There are economic factors to consider, however. NBC paid about $1.2 billion for exclusive U.S. broadcast rights to the Olympics. The company had to recoup that money somehow. Rolling the marquee events, highlights, and personal stories into a single primetime package consolidated eyeballs and, by extension, boosted ad revenues. The strategy seems to have worked, as ratings for the London Olympics were reportedly the highest of any in decades. People clearly tuned in despite the time-shifted broadcasts. NBC Research President Alan Wurtzel even told Reuters reporter Liana B. Baker that people appeared even more likely to tune in when they already knew the results.

Of course, it’s tough to credit any strategy, alone or in combination, when the company had a monopoly on coverage. Television viewers didn’t really have anywhere else to go, so the only solid conclusion one can draw from NBC’s ratings success is that a lot of people wanted to watch the Olympics and did.

Whatever you think about NBC’s broadcast strategy, though, you have to give them some credit for pushing the envelope just a little further on the digital front. The company’s transmedia approach to covering the Olympics was a promise, even if not quite fulfilled, of a future in which the Internet and TV (and, really, all media) finally, harmoniously, converge into a kind of unified and, yes, very social experience.

I got to hear about some of the ingredients of that digital strategy when I was invited, along with other local journalists and members of the Online News Association, to NBC4 Studios in Burbank for a sort of digital show-and-tell.

Mekahlo Medina, the local affiliate’s tech and social media reporter, tried to capture the spirit of this drive toward digital convergence when he reminded us that “TV is social and always has been.”

Medina put up a black-and-white slide showing people gathered around an early television set and pointed out that families and friends used to make TV viewing a social event. Advance slide and we see some dude on the couch, feet on an ottoman, a laptop glowing on his lap and a smartphone in hand while he’s watching TV…alone. The implication here is that even if technology seems at first to have isolated us, social media is making TV a shared experience again as people interact with their friends remotely. Interesting theory.

That said, on the social media front, a lot of what we saw has become rather standard fare (or at least should be) for any news outlet, TV or otherwise. Among the takeaways, which should sound familiar by now:

- create a Twitter hash tag to help guide or at least aggregate the conversation
- retweet, reply and favorite your followers on Twitter
- Storify events when appropriate
- encourage user-generated content using social media platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest
- ask questions on Facebook to get users more engaged
- create dedicated Facebook tabs for special content

But I did hear at least one useful tip I had never considered. NBC4 did a Facebook countdown by posting a new cover photo every day leading up to the opening ceremony.

For now, changing your cover photo counts as a significant activity in Facebook’s algorithm, at least according to Olsen Ebright, the NBCLA.com producer who headed the social media charge. The result is that your Facebook page will surface on your fans’ walls every day. It’s a strategy that could be useful for other Facebook campaigns, too.

So, how did the local affiliate fare with its social media strategy? All told during the Olympics, NBC4 saw an above-average gain in Twitter followers, and its Facebook likes roughly doubled, according to stats Ebright shared with the group.

Outstanding numbers to be sure, but it’s tough to conclude that any of the aforementioned tactics had much to do with them. As it turns out, it was the tried-and-true approach of a big-giveaway contest that appeared to generate the sudden spike in Facebook likes. The prize? A check for $40,000 to help some lucky fan pay his or her mortgage for a year.

In fact, a series of contest giveaways (iPads, $400 gas cards, theme park tickets) and a campaign for charity were probably the main reasons NBCLA.com shot to 350,000 Facebook fans from about 20,000 just last fall.

Call it an investment. Ebright told me that four years ago Google searches were still the largest referrer to their site, with Facebook providing a smaller but still sizable share. More recently, the two have alternated in the top spot, and during the Olympics, Facebook consistently surpassed Google as the single biggest referrer of site traffic to NBCLA.com.

Not every news organization will be able to afford such big prizes, but NBC4′s success is a sobering reminder that if you want people to come inside to see your content, you first might have to offer an incentive just to open the door.

As impressive as NBC4’s execution of its social media strategy was, though, the really exciting stuff came from the mother ship. There were two standout strategies — at least for this observer — that got to the core of what transmedia can mean.

One of them was a little gem of an innovation that comes, surprisingly, from the world of music: Shazam. For those who aren’t familiar with Shazam, it’s an app for your tablet or smartphone that can “hear” music and identify whatever song you happen to be listening to. That may not sound like an obvious tool for a journalist, but Shazam has recently entered into partnerships with other media organizations, including NBC, to offer some intriguing applications for their audio recognition software.

Nabisco tapped Shazam to help market one of its trademark crackers, Wheat Thins, by linking a TV ad to Twitter and Facebook.

“Through Shazam’s technology, the audio in the television ad identifies the sound and links to a pre-written Twitter post. Those who tweet the post get a free sample of the product,” wrote Laurie Sullivan, reporting for MediaPost.com.

