Stephanie Romanski

Okay so it’s only day four of a six week tournament, and time will tell if we can hold our readers’ interest for that long (we did for Movie Madness, so it stands to reason…) but I’m over the moon about the results of the tournament so far.

As of this post:

• Pageviews for Music Madness site: 5, 126 – Average per day: 583 – Today alone: 644
• We’re up to 21 Twitter followers for @gimusicmadness
• The 4th bracket closes tomorrow but all total so far, we’ve had over 1,000 votes in the polls, far exceeding the Movie Madness turnout.
• We had a great turnout last Thursday for the Liveblog with the guys, so much so that they wanted to continue it on Friday (traffic dropped, but I think that’s because we didn’t plan and therefore pimp a second day of chat.) The discovery by our senior columnist that Cover It Live was so powerful and yet so easy to use had him dreaming up other applications we can use it for, so even if the turnout had sucked, that alone would have made it worth it. Anytime I convert someone in the newsroom to new things is a total victory for me.
• We had some server stress the first day, (which was a good thing if you think about it ) but Wordpress is holding up magnificently, and handling large volumes of voting really well.
• We sold three sponsors, so yay it’s made a little money!
• The combination of print and online to make this thing work has been seamless thanks to good planning. Daily teasers in the paper, house ads and banners, Twitters, and blog posts – at least three of those options were completely free publicity (I don’t know if I can make that claim about print stuff, Do you count cost of ink and space on A-1?

The final bracket voting ends tomorrow at noon, and then I have a wee break where I’ll be building the polls for Round Two. It will be interesting to keep an eye on the interest level in the tourney, both in-house and from our readers. Six weeks is a long time.

And I can’t believe Van Halen’s “Jump” is moving on. I really hate that song.

A slightly bumpy start when it was discovered that the four guys featured in our liveblog for Music Madness were still working with Firefox 1.5. Yeah, I said 1.5. So Cover It Live wasn’t working for them. After a desperate plea with the IT guy to upgrade them to 3.0 (and a lovely little serenade from two of them who love having that version ) the chat has been going strong all morning!

We’re in a slow patch right now as the guys, you know, do real work, which is good because I’ve got a million balls in the air trying to keep this going. Got a new sponsor for it, had to make a banner for them, they filmed a roundtable discussion yesterday that I had to get embedded, and of course, keeping the chat and twitter going.

Good thing I’m a Queen Multitasker.

But I’m very pleased with the results so far. We’re nearing 100 votes in the first bracket, the promotion we’ve done leading up to this is paying off (using Twitter, radio call-ins, house banners, and a spread in print.) And of course, the liveblog is a hoot. Still impressed as ever with Cover It Live – use it whenever you can – it’s free!

I just spent a frustrating morning trying to fix a photo uploading problem for the photographers’ blog. It was a good frustrating though, because I’m absolutely thrilled that they are blogging, and that they came to me first and asked me to build a blog for them. I didn’t have to nag. I hate nagging. I love everyone in my newsroom, but sometimes getting them to explore the things they can do online can be… well, frustrating.

We’re down to two full time photogs and a couple of stringers now so the fact that they somehow find the time to put one of their fantastic photos up on their blog makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Barrett especially takes the time to write nice captions, explaining why he took each photo and giving our readers a glimpse into the process of photography. It’s one of my favourite blogs in our stable. The idea for The Things We’ve Seen is that Barrett and Scott (and hopefully the stringers if they want) to have a place to post photos that don’t make it into print. When they cover an event, the take more than a few pics, and sometimes I’m sure it’s difficult to pick just one for A-1. or in the case of this photo, it was something they took on their own time for not other reason than it was pretty.

I’m hoping they enjoy blogging and don’t look on it as a chore. I think that’s the key – if you view it as a chore, then that’s what it will always be. I have a couple of reporters who take that tack and changing their opinion of it is a battle. But I have an editor who is blogging and is always telling me how much he enjoys it. He took up the idea of blogging when he decided to train to run in his first-ever marathon and the paper would track his progress in print, and he’d post daily updates. It’s working out really well, and he’s discovered that he likes the blog thing (oh, and he likes the running thing too )

Fitting blogging into a busy schedule can be difficult. You either have to make the time for it, or you don’t. But! Blog posts don’t have the be novel-length. I’m the exception, because I can’t seem to shut up when I start writing, but even posting a link and a blurb about the link is considered a post. I wonder if a lot columnists who blog make this mistake by thinking a blog is an extension of their columns and therefore should be column-length every time. Not so! Look at Dave Barry’s blog. Most of his posts aren’t any longer than two or three sentences. In the time it takes you to text your significant other that you’ll be late for dinner, you could have thrown up a quick blog post.

And so it goes. Progress is being made in my newsroom, and hopefully it’s not a significant drain. judging by the feedback I get, it’s working well. Now if they would just talk to each other about how easy it is…