At the end of 2011, we began working on a transition to Town News’ much improved BLOX system, complete with a fair bit of website revamping (but nothing too drastic that would freak out our readers.) But most of all, it required a fairly big change for the way we publish stories online. The copy desk had to alter their routines quite a bit, and while BLOX is much nicer and definitely more powerful, there’s a learning curve that we’re still traversing.

But gone are the days of having to publish the website every time we update the site. Gone too are the constant re-ordering of priorities to position stories where we want them. We still struggle with the new way of prioritizing, but we’ll catch on and get it flowing smoothly. And because we don’t have to publish the site when we add a story (once a story is added either manually or via .xml, it is live on the website) we now need to change the publish date or set a story as Do Not Publish if it’s not ready for public viewing. Learned that the hard way after some lifestyle stories went up on the site with our internal slug as the headline. Oops

Some of the things I really like:

• Searching for articles, images – anything really in the back-end just became a whole lot easier. Love it.
• The ability to move ‘blocks’ around easily according to our needs is fantastic.
• The incorporation of ‘If you go’ boxes, bio boxes, youtube videos etc into a story is wonderful.
• Not having to publish all the time is a timesaver.
• It just *feels* refreshing, both the back-end and the redesign. I am a fan.

Some things I either don’t like or am still learning:

• Prioritizing for the slider and the subsections is confusing. Still learning.
• The whole caching issue Town News has is, well it’s irritating. I understand the reasons for it, I really do. But waiting anywhere from 1 to 30 to sometimes 60 minutes for a story pushed from InCopy/Falcon and never knowing which it’s going to be is agonizing in the news biz. And even cut & pasting a story manually yet still having to possibly wait 5 minutes before it’s live on the site is agonizing when you’re waiting to tweet the story. I understand they offer a preview function so you can check it before it goes live, but that doesn’t mean anything if you’ve got a breaking story, competition from other news outlets, and no way to send readers to the story as soon as it’s proofed for web. I hope this is something Town News will consider addressing in the future.

Other than that, I’m really pleased with BLOX as a whole. We have had a few readers complain about the new look, but I’ve never heard of a redesign that didn’t have people that simply dislike change. For my part, the transition was fairly smooth, with a few bumps, but I know it was rockier for my boss and the tech manager in my department as they worked with Town news to get everything we want. But I would like to say Town News has a great team and has made this normally painful process easier.

Here is an email I sent out to everyone that, I swear, started off with just wanting to share a helpful link with them and keep Twitter in their minds:

This is an EXCELLENT resource for the newsroom and using Twitter to research, mobile tweeting, hashtags and more.

http://media.twitter.com/newsrooms

Some of you have Twitter accounts – even if you didn’t know it – and I have your login info and am available *anytime* you want to learn more about this important and really valuable tool. Come find me. And to those of you who don’t have an Indy Twitter account yet (like our awesome new photog), I’d be happy to get one set up for you.

Please consider learning more about Twitter and social media in general – I can sit with you one-on-one if you like. Lately, we are constantly getting scooped on Facebook and Twitter by other media outlets, and while I know it’s important to get the story for print, in today’s media, a breaking story is old by the time the reporter gets back in, writes the story and someone reads it before it’s posted online. Our readers are starting to turn elsewhere when something breaking happens.

Even just a quick tweet saying, ‘Accident at 281 and Webb – details online soon’ would help. We have to shift our thinking just a little bit if we’re going to stay relevant in the future. So that’s why I might seem a little aggressive in this email. I may go into nag mode until I get all of you using Twitter, even just a little

I hit ‘send’ before I could talk myself out of it and for the rest of the day, I went from frustration to elation when one of the reporters I believed was the least interested in social media approached me and told me that her concern wasn’t the technology – it was that she felt she didn’t have access to the technology. Blew. My. Mind.

It’s something I bemoan a lot here. I believe every reporter should be provided with a smartphone – or at the very least, access to a smartphone to take out in the field when needed. We managed to get a Droid that is used by our online reporter/videographer and he often tweets as @girightnow when he’s out. And that is fabulous and that is a LOT more than some small newsrooms get. But some of my journalists are using Razr phones with no texting plans. I mean seriously. Razrs. And while it’s awesome that we have our online guy, we also need our beat reporters to be more involved in tweeting.

