The power of slide shows
October 29, 2004
At about 3:15pm Thursday, Boston.com passed the 15.5 million pageview mark, making the day after the Red Sox World Series victory a new record for Boston.com.
That’s not so surprising. But here’s what’s really interesting: Boston.com’s photo galleries received 8.5 million page views as of 3 p.m. ET, about 54 percent of the day’s traffic to that point. A gallery showing players celebrating generated more than 3 million page views, a record for a single piece of content in a single day.
Slide shows are very popular and great page view generators. Use them often.
Cool electoral college calculators
October 28, 2004
No matter how many popular votes a candidate gets, he needs more electoral votes to win the presidency, a fact that the 2000 race made all too clear. This time around a number of sites have put together fantastic interactive features to help readers better understand the electoral process and select which candidate is likely to come out on top in electoral votes.
CyberJournalist.net takes a look at some of the more innovative and useful sites…
Read more »
Vote by Issue
October 27, 2004
PBS NewsHour and WBUR, Boston, have just launched a blind-quiz, votebyissue.org, where you choose the position that most closely reflects your own on 20 issues, and then get a report card that reveals the candidate who most reflects your views. Another great example of a vote-by-issue quiz (see other examples), one of the best way news sites have found this election cycle for helping voters make up their mind. “I think it’s very useful as a way of drumming up some interest in issues during a campaign season mostly about polls, horserace, and personality,” says WBUR’s Will Thomson.
Related:
Great Presidential Candidate Selectors
WSJ’s Morning Brief
October 27, 2004
The Wall Street Journal Online is launching a Today’s Papers-like feature, The Morning Brief, a daily e-mail that provides analysis of the past day?s news-as seen by a variety of media and other outlets — along with breaking overnight news. The Morning Brief will be distributed to subscribers and posted on the site weekdays at approximately 6:30 a.m. ET.
ABCNews.com redesigns
October 27, 2004
New type faces, a much cleaner design, addition of RSS feeds, and very nice integration of video onto the home page, including a free clip of the day that plays right on the cover. A big improvement for ABCNews.com.
E-Voting: Promise or Peril?
October 27, 2004
Fifty million Americans will use touch-screen voting systems Nov. 2. Here’s an excellent package from washingtonpost.com looking at e-voting, including three made-for-the-Web videos and an interactive map of D.C.-area voting systems.
LexisNexis via BlackBerry
October 26, 2004
LexisNexis is now available via via BlackBerry wireless devices. A fantastic resource for journalists on the go.
2004 Best Blogs Readers’ Choice Award winners
October 26, 2004
Washingtonpost.com readers chose National Review Weblogs (The Corner and Kerry Spot) as their favorite politics blogs in five of the 10 categories. Other winners included Instapundit.com (in two categories), Little Green Footballs, Lileks.com and ScrappleFace. Here’s the full list of winners.
Blogs and ‘got-cha’
October 26, 2004
“I like the weblogs,” says Molly Ivins, “to the extent to which they play ‘got-cha’ with the establishment media. Hey, I’m all for it. I think they add tremendously to the national discussion. I think both journalism and politics will be beneficially influenced by the Internet.” (via Romenesko)
More Knight Ridder election blogs
October 26, 2004
Two additions to Knight Ridder’s stable of election blogs:
1. A new opinion blog called “Free-Fire Zone” at http://free-fire.blogspot.com, featuring two dueling Knight Ridder columnists, Carol Towarnicky of the Philadelphia Daily News (from the liberal side) and Leo Morris of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel (conservative).
2. A re-launched “Hot Off the Trail” campaign blog, which went dark after the primary season. Several Knight Ridder political correspondents following the presidential campaign are contributing at http://krtrail.blogspot.com.
Here are some other KR campaign blogs:
• Life of the Parties (Adam Smeltz looks at election through twentysomething eyes)
• Student Views (University of Miami students blog about the presidential debate there)
• Ozblog (Alan Bjerga, Washington correspondent for Wichita Eagle)
• Ohioblog (Steve Love of the Akron Beacon Journal)
• Campaign Extra! (Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News)