Newspaper large and small are moving online. Here's how.

Roger Simmons is Associate Managing Editor/Online for The Orlando Sentinel. He can be reached at RSimmons@orlandosentinel.com

IF YOU WANT A GLIMPSE of the online future of America's newspapers, just look around.

Direct your attention to Shelby, N.C. It’s home to the “Star Car” — a four-wheeled, Internet-ready mobile newsroom and the online pride of Freedom Communication’s Shelby Star.

Or look over at Long Island, N.Y. That's where folks are pointing their Web browsers to catch Pulitzer Prize winner Walt Handelsman's exceedingly popular animated cartoons for Tribune Co.'s Newsday.

Or wander out West to Tucson, Ariz. On the frontline of the nation's illegal immigration debate, Lee Enterprises' Arizona Daily Star is putting a human face on the issue, reporting extensively on its Web site - in both English and Spanish.

Or finally, log on in Indy, where the Gannett-owned Indianapolis Star has established a template — now replicated throughout the chain — for moms to connect with one another other via the Web.

This could be the most exciting year ever for newspapers online. Many have spent the past year making major Web commitments by creating new Internet divisions, transforming their newsroom structures and deploying digital equipment into the hands of eager and reluctant journalists alike.

But big questions remain. Are newsroom transformations working? Can smaller publications, without the resources of their larger cousins, also change and compete online? Should newspapers concentrate only on their online brand? Can they think outside the box in terms of building an online audience?

And, perhaps more important, what should newspapers be doing that they haven't already done?

CHANGING NEWSROOMS

To gear up for the challenges of 2008, newsrooms across the nation needed to change. Some did it in small steps, allowing editors at the local levels to lead transformation. Others took giant leaps.

Freedom Communications created an Interactive Division to help centralize technology and infrastructure and to take a more strategic approach to online content, advertising sales and marketing. Belo's Dallas Morning News developed and rolled out a quarter-million-dollar Web training program for its entire newsroom.

Three of the largest online initiatives, however, involved chain-wide training at the properties of Gannett, Lee and Tribune.

Gannett's initiative involved a top-to-bottom change of news philosophy. Newsrooms became Information Centers, collecting and delivering content across multiple platforms, including the traditional newspaper but also for specially zoned products and for online.

The Information Center philosophy "has enabled us to accomplish a great deal over a short period of time," said Sue Clark-Johnson, Gannett's newspaper division president. "It has enabled us to certainly reinforce the transformation of our business to a multimedia platform."

Video also became a big part of Gannett's plan, with photographers and reporters becoming videographers. "We trained almost 600 newsroom people as videographers and as a result of that we had in 2007 about 1.4 million video streams and about $2 million in revenue," said Clark-Johnson.

Analysis of some Gannett properties that have implemented the Information Center approach has pleased the company. "When you take combined audiences together across the platforms, our reach or footprint in a market is a healthy 77 percent," Clark-Johnson said. "In the places we surveyed we showed seven-day readership across all those platforms was stable — shifting but stable."

If you think Gannett is finished with its transformation, think again. "That has to be an ongoing process," Clark-Johnson said. "We've had some folks working in task-force mode in the last several months pulling together their ideas and thoughts for Information Center 2.0, and we will roll it out in the first quarter."

Lee Enterprises also set about to change the old-school way its newsrooms did business by coming up with a new school: Lee Online University.

"In 2007, we trained almost 500 employees from across the company through Lee Online University," said Joyce Dehli, vice president of news for Lee. "More than half participated in the three-day news track that included, among other things, training in producing videos, interactive graphics, slide shows and searchable databases, running on a continuous news cycle and planning online packages that integrate multimedia elements."

LOU — as the program is called — “reinforced our top priorities for strong local online journalism and gave our journalists more skills to carry them out,” Dehli said.

Tribune Co. launched a Web-focused program called Newsroom Now throughout its newspapers. The program had specific targets to build Web audience.

“The goals were to address what seemed to be a significant need to get lots of different content up on the Web sites with greater frequency earlier in the day," said Dick Malone, senior vice president of Tribune Interactive.