But NBC appears to be the real test case. Shazam put that partnership front and center on its website, encouraging users to “tune in and tag” Olympic moments at anytime while watching NBC’s coverage.

So with what were the curious, tech-savvy members of the audience rewarded? I can’t say firsthand, since I’m an on-again, off-again cord-cutter (that is, I try to save money by ditching cable and instead get my TV shows and news via the Internet). But according to the site, when you hit the Shazam button on your phone or tablet while watching any of NBC’s Olympics coverage, you were treated to any of a number of goodies, including:

- a schedule of events
- athlete bios, news and photos
- up-to-the-minute results
- the latest medal tally
- interactive viewer polls

It only takes a little imagination to extend what NBC and Nabisco have already done with the Shazam app.

A lot of people, for instance, listen to the news as audio while they drive or otherwise move about. A tech-savvy media outlet could reach out to its audience while a major story is breaking and locate potential citizen journalists near the event. The CJ’s hear the request, hit the Shazam button, and get a special link that they can use to submit photos or video straight from their phones.

TV stations could link their viewers directly to extended Web content with a touch of a button. They could direct their audience online to get charts and other data visualizations, exclusive Web videos, relevant stats, helpful background and explainers to give context. All this without making anyone get up from the couch, say, to scan one of those increasingly obsolete QR codes.

And, of course, there’s the already-proven social media application. It’s like having a share button on your TV and in your radio. Your audience sees it or hears it, Shazams it, and shares it on their favorite social media network. Now their friends and followers have a direct link to your story.

The other exciting glimpse into the future of transmedia coverage was also the most obvious — the oft touted if much trashed attempt by NBC to live stream every event via the Web and mobile devices.

I won’t go too deeply into the details, since this territory is well trod (follow any of the links at the top of this post). The short of it is that for the first time fans of the Olympics had access to the raw uninterrupted stream of events both prominent and obscure.

Using NBC’s smartphone and tablet apps or its Live Extra website, anyone tired of the main event on TV could switch over to the live stream and watch something else, like badminton or trampoline (did they really make that an Olympic event?!). They could even watch multiple events simultaneously.

Cool, right? Well, yes, though I do wonder how many people would tune in if C-SPAN did something similar. (“Split your screen and get four simultaneous committee meetings live from the capital!”)

And this is where the complaining starts. The streams were not without their hiccups. A lot of complaints centered on poor video quality and service interruptions, which, in the 100-meter dash, could well mean you missed the entire event.

The Android app, for its part, garnered a measly average of 2 stars from the user reviews in the Market. Which brings us back to those angry Twitcrits.

In defense of NBC, I might offer this: no new technology, especially when deployed so ambitiously, ever comes off flawlessly.

Louis C.K. said it best when he told Conan O’Brien in a clip that went viral on YouTube, “Everything is amazing, and nobody’s happy.”

In his four-minute rant, Louis mentioned an airline passenger who, having just discovered that he had in-flight access to the Internet with his laptop, gets upset when it stops working.

“How quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago!”

Indeed.

Loss is one of those subjects that can be tough to wrestle to the ground with kids. I don’t care about the Mets losing. I care about the loss of innocence. All parents face this as their kids grow older. As parents we try to shield children from the realities of life for as long as we can. It can be difficult.

Parents split up.

People die – often senseless deaths.

But sport has always provided a combination of beauty and innocence. Most of us are attracted to sports and athletics at a young age and find joy in the sheer excitement of competition. I’ve watched a lot of sports over the years and have always marveled at what athletes – both men and women – can do in times of tremendous stress.

For my daughter, the innocence extended to the simple things – she counted the number of planes that crossed over Citi Field during the game. She barked back at the hot dog guy patrolling the stands while he woofed it up. She took countless pictures of the ball field on a beautiful New York summer night.

I’ve always loved sports…and I’ve tried hard to pass that love onto my kids. I’ve been able to sit close and have access to athletes while working as a sports journalist, and I now teach a Sports Journalism course in the UMass Journalism Program. I’ve watched and covered everything from women’s softball to the NBA…and everything in between, even soccer.

But at some point the love of sports and what athletes do on the field crosses over into blind idolatry. It’s inevitable. We place athletes on pedestals, holding them up to standards impossible to maintain. Most sports fans go through a loss of innocence at some point – when the athletes we love begin tumbling off their pedestals. For me, it was when the news about drug use by Daryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden began to emerge in the late 1980s.

But I had fallen into the idolatry trap. And it’s tough to shake — I still haven’t seen a swing sweeter than Strawberry’s.

One of the first things I tell UMass Sports Journalism students is to stop idolizing athletes and coaches. I actually tell them that in order to be good sports reporters, they need to stop being fans. Some might consider such guidance overkill – sports journalists get into a business that fills their nights, weekends and holidays because of their love of sports, right?

