Sentinel.com blog

The Santa Cruz Community Media Lab had its third gathering Thursday. Fifteen bloggers stopped by Cruzio to talk about their latest work, technology, tools and adventures.

Sentinel reporter Jessica Pasko, who covers cops and courts for the Sentinel, and also writes the Lost on the Left Coast blog and maintains her own food blog was the guest speaker and talked about the way she reads, interacts and writes for the online world.

She talked about the power of authentic personal stories, making connections and friends with bloggers she discovered online and techniques for sharing through social media.

Here’s the roster of attendees and links to their blogs.

Eric Nelson: http://www.norcalcs.org

Christine Candelaria

1. blog http://www.theaums.com
2. twitter @theaumsmama
3. Facebook http://www.facebook.com/TheAums
4. iVillage Contributor http://www.ivillage.com/meet-ivoices-ivillage/8-b-342822#342874

Viva Harris: The Daily Citron

Angus McMahan http://www.angus-land.blogspot.com/

Jim Coffis, Publisher, SLVNews Network jcoffis@gmail.com | http://www.SLVNews.net

Rebecca Stark, http://www.rebeccastarkblog.com/

Jim Graham, http://www.desertdingo.com/blog/

Tom Bentley, http://www.tombentley.com/wordpress/

Robin Horn, http://www.seasonaleating.net/

Elizabeth Engelhardt, Motherhood: A Descent Into Madness

Mary Andersen

Thanks to all for connecting with the Sentinel and helping with the project. Thanks also to Cruzio for generously hosting the gathering in downtown Santa Cruz.

In other Media Lab news …
We’re thrilled with the new logo:


Designed by Kirsti Scott of Scott Design.

Media Lab blogger/boat captain Mike Sack has given a handful of tours to Media Lab bloggers (and Sentinel intern Eric Brown). Here are some links:

• The Captain’s Log
• Susanna’s Apron: The Message of the Whale
• Sentinel intern Eric Brown’s ride with Sanctuary Cruises
• YouTube video
• A fluke and poop

We also talked about a wide variety of projects individual bloggers have taken on and the ways they are telling and sharing their stories. One more note. Team G – part of the CML – is sharing a powerful story about a beautiful 4-year-old girl who is fighting cancer. Fundraiser on July 1 is a blood drive and for a very good cause. Help spread the word if you get a chance.

Posted from Los Altos, California, United States.

From Storify:

Starting today, you’ll find new community pages on the Sentinel website for:

• Aptos
• Capitola/Live Oak
• San Lorenzo Valley
• Santa Cruz
• Scotts Valley
• Soquel
• Watsonville

We’ve built the pages to feature a wide variety of content from Sentinel reporters and photographers, but also to include links and feeds from Community Media Lab bloggers, Sentinel staff bloggers, and twitter users with regular tweets about the community. We’ve also built Facebook pages associated with each community, and we hope readers use these pages as bulletin boards for discussion, events posts, questions, story suggestions, problem solving and more.

You’ll find the places pages in the Sentinel site navigation next to news (see image below). We’ve moved business page links under the news dropdown menu.

We think the local pages will be a great spots to catch up with all that’s going on in your neighborhood, and also, great places for advertisers who want to reach focused community viewers.

The pages are a model for the way we think about future digital products and news coverage in general. Our news staff works hard to cover the most important stories in Santa Cruz County, but we also connect with commenters, bloggers, readers in a variety of social media channels, and all kinds of knowledgeable sources beyond our staff.

Those connections help inform our newsroom and help our reporters and editors focus on the biggest stories, professional journalism and modern storytelling that makes a difference.

Let us know what you think about the community pages. Especially get in touch if you’d like a link to your project, have a suggestion for adding to our twitter feeds, or if you’d like one of the ad spots on the page.

E-mail feedback on community pages.

(Also, many thanks to Sentinel digital producer Christina Gullickson, who spent long hours building lists, maps and pipes, and tagging and sorting photos, stories and video to put these pages together.)

If you follow politics in Santa Cruz, care about the journalism business, or what’s happening with the county, you should follow @scnewsdude (aka Jason Hoppin) on twitter. Here’s a two-tweet summary of election day in Santa Cruz from Jason.

You’ll find Jason breaks almost all his significant reporting on twitter, hours before his story is written. We recommend reading both.

The Sentinel website was viewed more than 3.9 million times in May of 2012, a new record for views in a month topping March of 2011 (when the tsunami swept through the harbor). We also had 511,785 unique visitors to the site. Below is a list of the most viewed pages for the past month. The murder of Shannon Collins on Broadway stunned the community. Reaction to the murder on our site included an outpouring of condolences for the family, and serious discussion of issues of safety facing Santa Cruz.

1. Police call Monday’s stabbing of downtown Santa Cruz business owner ‘unprovoked’
   
2. Live Oak woman stabbed to death on Broadway, SF man arrested
3. San Jose high school students share name, share quote, share fame
4. Alleged killer spent four nights at Homeless Services Center
5. Man killed in shooting on Freedom Boulevard overpass at Highway 1
6. Annular solar eclipse — a ‘ring of fire’ — visible in Northern California on Sunday
7. Neighbor reports seeing man suspected in Monday’s killing on Broadway twice
   
8. Shannon Collins Guest Book: sign their guest book, share your condolences
   
9. City leaders, Homeless Services Center director announce new security proposals
10. Feds say Scotts Valley man ran a $60 million investment fund scam

A few more notes about Sentinel mobile and social interaction – our news apps (free on iPhone and Google Play) received more than 500,000 page views up from 362,247 in April. Since launch in February, we’ve had 1.18 million page views and 7,200 downloads.

We had more than 33,000 views on Flickr, and more than 10,000 video views on YouTube. We also activated a Sentinel Instagram account and quickly added 430 followers. We’ve also just signed up with Viddy, looking forward to sharing.

Thanks to all for finding us online!

The most viewed story on the Sentinel website in May was about the unprovoked murder of Shannon Collins.

Santa Cruz County residents: Did you vote in the June 5, 2012 elections?