So we gave the Droid to the reporter going to a board meeting today to see if she could manage a few tweets – so far she is rocking it and I am over the bloody moon. As I talked with my boss about this yesterday, I learned that we need to make sure the reporters will actually use the technology before we go out and splash a bunch of cash on it. We’ve been burned before (I’m looking at a dusty Zi8 video camera we bought in hopes of having the reporters grab it and go all the time) and so this time, we’re not going to get all excited and get ahead of ourselves until we’re sure they are on board.

The last thing I learned was that our paper’s Twitter/Facebook follower count has reached 1/5th of our print subscribers. That doesn’t include our “audience reach” of course, just the hard number of current subscribers, but that fraction also blew. my. mind.

I think we are finally past the “I don’t get it” stage or the “Who cares what they had for breakfast” stage. We’ve moved onto the “I need the technology first” stage. They get that Twitter and Facebook aren’t frivolous and unimportant. Now they just need to learn how to use them to their advantage.

Today I have two three reporters tweeting – one who had never done it before, and one who usually has trouble getting it to work for him. Today is a good day.

I just overheard a reporter say, “I hate that tweeting shit” in reference to the fact that the questions he had answered for his story were already tweeted. My heart died a little because I feel like I must not be doing my job properly.

I’ve been tweeting for the paper since 2007 and have trained and advocated and occasionally nagged everyone to get on the Twitter train. Some did, and some never ever will. But this person has a love/hate relationship with it and I can’t make him understand a) how it works and b) why it’s a good thing.

Things have changed. People want their news and information about 2-10 seconds after it happens, so that they can simply know about it. Once they are interested in an unfolding story, they will usually take the time to look for the in-depth articles that our reporters are so good at. They will want more details that can only be provided after everything is verified, fact-checked, sourced, and put together in a cohesive story. There’s room for both instant news, and fuller, in-depth news. One reaches a certain audience, and the other reaches them and everyone else.

Journalists should be embracing this stuff because it’s not going away. Learn how to adapt already, because I’m tired of banging my head against brick walls.

There are some things I’m still trying to figure out, such as how to truncate long comment streams on some of the more popular users (like Scoble) – I’m sure there is a way, I just haven’t figured it out yet. I ended up removing him from my stream altogether even though I like his posts. The Circles feature would let me just view my family’s posts or just my friends’ stuff, but I kind of like having all my circles show up in the stream, so scrolling past hundreds of Scoble’s comments to see what my daughter just shared was getting on my nerves. And some posts DO truncate the comments, but Scoble’s never did and I can’t work out why.

I realize Google’s trying to roll this out slowly, but I really want to be able to add more people to my circles who can also use the service. So hopefully when it’s open for all, I will use it even more. And I’m really looking forward to the iPhone app. Safari mobile interface is ok, but can’t add photos.I haven’t played much with Sparks yet, but as an avid Google Reader user, I’m wondering if I need yet another thing I have to check all the time. I suffer from Notification Syndrome bad enough as it is.

Will I end up using G+ over Facebook in the future, or Twitter for that matter? Personally, I doubt it. Twitter is so integrated into my routines that it would be difficult to break the habit. And I have too many Facebook friends who won’t give two craps about Google+ because they’ll stay with what’s familiar.

Ryan Huff, in a comment on Jeff Jarvis‘ G+ stream said:

“I see G+ as the water cooler. Twitter provides the headlines, G+ provides the discussion. Facebook? They provide the gossip. With that said, what G+ becomes will depend on the tools that emerge. With integration into Seesmic and another established tools, it could morph into something more familiar.”

I completely agree.