Perhaps, but maybe if those covering Penn State had been a little less involved in preserving the legend of Joe Paterno, the vile crimes occurring there would have been exposed earlier.

One of the top reasons why sports journalists at UMass decline to challenge comments made by coaches is their fear of losing access. It’s the fear of every journalist, really. Why did the members of the White House press corps not challenge assumptions about the presence of WMD’s in Iraq? Was Joe Paterno idolized and protected by members of the media as well as the university and government?

Which brings me to the real question: Where is the journalistic outrage over the decision to allow football to continue at Penn State?

I asked friends on Facebook whether the so-called sanctions on Penn State were enough. I received some of the same weak-kneed responses that we’ve seen in many places: The players should not be held responsible for actions above them and the program should not pay for the actions of one person.

Well, the players can transfer. And what we saw at Penn State was a wholesale failure of leadership on many levels as well as a wholesale failure of journalism. In the end, politicians, university officials, law enforcement and journalists refused to challenge the legacy of Joe Paterno.

Why?

Idolatry and the almighty dollar.

Consider that the $60 million fine equals ONE YEAR of football revenue at Penn State. The television money – which is substantial – remains untouched. Some have written that it may take a decade for football to recover at Penn State.

A decade? Why allow football to continue at all?

Isn’t there a line where we say, “Enough is enough?”

Katy Culver, who teaches Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told me recently, “sports haven’t lost their innocence, but when they’re used to cover up the rape of children, they’ve lost their soul.”

As another college football season starts gearing up over the next month, sports journalists need to understand they are doing no one any favors by going about business as usual and buying into the company line to protect their press box seats.

Some thoughts on how to go about changing sports journalism:

• Begin by challenging the status quo.
• Take a hard look at the money being spent on football and other programs.
• Don’t worry about access and your position in the pecking order.
• Start worrying about what you don’t know.

The company announced it was beginning a partnership with Hearst to introduce local online editions in the newspaper publisher’s four largest markets, including San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate, the Houston’s Chronicle’s Chron.com, the San Antonio Express-News’ MySan Antonio.com, and Seattlepi.com. Essentially, headlines will be pulled into the main sports page, highlighting local content from Bleacher Report’s citizen journalists.

For the newspapers involved, the partnership represents an extra stream of advertising revenue and, most importantly, a commitment to increasing coverage of local sports.

In many ways, the success or failure of this partnership will help determine whether citizen journalism is the “integral piece,” as cited by many experts, that will help newspapers both survive and prosper in the current media landscape.

Sports pages are a particularly excellent venue for this test. They lure the coveted young and middle-aged demographic who are passionate and vocal about their favorite teams and favorite sports … and more than willing to provide their written opinions for free.

While citizen journalists such as these might look, think and act like paid, professional journos, they’re not – at least in the traditional sense – and not just in the salary department.

Indiana University journalism professor David Weaver doesn’t even think citizen journalists should be the correct term in this discussion. “Citizen communicators” would be better, he says, because “without the training and education that most journalists have, most citizens cannot qualify as journalists.”

In a project conducted by OurBlook.com, Prof. Weaver and other experts around the country shared their thoughts on the pros and cons of citizen journalism, and its possible role helping newspapers. Here are some comments.

The Positive

“The newspapers that survive will be the ones that make the most of the benefits of the online world. Citizen journalism can in many cases provide free content and the internet provides the ability to reach a much larger audience. The old media that combine their resources with the advantages of new media will thrive. The old media that try to cling to their old methods of doing things will die.” — Derek Clark, who runs GeekPolitics.com.

“Probably some events get reported by citizen journalists that would not be reported without them. Reporters can’t be everywhere and cannot know about all events taking place in their communities. In that sense, citizen journalism may help to broaden the
kind of events that are reported.” — Prof. David Weaver.

“With smaller staffs chasing fewer stories, citizen journalists could help local papers keep a broader mix of stories and community reporting in front of readers. Citizen journalism can be a powerful tool for reporting hyperlocal news (news that is specific to one community) because people care about their community and have a hunger for finding out what is going on.” — Thom Clark, president of the Community Media Workshop in Chicago.

“Are you a local newspaper? 90 percent-plus of your income from print adverts targeted at people in the area? Then you should be looking for the local citizen journalists who sit
next to their police scanner and report on the drug busts and local fires. Assume you will have to invest in improving their writing skills, be relaxed about them publishing elsewhere, and pay them enough money to make it worth their while to give you first option on material.” — Brian McNeil, pioneering Wikinews journalist.

“Citizen journalism can help local newspapers survive by making them a more interactive product. Readers who post comments, articles and photos on their local newspaper’s web site might feel a stronger connection to the paper and be more likely to read the print version and the online version of the paper.” — Larry Atkins, adjunct professor of journalism in Arcadia University’s English, Communications and Theatre Department.

