Freedom Shining Stars for first quarter announced

IRVINE, Calif. — April 21, 2009 — Freedom Communications' Center of Community Journalism Excellence is pleased to announce the Shining Stars award winners for the first quarter of 2009.

The five winning associates exemplify innovation and leadership in Freedom's content transformation. Congratulations to these Shining Stars:

—Emily Killian, The Star, Shelby, N.C.
—Barry Noreen, The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo.
—Scott Smith, KTVL-TV, Medford, Oregon
—Jared Taylor, The Monitor, McAllen, Texas
—Wendy Victora, Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach, Fla.

All five Shining Stars are rewarded with a trophy and a gift from the Freedom Store. The Stars may also take part in training and mentoring opportunities.

“The dedication and innovation shown by this group of winners is top-notch,” said Lee Lerner, Director of Freedom’s Center of Community Journalism Excellence. "When you read the nominations, a recurring theme is ‘enthusiasm.’ Each of these Shining Stars helps drive our interactive success and transformation because they are excited about the job. That enthusiasm helps Freedom better serve its readers and viewers — and the Stars’ can-do attitude makes for a better place to work."

Five associates are selected as winners each quarter. Managers are invited to contact Lerner to offer new nominations or re-nominate worthy candidates. Follows are the submitted nominations for each winner:

WENDY VICTORA
Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach, Fla.

"The Daily News has seen tremendous growth in its online audience in the past two years. In March, nwfdailynews.com generated more than 4.6 million page views. Wendy played a key role in generating much of that growth. Wendy wears a number of online hats at the Daily News. She is the first person in the office every weekday, and she often posts several breaking stories between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. — the period when the greatest number of people go to our Web site in search of news.

But Wendy's greatest strength is as an innovator. She has led the way in developing daily short crime stories online that collectively generate hundreds of thousands of page view each month. Wendy also championed the increase in our photo galleries, which generated 637,000 page views in March. And, when something big happens, Wendy is quicker than anybody to get the facts and get some sort of breaking news story up online that can then be added to as more facts are gathered.

I should also mention that Wendy now organizes the daily news budget for the newsroom by 10 a.m. every morning, which keeps us thinking online first, print second. And, yes, Wendy continues to write a weekly column, and occasionally write that great feature story that has made her one of Freedom's most award-winning journalists.

If there's one thing I know, it's that a newsroom is a team effort, and teamwork has been the key to online growth at the Daily News. But every team needs great individual effort, and no one has worked harder than Wendy Victora to grow online audience at the Northwest Florida Daily News."

— Nominated by Patrick Rice, Director of Content, Florida Freedom Newspapers

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JARED TAYLOR
The Monitor, McAllen, Texas

"Jared Taylor is an old newspaper curmudgeon trapped in a 23-year-old’s body.

Of course, he may just be cranky because getting up for a 6 a.m. shift four days a week does not jibe with what most reporters think of as the start to a good day.

Jared’s official title is the morning cops reporter, but he’s the linchpin to our online news-gathering operation.

Jared got a new toy over Christmas: an iPhone that he describes as “this reporter’s best friend.” It allows him to file photos from the crime scene, before TV (our only competition) can get anything online. This proved especially effective during several major wildfires where preliminary information is sketchy but the photos tell the story more than words could.

Jared also averages about three videos per week, typically breaking news shots from the scene of crimes, accidents or fires, plus dash cam and surveillance videos. His videos made up more than half of The Monitor’s 100,000-plus video page views during the first quarter of 2009. And just because the story was not huge does not mean it will not have video success — some of our most popular videos have been non-fatal car crashes not covered by TV, but picked up by us on slower news days.

Jared’s iPhone has also allowed him to give voice-activated Twitter updates from crime scenes before he gets back to post the story online. And none of this takes into account his more than 100 bylines in print during the first three months of 2009. Those stories range from breaking news such as a bus crash in Mexico that killed a dozen people to stories that require more shoe-leather reporting, such as an ongoing story that asks how a computer lab proctor accused of molesting a first-grade class could be reassigned to another class and why it took the school district nine months to investigate the allegations.

But his latest project adds another tool to his online repertoire, a tool that has the potential to bring an even greater viewership to themonitor.com — as well as good information for our readers.

He’s been working on getting local law enforcement to compile their daily call logs into electronic form so we can create an online crime map, similar to what the Northwest Florida Daily News has had so much success with in the past.

It has not been easy, and the process is not complete, but the county sheriff has begun work on sending over crime reports. We hope to convince other law enforcement in the area that posting these statistics is in their best interests as well.

And so, for his ongoing work as a true multimedia journalist and his continuing efforts to improve not only his own abilities but themonitor.com’s readership and readers’ knowledge of what’s happening in their neighborhood, I submit Jared Taylor as a candidate for a Shining Star for the first quarter of 2009."

— Nominated by David Gragg, Metro Editor, The Monitor, McAllen, Texas

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SCOTT SMITH
KTVL-TV, Medford, Oregon

"Ever since Scott joined the team in mid-September, the Web site’s page views have steadily increased. We’ve broken daily, weekly, monthly and, of course, our record for page views for the year, as well.

