Newspaper Web sites are a dime a dozen. If you print a newspaper, chances are you also have an online presence and every newspaper is looking for ways to drive traffic to its site.

Some newspapers, however, are doing it better than others with innovative content that grabs readers’ attention.

The Newspaper Association of America’s New Media Federation named its Digital Edge award recipients in January. The awards are given in four categories to newspapers that judges believe cultivate new reader relationships and enrich advertiser messages.

Times Union’s coverage recognized

The winner for the most innovative use of digital media for news event coverage in the 75,000-250,000-circulation category was the Times Union in Albany, N.Y. The newspaper received the Edgie for its feature The Race for Governor (www.timesunion.com/race2002). The Times Union used its digital arm to provide background information on candidates and updates on the state’s gubernatorial elections.

The Times Union in Albany, N.Y., won an Edgie for its news feature, The Race for Governor.
Graphic: The Times Union

“As the major newspaper in New York state’s capital, we’ve always felt that coverage for state government is one of the most important things we do, so it was just natural for us to try to cover the race aggressively,” said Patti Hart, interactive media director. “We’re also very oriented toward making sure that if we make a major project of something in print, it’s also a major project on the Web.”

The Times Union had done a similar feature during the Senate race between Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio in 2000.

“We took a lot of the things that we learned from that and applied them to the new race and then added some new features,” Hart said.

The Race for Governor feature includes background information on each of the candidates, their stances on hard-hitting issues like abortion and gun control, streaming video of television ads, discussion forums, opinion pieces and articles on the latest issues.

The Times Union also added a link to Albany2Go.com, an entertainment site aimed at younger audiences, which features Times Union articles as well as other original content. Albany2Go photographers went out to talk to people around the capitol and downtown Albany about the race and interviewees’ pictures and responses were posted on the site.

“It was kind of a voice on the street thing, which worked out well,” Hart said. “It also helped us get voices of the younger audience.”

The Times Union uses a proprietary content management system based on Microsoft SQL Server, which is all maintained in-house.

“It lets us create a lot of different relationships between stories, which really helped us to seamlessly group things within the governor’s race section,” Hart said.

Hart said she thinks creativity was key in winning the Edgie and that the newspaper received positive feedback on the feature from people all over the state of New York.

“I think we were aggressive about doing unusual things that really took advantage of the medium,” she said. “I think the ads and interviews with the candidates, as well as the … photo galleries were all a well-rounded package of interactive tools.”

Ventura Star resurrects Lewis and Clark journey

The Ventura County (Calif.) Star earned an Edgie for the most innovative use of digital media for features/enterprise in the 75,000-250,000-circulation category.

̉he newspaper’s winning Web feature Voyage of Rediscovery (www.voyageofrediscovery.com) accompanies a yearlong print series by environmental reporter John Krist in which he retraced the Lewis and Clark trail.

The Ventura County (Calif.) Star was awarded an Edgie for its Voyage of Rediscovery enterprise feature, which accompanied a yearlong print series on Lewis & Clark.

Krist wrote a monthly series that appeared in print and on the Web. The Web feature, however, allowed the newspaper to provide readers with much more detailed information beyond the print version.

“It’s got (Macromedia Inc.’s) Flash maps and it’s a neat way to follow the trail because you can choose either to read it by episode or to just click on the maps and follow it that way,” said Steve Dana, director of new media. “It’s really comprehensive.”

The Voyage of Rediscovery feature began in January 2002 and ran through January of this year.

“It was updated on a monthly basis and it was a neat component obviously for the print series but I think it served another function, at least internally,” Dana explained. “It really caught the imagination of the newsroom. We used this as an example of all the different things we can do with stories.”

The Ventura County Star uses a mix of software, including Vignette Corp.’s content management software and Macromedia’s Dreamweaver to maintain its Web site, which is all done in-house. The newspaper has a content staff of three for the site and part-time employees help out as well.

This is not the Star’s first Edgie. The newspaper won for best newspaper Internet site in its circulation category in 2001 and for best automotive vertical section in 2000. So how did it snag Edgie No. 3?

“I think the depth and breadth of the feature is pretty stunning in terms of what you can find,” Dana said. “We also tried to make it have some of those ‘gee whiz’ qualities with some of the Flash maps and the way it was put together. All of that combined with the multimedia elements really kind of set it, hopefully, head and shoulders above the others.”

The Herald-Sun takes ‘Long Road Home’

The Herald-Sun in Durham, N.C., won the Edgie for innovative features in the under 75,000 circulation category. The newspaper’s Long Road Home feature (www.heraldsun.com/evergreen/93-260512.html) focused on a man’s journey back home to Celaya, Mexico, after spending 15 months working in North Carolina to earn money for his family. The feature traces 21-year-old Gregorio’s journey home to Celaya and back to his wife and a 13-month-old son whom he has never met.




The Herald-Sun in Durham, N.C., won an Edgie for innovation in features/enterprise for its Long Road Home feature.

The Long Road Home was written and directed by Joe Weiss, who has since gone on to work for MSNBC.

Until December 1999 The Herald-Sun didn’t even have a Web site to speak of.

“All we had basically was a calendar online and our feeling was we shouldn’t give our stuff away, but after everybody started doing it, we just felt we had to,” said Jon Ham, the newspaper’s director of digital publishing, who previously spent 14 years as managing editor. “We sort of put it off for about four years.”

That is not to say The Herald-Sun was not capable of innovation on the Web. In fact, the newspaper won the very first Digital Edge Public Service Award in 1996 for its election guide.

“But we really didn’t do news, so in very late ’99 we decided we were going to do a Web site.”

Ham worked along with two other staff members — an assistant metro editor and the IT director at the time — to create the site.

“My approach to it was it should be treated like an edition of the paper and that the copy desk should put it out every night and that’s actually what we do,” Ham said.

The staff of three came up with what they call “Webination” after buying a publishing system that did not meet the paper’s needs.

ihe newspaper’s assistant metro editor (at the time) wrote the new publishing system in about six weeks.

“I tested it for a month and actually put out the Web site, although it was not yet visible to the public,” Ham said. “I actually created the Web site every night for about a month and we ironed out the bugs of the program.”

Ham said Webination is very user friendly and users need not know a lot about the Web to operate the system.

Content for the Web site is exported from the newspaper’s Openpages system.

“We export our stories into the Webination system and from there the copy editors just take them and put them where they want,” Ham explained.

Ham attributes the Edgie win for the Long Road Home feature to the talent and creativity of Weiss.

“It’s so different. A lot of these multimedia things are just glorified Web pages,” Ham said. “Joe’s are not at all. He actually wrote the music and performed it and he is the guy doing the narration.”

Ham said the way the story was presented on the site was also unique.

“I think it clearly has a documentary feel. It’s almost like watching television,” he said. “A lot of these have so many links and so many things to choose from, it’s like going to a portal page — you don’t know what to click first. When you go to this feature and the music starts and Joe’s narration, you just sit back and enjoy it, there’s no, ‘OK, I see a nice headline there and I see a picture and I see a bunch of links, which one should I do first?’ The feel is just totally different.”

The Long Road Home feature accompanied a three-day print series that ran from Aug. 25-27, 2002, in The Herald-Sun. Reporter Claudia Assis accompanied Weiss to Celaya and did all of her own reporting for the print feature.

For a complete list of the 2003 Edgie recipients, see Newspapers & Technology, March 2003.