The Negative

“I don’t think citizen journalism should dominate or even play a minor role in the operation of mainstream newspapers. I’m sure there is a place for it … a valuable place … in alternative media. I think it’s been the mainstream newspaper industry’s embrace of new editorial formulas and approaches that has been leading to its demise (although) my opinion runs contrary to what most inside and outside the industry believe.” –Adam Stone, publisher of Examiner community newspapers in Putnam and Westchester counties.

“[Citizen communicators] are best at reporting breaking events, and not likely to be very helpful for in-depth, analytical or investigative reporting.” — Prof. Weaver

“Newspapers are brands that bestow credibility, authority, gravitas on their content. I don’t think ‘citizen journalism’ (is there agreement on what this term even means?) can sustain the type of reporting that produces Pulitzer prize winning pieces.” — Richard Roher, president of Roher Public Relations.

“Local newspapers should not rely on citizen journalists to help them survive. Most citizen journalists are not paid anything for their work and lack the motivation to help a for-profit entity continue to make a profit. Citizens cannot and should not be viewed as free labor.” — Dr. Kristen Johnson, assistant professor, Department of Communications, Elizabethtown College, Pa., who has authored several papers on citizen journalism.

Gerry Storch is editor/administrator of www.ourblook.com , a media analysis/public issues discussion site that bridges the gap between a blog and a book. He has been a feature writer with the Detroit News and Miami Herald, Accent section editor and newsroom investigative team leader with the News, and sports editor and business editor for Gannett News Service. He holds a B.A. in political science and M.A. in journalism, both from the University of Michigan.

Huh? I hear folks asking. People have been roasting NBC’s decision. Do I actually support it?

Heck, no! But by denying me the chance to watch the Olympics live (which are taking place in the same time zone where I live, by the way), NBC’s pushed me to search the Web for live video and coverage, allowing me to find lively, even wildly entertaining, streams of coverage that I’d never have found if I’d been able to watch the games live on my TV.

That’s an important lesson for all news publishers. If you don’t provide the information that your audience wants, in the manner that they want it, people not only will they seek alternatives… but they might find ones that they strongly prefer to yours.

Me? I’ve been spending more of my days than I’d like to admit following the games on Twitter, the official Vancouver games website and whatever European and Canadian video streams folks on those sites have led me to. Vancouver’s website has a nifty widget on its real-time competition results pages that allows you to read what other folks reading the same page are posting to their Facebook status update about the event.

Not only does that provide you with the feeling of being in a packed dorm lounge or sports bar talking about the games (even when you’re alone at your computer), it’s also become one of the go-to first sources for Americans looking for links to live video streams of the games.

Thanks to other folks I’ve found through these social media streams, I’ve been exposed to EuroSport, CBC and other networks’ coverage of the games that I’d never have seen if I’d been able to watch NBC. Frankly, I’ve gotten a kick out of watching Lindsey Vonn attack the Whistler downhill while listening to commentators with rich Irish and English accents. Or to sit with my son and daughter watching the half-pipe competition, while my daughter picks out words from the commentators’ French, translating them to my son and me.

Even when I don’t understand the commentators’ language, I don’t miss results, since those stream live on my computer screen, thanks to the Vancouver website. And emotion transcends any language. In fact, it’s been a treat to experience these games as the global event they ought to be, rather than as a reality show focused only upon American athletes.

Of course, NBC doesn’t want me, or any other Americans, to do this. NBC spent billions to secure the exclusive broadcast rights to the games within the United States. If anyone outside the U.S. were able to stream video to U.S. residents, that could undermine NBC’s investment in those broadcast rights.

But I’d argue that NBC’s indifference to its audience is doing more damage to that investment. Chatter on the social networks turns to deep suspicion, even hostility, when video streams that have worked for hours go down within moments of being posted on the Vancouver Facebook stream. (Especially when those streams are replaced by notes that they were removed “at the request of the copyright holder.”)

My wife peeked over my shoulder as the women’s downhill stream died. When I explained what was happening, she replied, “What? Do we live in the Soviet Union now?”

Hey, she’s a writer, too, and dishes hyperbole professionally. But it does seem a bit much that a major corporation can employ the force of law to keep U.S. citizens from… watching an Olympic ski race at the same time as the rest of the world watches it, instead of eight hours later.

NBC and its handful of supporters counter that strong ratings for the games, even on the west coast where the delays are longest, show that Americans prefer to watch the games in prime time, rather than when they happen.

Allow me to suggest that there might be another variable in play here: The fact that Americans are cleaning up at the Vancouver games. Nothing pumps TV ratings in the U.S. like Americans rolling in gold. Heck, not only did I watch Lindsey Vonn and Shaun White on the Web live, I tuned in and watched
them again on NBC in prime time.

