Town blogs and you
Louis Amestoy, our senior content editor, just led a staff meeting on our online operations and blogging, and it was very relevant to a point that reader Mike Smith made in one of his posts earlier today.
A lot of the blogs we're producing now - FontanaNow, ColtonNow, HighlandNow - need to become portals of information for those communities, and to that end, we're changing our own expectations.
Back in the days of traditional newspapering, a town reporter might produce a story a day. Now the focus is on managing multiple items a day so that as a reader, you know that there's something in the paper or online from your community everyday.
That's certainly the case in Yucaipa, where we launched the first of our town blogs a couple months ago. "Mobile journalist" Bob Otto is averaging five items a day - briefs, stories, pictures - many of which are "reverse published" back into the paper on a daily basis.
Our rollout schedule for other communities is pretty aggressive, and I would appreciate any thoughts you might have to improve what we're doing. Again, YucaipaNow is the most evolved of these sites, so if you have a chance, check it out.