview with someone in Africa (more on that in a later post...)

Do you have ideas about what we should be covering? Thoughts on how we can do a better job to get news to you throughout the day? Any tools we should be using to do a better job reporting?

Let us know.

— Emily