NBC could have had me as a consumer twice those days. It could have offered me live coverage of the events I wanted to see on NBC or online, plus serving up live social media streams that I instead found elsewhere. Heck, the network could have joined with Olympic broadcast partners in other nations to make those international feeds available on an official NBC website, capturing the page views and serving me the ads that I instead watched from other sources.

Then, NBC could continue to repackage the day’s highlights in a slickly produced prime-time wrap-up, as it now does, for those viewers who want the convenience of watching after work and dinner.

Part of the appeal of the international feeds, for me and for others on the social media feeds, lies in how they stick with the competition, rather than cutting out non-medal-contender athletes from other nations in favor of feature stories, promotions or more commercials, as NBC does in prime time. This helps viewers develop a feel for and, eventually maybe even a passion, for the individual sports of the Olympic Games.

Ironically, NBC has a financial interest in developing that passion within the U.S. audience. The network owns Universal Sports, a cable and HDTV broadcast channel devoted to year-round coverage of Olympic sports. You’d figure that NBC would at least use the games to promote the existence of Universal Sports, but I’ve not seen a single promotion for that channel in all the coverage I’ve watched on the flagship network. Nor is NBC using the Universal Sports channel (which I get over the air as a digital channel in Los Angeles) to show live coverage of events of less interest to U.S. audiences. All I’ve seen on the channel is taped coverage of pre-Olympic events.

Instead, NBC is cleaving to its strategy of betting it all on prime time, hoping that U.S. athletes win enough gold to keep ratings up. And when consumers like me turn to online alternatives to get the coverage they want, NBC calls up the lawyers and orders them to shut that coverage down.

Sounds a lot to me like the recording industry’s response to consumer demand for online music in the 1990s and 2000s, and the ongoing response of some in the newspaper industry to consumers’ flight to online news sources.

But you can’t fight your customers. The Internet was designed to route around disruptions, and the architecture (to that extent, at least) was brilliant. Its users have adopted that same spirit, too. The recording industry didn’t make file sharing services irrelevant by suing them out of existence. They became afterthoughts only when Apple’s iTunes provided a better alternative that (largely) met consumers’ needs.

And despite the doom-and-gloom coming from many newspaper managers, many online sites are thriving, producing original coverage of their local communities and topic niches, providing alternatives to diminishing daily newspaper coverage.

Given these precedents, it pains me to see NBC making the same, short-sighted mistakes. The network’s blowing a chance to expand its reach to millions of new viewers by learning to build a continuum of coverage that extends across television, cable, digital broadcast channels and the Internet, using social media and international connections to forge a more loyal audience of consumers for the network and its advertisers.

But NBC’s loss is my gain. Because the network isn’t doing that work… I’m doing it for myself. And so are thousands, and potentially millions, of other consumers in the United States. Not everyone’s gone as deep as I have in searching out online video, but millions are using social networks and alternative online news sources to keep up with the Olympics, instead of only turning to NBC.

NBC can do all it wants to make us watch the Olympics its way. But that heavy-handed control didn’t work for the recording industry, isn’t working for newspapers and is hanging a huge opportunity cost on NBC.

The reality for most communities is that their neighborhoods either never received coverage from local media or that coverage has pulled back as budgets have tightened. This has left a big opportunity for hyperlocal sites to get a marketing boost like no other. I will share how that has worked tremendously well for my local site — www.sunvalleyonline.com — so that you can take these experiences and apply it into your own site. I will also share how we are being proactive with the upcoming Olympics to draw more audience. Our site has a local connection with the most prominent snowboarders on the U.S. Olympic team — Lindsey Jacobellis, Seth Wescott, Shaun White, Nate Holland and Graham Watanabe — that we are going to utilize to provide our community with a perspective they won’t get from NBC.

Curtis Bacca is a local the top snowboard/ski technician in the world with a small shop in town called The Waxroom that tunes skis and snowboards. No one has done the tech work for more gold medalists at the Olympics or X Games in the last decade. He had three athletes (Jacobellis, Holland & Wescott) competing in two events at the recently completed X Games and they came in first, first and second. He shared some pics after the event and was profiled by ESPN. He also provided his updates on the Waxroom page. Afterwards, he told me he was blown away with all people from our community and around the country who saw what he was doing and was psyched to do more at the Olympics.

At the time I’m writing this, he’s in Vancouver, well before the Olympics start, to do his reconnaissance and testing the boards to ensure the boards are riding at their maximum velocity, as every 1/1000th of a second can matter. In fact, he’s been at an “undisclosed location” that he calls the “Secret Squirrel Test Facility” and has had some mystery shots of a Boeing test facility honing the boards for the unique conditions of the misty, foggy, wet snow of the Cascades that his athletes will encounter. We’re setting him up with a helmet cam as they recon the course. After the events, he’s going heli-skiing/riding with Wescott and will share that, as well as being able to liveblog from his Blackberry while shooting pics (we have a feature that allows you to email pics/stories directly to the site), giving us the inside scoop, etc. If you know anyone who has interest in snowboarding, in particular, send them to the Waxroom page. They’ll get a perspective like none other.