Today, I managed to get my newspaper going on Google+, and that’s a whole different ball of wax compared to using it personally. I think it could be very useful if I can stream our headline tweets and Facebook fanpage posts into it. My philosophy for the paper is that we will bring you the news where ever you are. And if G+ is successful, we’ll provide our coverage there for you. But we’ll definitely need some API tools developed to coordinate everything. It took a long time to grow our Twitter followers and Facebook fans. I’m curious as to how quickly we can grow an audience and drive traffic on Plus. I suppose it’s finally time to add the +1 button into our stories

I hope it doesn’t fail. Google has a solid effort this time so here’s hoping.

But one of the reasons I justified spending some hard-earned dosh on it was that I hoped it could potentially be useful at work. My publisher has been talking about trying to get a couple for the newsroom and for advertising and so I thought, if I have one and bring it to work with me everyday, it’s usefulness would become apparent.

So far it’s great at telling me the weather. And testing site designs and how they look on it. I’ve been able to show it off a little and everyone agrees it’s a pretty gorgeous little machine, but so many keep referring to it as ‘Steph’s toy.’

At home, yes it’s been something of a toy while I play Plants vs. Zombies on it or watch some Doctor Who on Netflix while I’m on the treadmill, and my goodness, AirPlay is a brilliant app. But here’s a few ideas I have for making this more of a tool at work as opposed to a toy:

• Our mobile web reporter could use it to make submitting stories on the road easier than typing it out on the Droid.
• Any reporter attending city council or school board meetings can take notes easily without lugging a laptop in and with a 3G iPad, no need to worry about available wifi.
• Ad reps can eliminate the need for paper-wasting flyers and packets by keeping various presentations on the iPad to show advertisers.
• Online demos and ad banner prototypes can be shown easily and impressively.

I would love to hear from other newsrooms out there that are either using iPads or thinking about it to find out how they’re being used or to get more ideas on how to use them. Comments are open- Russian spammers piss off please, I’m sick of you.

- written with the WordPress iPad app which is really awesome

My coworker, who is anxiously awaiting the Verizon iPhone and declined to get a Droid in anticipation of the Verizon iPhone, was thrown by Palmer’s blog post particularly because she talks about the cost of switching from AT&T and the fact that Apple will likely announce a spanky new phone later this year. He’s worried about tying himself to a 2-year contract for the phone now if something faster and better will be on the way in just a few months.

This is what annoys me a little about the flurry of posts touting the pros and cons of the new Verizon iPhone – no one takes into consideration the fact that things are different out here in the flyover states. Unless we live in Lincoln or Omaha, Nebraska, we’ve never had access to iPhones at all.

Thank goodness for the Droid!

So should anyone around my part of the world have the same fears about theViPhone as my coworker, I’ll tell you what I told him: If your current Verizon contract is due for an upgrade, go ahead and get the new iPhone. Yes, you’ll have to buy the phone still, but it’s pretty spiffy and you won’t regret it. As far as speed and knowing that 4G speed is becoming the norm – in more populated areas first of course – it will likely be a while before that lightning fast LTE or 4G hits Grand Island, Nebraska so to me, the 2-year contract thing isn’t a big deal. In 2 years, there will likely be an even better iPhone coming out. Besides, Verizon’s 3G network is pretty fast and unless you are a super power-user, you’re not likely to care much. But the one thing that makes getting the ViPhone worth it, in my mind, is the wi-fi hotspot capability.

That alone is pretty fantastic. I don’t have a smartphone at all – I rely on my iPod Touch 4 and the Verizon Mi-Fi. I use it for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, email, Evernote, games, paying for my mochas, texting, and with some jiggery-pokery, a phone. Rarely do I actually use it as an iPod, funnily enough. With wi-fi becoming so available, even here in the sticks, in time I don’t even think I’ll need the mi-fi anymore.

So, my recommendation based on what I know about living in the land that tech sites forgot, and based on being quite a gadget whore, I say it’s ok for you undecided Nebraskans to go ahead and get yourself the new Verizon iPhone when it’s unleashed. You’ll love it.

[For the record, I have nothing against Droids and would be perfectly happy with one if I didn't love my iPod Touch so much.]

