Newspaper turns off Twitterfeed, gains followers

Erica Smith — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:27:40 +0000

The Grand Island Independent, a small paper in Nebraska, has been on Twitter for almost a year. In the last month, @theindependent has more than doubled its number of followers. Web editor Stephanie Romanski tells how:

I turned off The Independent’s Twitterfeed on Sept. 17th on the advice of @robquig. Instead I have been tweeting site updates myself, giving them my “voice.” I also expanded the area in which I search for Twitterers by including pretty much the state of Nebraska. …

On the first day, I got two direct messages from readers, one who had a story idea for us, and another one who offered up his storm chasing videos if we’re interested. I received the following comments from followers:

It is nice to see a Nebraska paper being progressive with technology. — @johnhenrymuller

It’s nice to see a newspaper that seeks to hear what its audience has to say. Would be curious to know your goals. Grew up reading GI paper. — @4whatitsworth

Thx for following; youâ€™re on my Faves & I check every AM! It’s been 2 yrs since we lived in GI — @motherconnie

Today I spend more time interacting with our readers than ever before (and we have had our Twitter stream going since November of 2007.)

On May 1, when I found it, the Independent had 12 followers; its audience has steadily increased since then. On Sept. 1, it had 95 followers. Today it has 196 followers.

Austin American-Statesman: @statesman, @360acl and @trackingike
Chicago Tribune: @coloneltribune
Dallas Morning News: @dallas_news
Orlando Sentinel: @orlandosentinel — one of the first to buck the Twitterfeed trend

I’ve been encouraging newspapers to use Twitter the “right” way for awhile. If you don’t believe me, Statesman Internet editor Rob Quigley offers great some advice.

One last note from Stephanie:

I would completely and without reservation recommend that papers shut off the Twitterfeed and find someone who can tweet headlines by hand, and TALK to the readers.

You should also see what Stephanie’s doing with live-blogging.

See which newspapers are on Twitter. Did I miss one? Let me know!

Liveblog your redesign

Erica Smith — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:05:04 +0000

The Grand Island Independent found a clever way to use CoverItLive, a Flash-based liveblogging tool. They’re chatting with folks about the redesign of their Web site. It’s a genius use of the tool. The conversations are public (That whole transparency thing that we love, right?) and, as Grand Island learned, allowed them to immediately fix quirks and bugs that readers found. (And, of course, the obligatory explanation that they were not going to go back to the old design — people always ask, no matter what you’re redesigning.)

But do you know what was missing? A link from the blog to the new site. (There was a link in the first entry of the liveblog, but elsewhere.)

The front page of the Independent’s site has a link to a user guide and column about the redesign. The user guide is a PDF. (Clicking on the image of the guide will not download the PDF, though. It’s a separate link to the right.) Why not walk me through it on the site? Set up a slideshow or, if you can, create a guide in Flash. There were two ways to get from the Web site to the blog: a link from the user guide page or through the blog channel, but neither adequately advertised that a live discussion was taking place on the blog. (I did ask Web editor Stephanie Romanski about it, so a clearer link may have been posted later.)

graphic designr » Grand Island Independent

Newspaper turns off Twitterfeed, gains followers

Liveblog your redesign