To accomplish this, Tribune’s papers looked at how they organized resources in the newsrooms. Morning news desks were created, and special Web editors were dedicated to planning and delivering news feeds to online. “We also deployed 900 video cameras across the newsrooms and trained over a thousand photographers and reporters on how to use them,” Malone said.

The result? Malone said Tribune papers have significantly increased text updates to Web site before noon, went from having a handful of photo updates to more than 175 a week, and have increased video streams from just a trickle in 2006 to more than 3.37 million in December 2007.

BIG IDEAS IN SMALL PLACES

The industry’s focus on the Web isn't restricted to the nation's largest papers. Noteworthy online coverage and innovation is coming from some of the smallest publications.

During wildfire season in the West, Lee’s papers, such as the Helena Independent Record and Billings Gazette in Montana and the North County Times in Escondido and Oceanside, Calif., proved themselves as nonstop sources of news for their communities, using all of the multimedia tools available to keep people informed. “Their blogs and forums enabled members of the public to share stories, advice and crucial information with each other and our newsrooms,” said Dehli

She also pointed to the series by the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson that examined the entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border and the feasibility of building a fence along it to stop illegal immigration. The online presentation includes an interactive map, listing — in English and Spanish — the names and locations of the more than 200 people who have died while trying to cross the border in this particular area.

“From the start, planning for the series focused on using the particular storytelling strengths of the Web as well as those of the printed newspaper,” Delhi said.

“These few examples don't stand out for me because they’re the exceptions. They stand out because they're representative of the way we work now and the kinds of journalism we do in small and big newsrooms. And that's amazing.”

At Freedom's Shelby, N.C., property it’s what the staff is using for newsgathering that’s amazing. It’s called the Star Car, and it’s equipped with everything a digital journalist needs for reporting from the field.

With its routers and servers, it creates a wireless hot spot, allowing reporters to connect to the Internet from anywhere. The vehicle has a video camera mounted on top so people can see what the reporters are seeing. It also includes a digital still camera and high definition video camera, plus a GPS tracking system that lets online users track where the car is going.

Freedom’s Moore says the $60,000 car’s real message is that “smaller properties are innovative as well.”

GOING FOR NICHES

No matter how popular or how respected a newspaper's online brand may be, there are segments of the Web audience that remain hard to engage. But that doesn't mean newspapers should ignore them.

“We need to reach beyond core news audience to provide useful and actionable information and gathering spots for like-minded individuals,” said Steve Swartz, executive vice president of Hearst Newspapers. Who should newspapers be going after online? He pointed to audience areas such as high school sports, pro sports or groups that share a common interest, such as mothers.

Expect to see many more of these newspaper-fueled niche Web sites arriving in 2008 as print properties look to diversity their online offerings.

Tribune, which last year launched a site geared at car enthusiasts called EngineHead.com, is looking to target more specific niches. “Ones that come to mind that we may or may not do this year are ones that resonate most with consumers, like health, travel, business, sports and real estate — areas that we want to make sure we have rich content and rich archives,” Malone said.

Growing niche Web sites has been one of Gannett’s online triumphs of 2007. “One of the biggest highlights for us is understanding the priority of digital lifestyle niches and how they provide us an opportunity for audience and revenue growth, most symbolized by our Mom.com sites,” Clark-Johnson said.

First launched in November 2006 in Indianapolis as IndyMoms.com, Gannett quickly realized it had a hit on its hands. Clark-Johnson said that as of November, there were 50 local versions of the IndyMoms.com site across Gannett. Together they produced 6.1 million page views, 420,000 unique visitors and $3 million in revenue. “The other exciting thing is how quickly we were able to mobilize on a good idea,” she said.

Other similar rollouts for Gannett in 2008 could include two sites being produced by its Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle: RocMen.com, a sort of male version of the Moms.com sites; and RocLoop.com, a college student focused site.