Listed below are items on how we hope to turn a first-time visitor into a repeat visitor (something that would Jeff Jarvis would probably recommend to Rupert Murdoch surrounding the whole paywall kerfuffle). I should give a shout-out to Neighborlogs for providing us with a Content Management System (CMS) that enables what I outline below. In an earlier piece on OJR, I highlighted why I selected their platform over WordPress, despite having worked extensively with WordPress. The items below were brain-dead simple, which wouldn’t be the case with most CMSs I have worked with.

• Nearby Stories module. Most of our stories are geo-tagged. Chances are if someone is reading a story about a topic, they’ll be interested in stories that are about that same location.
• Featured Stories module. These are our editorial picks of the most interesting stuff on the site that we hope draw them in.
• Featured Photos module. Some people are more visual so we highlight some of the best pics that come in to the site. Hopefully some will grab their attention. Those pics, in turn, have links to the articles they are associated with.
• Events module. We highlight the upcoming events happening in the area and encourage them to post their own events.
• At the bottom of the article, we give them ways to sign-up for our email newsletter or follow us on Twitter (as well as some recent tweets).
• Finally, if none of that grabbed their attention, at the bottom of the page we have teasers for our Most Viewed Articles.

The following are some other examples of the sorts of stories that give a hyperlocal site a boost to ts visibility that we have seen work very well (some obvious, others less so):

• Natural disasters of local significance: We have had a flood and mudslides. At the time we had the flood, our community paper only updated its website once a week. Conditions were changing by the hour, so our updates, including pulling data from federal data sources, were invaluable for our community.
• Natural disasters of local and national significance: We had a major wildfire that became the number-one priority fire in the country. With people being evacuated and many local people either traveling or being second homeowners, the local newspaper and radio didn’t do them any good as those sources don’t reach beyond our community. We turned our classified system into a resource for people needing housing, places to board animals and more. Even though the local newspaper has 30 times more resources than us, we had the most comprehensive coverage because we tapped our community.

  They were shooting pictures, sharing stories, taking video and more. In part they were inspired by my limited videography skills (my only real skill is I don’t mind running up 3000-foot peaks to get a good view, as you can see here and here), knowing they could do better. Some of the video ended up getting picked up by CNN and by CBS’ 60 Minutes (see footage here). The video is from a member of SunValleyOnline’s community that happens to be a professional videographer but contributed his video to us for free though later was paid by CNN & CBS for his footage. You can see more of the footage that we posted on YouTube to see the range of video from low to high production value. By the time the fire was done, we’d had site visitors from all 50 states and 42 different countries. To this day, many of those people still visit the site as they have some connection to our area (friends, family, second homes, etc.). On an even more gratifying note, to this day people will stop me on the street and thank me for how connected they felt even though they were hundreds or thousands of miles away, as they’d been evacuated or were second homeowners.

• Locals hitting the big time in their sphere: Whether it is a Little League team going to the World Series, a local athlete going to the Olympics or someone in the arts hitting the big time, locals are deeply interested in their experience and proud of their connection with those individuals. Some subset of those people are willing to blog and share their behind-the-scenes perspective that you don’t get in a traditional media outlet. Even if it is raw, people love it.

Around the time of MSNBC.com‘s 10-year anniversary, I visited its newsroom and noticed what looked like an EKG reading (i.e., a line graph with spikes up and a plateau followed by more of the same). The only difference was each plateau on the graph was a little higher than the next as you moved left to right. As I got closer, I realized that this graph was actually MSNBC’s traffic growth over 10 years. Each of the spikes was labeled with the associated news event — OJ verdict, Princess Di’s death, elections, tsunami, 9/11 and so on. Little did I know that there would be a correlation between that graph and growing a hyperlocal site’s traffic.

Not unlike MSNBC, we have experienced the same dynamic. That is, when there’s a big story we will see a spike in traffic followed by a higher plateau of traffic. That plateau is what has the greatest value. If we did a good job when people visited for the first time by giving them a good experience, they will come back. Better yet, we get some to subscribe to our newsletter or RSS feed and are in a coveted spot to remind them of our site. Our site has gotten progressively better at increasing the length of time people spend on our site as we have added modules on the page to expose them to what else we have. Let me give a recent example. We had an unfortunate avalanche tragedy at the local ski area that defines our area. [As fate would have it, it happened at the same time we were doing a complete platform shift that I wrote about on OJR, but that's a different story.]

SunValleyOnline has not spent a penny on marketing, in the traditional sense, to build its audience. Instead it has used tactics such as what I outlined above to build itself into a top site in its area. This kind of resourcefulness is what has enabled SunValleyOnline to be one of the early profitable hyperlocal sites supporting a small team.

