Sentinel.com blog

We recently uploaded 29 photos from Wharf to Wharf by Shmuel Thaler for purchase.

If you haven’t checked out the Sentinel’s photos for sale site, it’s worth a look. We set prices at a somewhat ridiculous level, mainly as a service to readers and a possible way to help photographers make a few bucks for equipment.

This year we’ve sold 86 prints, adding some $82 to the Sentinel coffers. The point is, there are great shots, and great prices. If you see shot in the paper you’d like, you can request it. You can have your favorite photos shipped framed, on T-shirts, on coffee mugs, whatever floats your boat.

It’s not too early to start stocking thinking about holiday gifts. (OK, maybe it is, but keep us in mind).

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked cities to post their salaries in the wake of the Bell scandal.

We’ve been working on posting public salaries and a wide variety of public information on Sentinel.com for the past two years.

Upcoming, we’ve got the Santa Cruz Metro salary database. We believe that publishing this information helps the community avoid the kind of scandal that has hit Bell, and we think you deserve to have a clear look at how your tax money is spent.

There’s a ton of data about the Santa Cruz community, and part of our job now and going forward is to help organize that data and help you sort through it. We’ve done some partnering with Santa Cruz Public Libraries to share their database of community services.

We’ve been posting real estate transactions, and we’ve recently added Santa Cruz Police’s crime map and the Sheriff’s crime map.

Here’s one reporter’s account about the value of data to newrooms.

Has your organization been gathering data? Want to share and display that database? Have a good idea for the Sentinel and community data? Drop us a line.

Thanks to everyone who was out covering the Wharf to Wharf for the Sentinel

A few notes – we’ve had close to 40,000 page views for Wharf to Wharf coverage.

Monday’s single day traffic was more than 140,000 page views and Sunday’s traffic was close to 100,000, when we’re typically at 80,000 on Sundays, and right around 100,000 on Mondays.

Among highlights online – we had live updates, including photos, video, and twitter posts from throughout the race route as the event was happening. Sports intern Isis Roberts, Internet director Mike Blaesser and freelancer Cameron Moody were among Sentinel staffers sending photos and updates. Isis and Cameron also composed video reports.

Here’s what the live feed looked like

The feed also pulled in others using twitter to talk about the race – hundreds of updates, and more than 3,000 people clicked the feed

We had more than 50 photos submitted by viewers along the route and posted them automatically here

Stories were posted throughout the afternoon, by Julie Jag, Isis and Cathy Kelly.

We sent video to the home page, to the live feed and to youtube, getting more than 2,000 video views.

The highlight, though, is Sentinel photographer Shmuel Thaler’s slide show, which has received about 3,500 page views.

We also tweeted and let our fans on Facebook know about all of the above.

Thanks again!

Tom and the web team