BUILDING AUDIENCES IN UNUSUAL WAYS

The Washington Post received a lot of attention (and awards) for its On Being project — a well-produced series of short videos showing people talking about their lives. It was a simple idea that had many in the newspaper online world smacking their foreheads and exclaiming, “Why did’t I think of that?!”

“On Being generated a lot of loyalty,” said Jim Brady, executive editor and vice president of WashingtonPost.com. “It started out at 30,000 to 40,000 streams a week but has tapered off a bit. But we’re really happy with these numbers.”

At Belo’s Dallas Morning News, the challenge was how to attract larger Web audiences for major projects that appear in the Sunday newspaper. While Sundays traditionally have the largest readership of the week for newspapers, they are usually are one of the lowest traffic days for Web sites. Assistant Director of Photography Irwin Thompson and Deputy Managing Editor for Online Anthony Moor took a page from the movies — creating video trailers promoting upcoming Sunday packages. And they uploaded the trailers where they knew they had the largest potential audience: YouTube.com.

At Newsday, the biggest Web traffic draw at the end of 2007 and start of 2008 was cartoonist Walt Handelsman’s animated Flash cartoons. In November and December, the popularity of his work — particularly his musical take on Baby Boomers that quickly became a viral must-see among Web users — vaulted Newsday.com past The Wall Street Journal into the top five of the nation's newspaper Web sites as ranked by Nielsen Online.

Remembering that audiences also come to newspapers for advertising, Hearst, Media News and Lee made an acquisition they hope other newspapers will join. It’s a free online classified ads site called Kaango.com. In November, Hearst and Media News teamed up to acquire 80 percent ownership of Kaango.com. Lee then made a deal to buy 10 percent. Hearst’s Swartz explained that Kaango has “up-sell opportunities and is designed to compete directly with Craig’s List with personal-oriented classified space,” Schwartz said. The goal is to get other newspaper companies using Kaango as a way for the industry to counter Craig’s List and eBay’s Kijiji.

And while many of the nation’s newspapers have embraced high school sports coverage online, Freedom’s Orange County Register has taken its commitment a step further.

After having a UGC high school sports tool for several years, the Register launched MyOCHigh.com. “It’s created for high school students and built on interaction” with lots of social networking tools, Moore said.

THE ISSUES OF 2008

What about the challenges facing newspapers online in ’08? Attracting audience is still key, but the Web competition is tough. And if you can’t beat ’em, do you join ’em?

“The biggest challenge — and something I think we can rise to — is that that have competition in all the areas,” Swartz said. “Local TV stations are improving their Web sties, there are local entertainment Web sites, fans sites started for pro teams and even high school parents starting sites for their kids’ teams. The Internet is the ultimate leveling of the playing field. The printing presses used to set us apart from everyone else, but we have to win the battle head-on to create the best content and get the best user-generated content alongside our content.”

At Tribune, Malone said the company needs “to do a better job of organizing our data and news content” and will deploy “taxonomy” tools on its sites to accomplish that. By organizing existing data along lines of audience interest, Tribune will “essentially create news ways for consumers to engage with that content. A combination of taxonomy and better site design, search engine optimization and some search engine marketing — if done right — can elevate traffic to our Web sites.”

With the soaring popularity of Facebook and other similar sites, newspapers are taking a look at getting into the social networking game. And it’s not too far afield from the ultimate mission of newspapers, according to the Washington Post’s Brady. “People want to connect with people of similar interests,” he said. “Newspapers have been putting people together for a long time. We have all these readers that come to our site to read a politics story because they are interested in politics.”

The Post has launched mini social networking areas on its site with reporters acting as moderators. “This will get a lot more attention in ’08,” Brady said.

The Post is doing something extraordinary — distributing its content to big Web audience magnets, such as YouTube, iTunes and Facebook. In addition to posting its content, it has created widgets for other Web sites that bring folks to WashingtonPost.com. The site saw an eight-fold increase in traffic from such external widgets from June to October.

“The key word this year: distribution,” Brady said. “We need to get away from the Field of Dreams concept of if ‘we build it, they will come.’ The paramount need is to go where the audience is and bring them in.” *