Last month Tunsion—aka Christmas Ape—came out of Internet anonymity with a KSK entry documenting his inebriation one ancient evening at (gasp) a sports bar. Turns out that was the Washington Post’s cue to fire him, within 48 hours of the post, for “discrediting the publication.”

The Web backlash to WaPo’s knee-jerk reaction was immediate and expected. For HR malpractice. For stodgy new-media ignorance. For axing a potential traffic cow.

But don’t quit your day job, Mike. KSK is of course booming on the heels of the incident, and Tunison is content, sort of, to be uncaged in that space.

We caught up with him over e-mail for a closer look at the whole mess.

OJR: Is there anything defensible about this? Or does a part of you think WaPo did what it had to do?

MT: I think The Post has a right to uphold and enforce whatever stodgy standards of conduct that it deems appropriate. I don’t they would have acted as extremely or as quickly as they did if it wasn’t first picked up by a journalism blog. In that case, the editors probably felt pressure from within the journalism community to cleanse whatever damage they thought I was doing to the Post brand.

OJR: Sounds like it was technically over your post about being drunk at a bar, but that seems a little far-fetched. There’s got to be more to it than that. They say you “discredited” the publication. But what was actually said to you. Anything verbal, or did it all come in memos?

MT: Far-fetched though it may seem, that’s what they said. The day after I put up the outing post, I got a call from the top editor of the Metro section, who was already making clear I was in deep shit and was probably going to be fired. He essentially wanted my reasons for doing so to run by personnel. The next day, I was called back into his office where he laid out the terms of my dismissal. He said the drunk picture coupled with the language while linking to my Post stories violated the paper’s standards.

OJR: Seems to me they would have been a bit better off to give you a slap on the wrist and leverage you for site traffic. Are you at all surprised they couldn’t see it that way?

MT: I figured the penalty would be less severe and there would be more room for discussion. I’m not surprised at all that they couldn’t find something for me to do with The Post’s Web operation. There’s a stunning lack of vision at The Washington Post when it comes to Web-exclusive content. Not to mention that the disconnect between The Post and its website is astounding. The Washington CityPaper did a great piece on that a few months ago. Look at Dan Steinberg’s D.C. Sports Bog. It’s probably the best executed sports blog by a mainstream publication and it’s barely promoted at all by the organization. Sure, one post makes it to page 2 of sports section in the print paper, but log onto The Post’s site and you’d never know it existed. You have to really dig through that unwieldy thing to find it.

OJR: Surely you had to be expecting a knee-jerk reaction of some sort. To what extent did you think it would be feasible for your two writing lives to coexist?

MT: I thought so. As I’ve said on the site, there was no overlap at all between what I did for the paper and the writing at KSK. I also made pains on the revealing post to not actually write out my name and the publication. You could only find those things by visiting The Post and clicking through the links. A Google search of my name or The Washington Post wouldn’t have brought it up, so no one would have discovered it except readers of Kissing Suzy Kolber. Now, readers of KSK and WaPo readers aren’t mutually exclusive, but you can be damn sure KSK readers didn’t think my employment there hurt the paper in any way.

OJR: It sucks to lose the 9 to 5, but how bitter are you, really, considering you come off as the good guy in all this?

MT: I’m a little bitter because I was never really given an opportunity to excel at The Post and as soon as I develop something for myself that garners some success, they find out about it and can me. When I’m doing uninteresting work, I’m going to need a creative outlet on the side.

OJR: How, if at all, are you pursuing other newspaper jobs? Or are you done with MSM? If so, why?

MT: I’m not going after any newspaper jobs at the moment. Partly because I don’t want to but also because they wouldn’t hire me even if I did. Just this past week, the guy who runs The Sporting News’ blog, The Sporting Blog, wanted to bring me on to do some work with them and he was shot down by higher-ups. The reason: because I’m too “controversial” after this firing. I’m sure I’m blackballed from a number of places, probably forever. It’s a little pathetic, really. The mainstream journalism community is so insular and at the same time so terrified. The situation is just going to get worse for them until they reevaluate more than just staff sizes. I have other aspirations, but I’m happy with blogging for now. I make about as much as I did at The Post, which wasn’t much, with writing for a few blogs. I can be happy with that for a bit.

OJR: How has your role on KSK changed through all this? Obviously you have more time to put toward it, but do you feel at all uncaged or liberated in terms of your content?

MT: KSK has never really been a place where I’ve felt limited in terms of what I can say, so the firing doesn’t change much. I have more time and am writing a little more, but it’s still the off-season and there’s only so much to write about. Before coming forward, I had to be more guarded with personal information, which I don’t anymore.

OJR: This is the best PR imaginable for KSK. How has site traffic looked since the coming-out party? Are you guys looking to expand the site out of this?