I won’t go into all of the red tape reasons we were dragging our heels because it doesn’t matter anymore. We no longer have a videographer. Now we have a mobile web reporter. Essentially, we turned our videographer into our reporter for the web. Do you have any idea how much I’ve wanted such a person in the newsroom? Not only that, but we worked out a way to get him a Droid X, taught him how to turn it into a wifi hotspot and now he can get out there, shoot photos and video and write a story for the web in his car, pop me a text and I can get it edited, photos/video added and have something online before any other news service around here can say, “I didn’t know about that.”

What this means for The Independent is we’ll have a fresh, regularly updated website all day long.I’m so excited I could spit.

Our new mobile web reporter has some learning to do, mind you. I want him to not rely on his expensive video camera all the time that requires a lot of editing/producing time and just grab some video with the Droid for a story that we can put in as plain old raw video. People click that stuff. They don’t need something slick and produced with transitions and title tags all the time. I want him to open up his UStream app and air it live while I embed that into a story and direct readers to it from Facebook and Twitter.

But he’s still learning how the phone works, and for now he’s doing a good job of getting out to stories we might not always cover because we’re shorthanded (like most newsrooms I know.) He needs to be able to find stories on his own now, but he’ll learn that too.  We’ll get there, and I’m so excited about this.

Not only that, I had a meeting last week regarding our direction with Social Media, which is my forté. I am not going to talk much about it just yet, but I will just say that my publisher is *extremely* taken with what the Journal Register is up to….

But having access to a boatload of Twitter accounts (my own few and close to 40 I manage for the giNetwork) I thought maybe… just maybe, I’d get to play. To my eternal surprise, my professional account, @stephromanski was upgraded. DEEEEEEE-lightful! I dove in and wandered around the new digs, read all the tech blog roundups detailing the subtle and not-so-subtle toys, and enjoyed the improvements.

My only annoyance with it all is the unexpected chore I now have of having to go and redesign almost 40 Twitter backgrounds for our giNetwork partners. I watched @Scobleizer’s livestream video of Twitter’s presser last night and the live chat/social stream was lit up with people asking about their Twitter backgrounds. The wider content area means a thinner space on the right to put brand info, however, the right pane of the content area lets some of the background show through so it’s time to get creative!

We’ve been including a custom Twitter background as part of the package for the giNetwork because we link directly to a business’ Twitter page in our directory. But if a user is searching a local business on Twitter.com, it’s going to open up in their right pane with all the pertinent info and vitals, so there’s no need to even go look at their page at all.

Other than the background dilemma, I can’t really think of a way that the redesign with adversely affect what we’re doing here, and the background issue isn’t a big deal (except to me since I have to do all the extra work – Thanks Twitter! ). The ways Twitter incorporates all the new info when you click a tweet that will encourage new follows – that can only be a good thing for businesses right?

Speaking as someone who does actually use the web interface on a daily basis (there’s been quite a lot of snark about that ) I want to congratulate Twitter on the redesign and new features. Thank you guys!

A couple of days ago, Mark gave us a call from his posh digs in Austin, TX to talk about the giNetwork for his post and I thought it went smashingly. We’ve been working so hard on fine-tuning this program for the past several months and I think we’ve got it down to a science now Over 30 businesses have jumped on board and we’ve only lost one.

The ad reps are able to sell it on their own without needing Jack to join them on the sales call (though of course he always will if he’s needed) and I’m getting faster at all the back-end stuff now that I’ve unwound all of Facebook’s quirks and discovered the best way to work with the businesses is to find out their comfort level with technology, find out whether they’re a cell phone user primarily, or if they are behind the computer most of the time, then recommend the best way to post their deals.

Behind a computer: Facebook is best bet. Cell user: Twitter.

It’s important to find that out because during the setup, you either need to link their fan page to Twitter, or use a Facebook app called ‘Smart Twitter for Pages’ to link their tweets to Facebook. If you turn both on, you get sucked into double-posting hell and you don’t want any part of that.

I’m beginning to ramble. I really just want to say that we’re pleased and excited with giNetwork’s success and while I’ve talked to a few other paper’s about it I’d love to talk to more. I’m sromanski [at] theindependent [dot] com if anyone’s interested in hearing more about this.

Thanks again to Mark Coddington for the wonderful write-up!