In the first quarter of 2009, our page views are double what they were last year. Scott contributes more than just Web stories. He's a newsroom leader with new, interactive story ideas for our on-air coverage as well.

Scott's positive, never-quit attitude makes him a shining star at KTVL every day. He recently started our video Web log. This feature is unique from any other Web site in the market, or even the state!

Scott's ideas are fresh and different, propelling KTVL.com to more than doubling the page views of any other television Web site in the market.

Scott markets our stories to bigger news sites such as CNN, drawing traffic from nationally ranked sites to KTVL.com.

His positive attitude and “never say die” spirit has also added to strengthening morale at the station. He works odd hours when news or weather events present special opportunities to increase our Web performance. He also works well with sales on interactive efforts on KTVL.com.

Scott is reliable, creative and, bottom line, he has increased our numbers to compete with the local newspaper’s Web site. We are currently the number one television Web site in the market.

Here are some numbers to show why Scott is a “Shining Star:”

—2007 (without Scott): 1,028,742 Page Views (entire year)
—2008 from September to December: 1,003,761 Page Views (in just over
three months!)"

— Nominated by Manny Fantis, News Director, KTVL-TV, Medford, Ore.

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BARRY NOREEN
The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo.

"One of Freedom's newsroom transformation elements is 'community conversation.' That's the pillar upon which this nomination rests.

Barry Noreen isn't the guy in our newsroom you'd peg as a digital transformation agent. A Gazette longtimer, he proudly bleeds ink. But he also possesses a tremendous amount of common sense, and that's what makes him a transformation shining star.

Barry is our local columnist. He does his dead-tree thing, and he's got his blog. As does every reporter, he reads the comments that visitors post at gazette.com. One recent day, the discussion turned toward the sometimes-uncivil tone of online debate.

Barry chimed in with a question: 'Would we be this nasty to each other if we were talking face to face?' It's not an original thought, but his next post was: Let's get together and find out.

Thus was born the first meeting of gazette.com commenters — some of whom, when online, go hammer and tong at each other. We provided the place, and the cookies and lemonade. A tentative handful showed up.

What do you know: These people actually were civil. Friendly, even. They disagreed without giving offense. Afterward, they said warm things about the event and each other on the comment boards.

We liveblogged it. An online staffer posted running minutes of the discussion, and fielded questions from online observers (Do they have fangs? Any injuries?). Several dozen gazette.com visitors logged on to the liveblog of the event.

Encouraged, Barry organized a second get-together. Twice as many people showed up. This time, laptops awaited participants, so they could post directly into the liveblog. The result was a 3 1/2-hour multiperson chat; more than 50 visitors contributing more than 450 posts to the liveblog, and an average visit duration of 20-plus minutes.

The modest traffic was nice, but the real impact has been on the quality of commentary on the boards. Such a thing is impossible to quantify, but by all accounts, there have been fewer flame wars of late, and there are more examples of participants modeling restraint. What I can report factually is that I am receiving fewer e-mailed pleas to investigate allegations of bad behavior.

Barry recognized something not about technology, but about human nature: Give someone ownership, and they take responsibility. What he provided, to our most active gazette.com users, was a way for them to claim an ownership stake in a transformation element: community conversation.

This is as important to our success as is our own mastery of various tools and techniques. Is our comment volume increasing as a result? Hard to say; we don't have access to Pluck reporting tools. Overall, our March traffic was up 51 percent vs. March 2008.

Is Barry driving traffic? His share, sure. Is he a digital ninja? Not really; he only recently got a cell phone.

But does he understand people at least as much as he understands that our future is digital? Absolutely. And that's why he deserves to be Freedom's Shining Star."

— Nominated by Jeff Thomas, Editor, The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo.

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EMILY KILLIAN
The Star, Shelby, N.C.

"A big new feature she has championed is using the Mogulus Web program to allow us to show live audio and video from big meetings and sporting events in our area. We first utilized it with a big Shelby City Council debate on sidewalk alcohol sales. Dozens of viewers were able to watch and listen to the entire meeting and chat online as the debate progressed. It was a true interactive feature.

Freedom’s Eastern North Carolina papers used the same technique to offer live video of President Obama speaking during a visit to North Carolina. We've now used this technique at basketball and baseball games, as well. It's an easy way to get live streaming video and audio of events throughout the community. We can't wait for football season.

Emily is the type of associate who can do everything, from covering breaking news to driving Web traffic in other ways. She shoots and edits video constantly and has taken the initiative in a number of interactive features we've launched, including "Road Hazard: Deer crashes," which also included a database.

She also worked with our photo editor to start utilizing audio slideshows of big news events. She initiated a reader-submitted snow photo campaign and it led to some of the largest page view days in shelbystar.com history. It also led to several hundred photos being submitted directly from our readers with many of them published in the newspaper.

Emily has successfully worked to launch our Caspio database initiative with job layoffs in a three-county area, DWI arrests, and 911 calls at an assisted-living center that was shut down by the state of North Carolina after a troubled history and a number of residents dying."

— Nominated by Jon Jimison, Editor, The Star, Shelby, N.C.