MT: There was a big initial burst of traffic right after the outing. We had 108,000 unique visitors the day after I got fired. We average around 22,000 or so per day. It’s still been a little higher since than it was before the incident. We probably gained a few readers, but most of the other people were there because it was in the news. As far as expanding, the firing coincided with moving the site to a new address after reaching a contract with a nascent blog network. There are big plans for that network. As far as KSK, there are things we’re planning on adding here and there, like a liveblog of a game every week during the season. Other than that, we’re just keeping with what’s worked for us.

Many newspaper websites offer contests in the week leading up to the tournament, inviting readers to fill out the 65-team tournament bracket with their picks for winners in each of the games. It’s the (legal) online version of the ever-opular office betting pools, with the not-so-legally-insignificant difference that the prizes are coming from sponsors and not money put up by the participants.

That’s fine. It drives some traffic, and people like making picks without having to put any of their own skin in the game. But everyone’s doing that. What else is out there?

I found a few interesting examples.

First, the Los Angeles Times offered an option on its Flash tournament brackets that I’d not seen before:

It’s a geographic map that shows where each of the 65 teams are traveling from and to for the first-round matchups. The NCAA sends teams flying all over the country in an effort to balance the competitive level in each of its tournament regions. I found it fascinating to see, in one glance, just how far some teams have to go. Plus, this graphic provides a handy way to answer the inevitable first-round question: “I’ve never heard of that school; where is it from again?”

Click on the “Bracket” option at the top of the graphic, and you return to the traditional bracket chart, which readers can fill out by clicking team names.

The Washington Post and USA Today produced their own NCAA tournament webpages, but what caught my eye is how they also spun the idea of filling out a tournament bracket and applied that to different forms of entertainment.

The Post got a head start by starting earlier this month a single-elimination tournament pitting characters from the TV show “Lost” against one another. Readers voted for the characters they thought would survive in each head-to-head match-up.

USA Today seeded 64 entertainment celebrities and celebrity couples and created a reader-vote tournament to find the “winner”:

The WaPo and USAT tournaments exemplify the power of reader interactivity. Sure, they are fluff. But they, like the interactive NCAA tournament brackets, are fluff that get people reading, clicking and spending time on their newspapers’ websites.

Industry veteran Vin Crosbie last week pointed out on Poynter’s online-news e-mail list that U.S. newspapers have a huge problem in eliciting repeat visits from their online readers:

“If you download the NAA’s spreadsheet of the N//N data and calculate medians, you’ll see that the median user of those top 100 U.S. newspaper sites visited only 2.58 times per month and saw only 15.03 Web pages on a newspaper site per month. That’s not much: a visit only once every 11.6 days and 15 Web pages all month.”

My wife is fond of citing her Suzuki violin training that “it takes 21 days to form a habit.” (“And 12 steps to break it,” I shot back the first time she told me this.) Whether habits form in 21 days or not, website publishers help their readership numbers by creating features that inspire readers to come back to a site, and reward them for doing so, day after day.

A reader-vote tournament, such as the Post’s and USA Today’s, does this. Unlike traditional online polls, these build upon each other, sending the winners in one day’s poll on to the next’s, inspiring readers to return. Unlike the NCAA tournament, which you can follow on TVs, websites, cell phones and newspapers, these tournaments are available only on their creators’ websites. So you gotta come back there to vote, and to see who won in each round.

Take it a step further: Include each day’s match-ups and results in one of your daily update e-mails, and invite those readers following the tournament to subscribe to it. I’ll bet you many of them continue to get and read that daily e-mail, finding other news and features on your site, even after the tournament’s done.

If you want people reading the great reporting on your news website, first, you’ve got to get them in the habit of coming to the site. Don’t overlook the value of interactive reader-driven online events, such as these, in helping you to do that.

1. Newspapers: Get a breaking news blog

I asked several friends of OJR to suggest their favorite news sites and features of the past year, and many Southern California neighbors pointed toward the coverage of this year’s wildfires by the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune’s SignonSanDiego.com.

In May, I wrote about the Los Angeles Times’ use of a breaking news blog to keep readers informed about that month’s wildfires, which struck the city’s popular Griffith Park.

Blogs are the ideal format for breaking news, as they allow newsrooms to swiftly publish little bits of information, as they are confirmed, and without having to weave them into a traditional story format. They also make it easy for readers to see “the latest” on a developing story, rewarding the reader and making it easier for traditional-print newsrooms to compete with the immediacy of broadcast media.

2. Get widget love

Text, photos and video are just three of the tools available to online news publishers, with which to engage readers and hook ‘em into spending more time with your site.

Millions of Web readers are using online widgets, from embedded YouTube videos to online polls, to dress up their blogs, personal websites and Facebook and MySpace pages. There’s nothing keeping news publishers from using these same tools, as well.