Sentinel.com blog

We’ve got a few open spots for tomorrow’s monthly meeting of the Santa Cruz Community Media Lab.

Joel Postman, author of the Socialized blog on social media will speak and answer questions.

Postman, from Boulder Creek, consults and provides social media strategy, implementation and measurement for progressive companies and non-profit organizations (see Bio).

The Media Lab meetings have been good opportunities for bloggers and Sentinel journalists to talk about their work and make connections. At our March gathering, Nina Simon talked about starting the Museum 2.0 blog, and the ways it changed her life. Going around the room, Media Lab bloggers talked about the way every post seemed to make another connection or another door. We hope our face-to-face meeting offer those opportunities.

We’re meeting at noon, Wednesday at Cruzio – no charge, but bring your own lunch. Send us a note (cml.santacruz@gmail.com) or check in on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/414876248611788/ if you plan to attend.

Thanks! Tom

The Santa Cruz Community Media Lab gathered Monday for its February meeting and talked about arts, entertainment and the cultural life in Santa Cruz.

Longtime Sentinel arts and entertainment writer Wallace Baine talked with Media Lab members at Cruzio. (Thanks Chris Neklason!). Wallace has teamed up with Kirby Scudder to build a new blog for the Sentinel – The Muse Santa Cruz with the intention of becoming the hub of arts and cultural information for the community.

Wallace has pushed ahead with the blog, with some tireless work from Kirby to build and populate the site. They’re planning a launch party Thursday, Feb. 28th 6-9 p.m. at the Tannery, and all are invited.

Wallace talked about a wide variety of possibilities for the Muse. Among them:

• A more realtime orientation to updates about the arts community
• Guest blog posts
• Multimedia
• Outreach to the community for photos, writing and video
• Linking out to creative events and reviews around Santa Cruz County
• Stories and photos that appear in the Sentinel printed Guide, which comes out every Thursday

If you’re interested in connecting with the Sentinel’s arts and entertainment coverage, and the Muse blog, reach out to Wallace.

This month marks a year since the Sentinel launched its Community Media Lab project. More than 200 bloggers have become involved in one way or another. We link out to the best posts every day, promote those links on the Sentinel home page, on the Media Lab page, through Facebook and twitter and other social media sites. Sentinel copy editor My Nguyen does most of the daily updates and also attended Monday. The lab’s page received more than 10,000 page views in 2012.

The people and organizations that have joined the project have been unfailingly helpful (among other cool developments, we started a Facebook group where questions are posed and help is given among bloggers on social, technical and other questions). Participants have provided news tips, breaking news photos, front page story suggestions, promoted worthy causes, and more importantly, shared their voices about what it’s like to live, struggle, create and celebrate in Santa Cruz.

Our face-to-face meetings with with members have been enjoyable without exception. Sentinel reporters, editors and photographers who have attended always come away feeling energized and full of the possibilities for their work and network. The project has informed us about the possibilities for collaboration in every aspect of Sentinel coverage.

We hope (and believe) that Media Lab bloggers come away from the meetings with new ideas and a better understanding of what the Sentinel is about.

Thanks for attending Monday to Sentinel Digital Producer Christina Gullickson and bloggers from:

• Positively Santa Cruz
• The Aums
• Motherhood, A Descent Into Madness
• Seasonal Eating
• Tom Jacobs Photography
• Laugh.research.write.run
• Riding Pretty
• Civinomics

- Tom Moore

The Sentinel website, staff blogs and mobile apps received more than 4.8 million page views for the month of January. Below we’ve included a list of most-viewed stories. The list is topped, unfortunately, by an account of a man who adopted an unusual fighting technique. The story was picked up on the front page of fark.com and received more than 20,000 page views.

Those kind of stories, even when they get some viral attention, don’t drive the most traffic on the site. The Sentinel home page received more than 870,000 views. Photo galleries, led by shots from the Mavericks Invitation, this year and years past, generated more than 110,000 views. The Sentinel calendar (look for February updates to the most-used online calendar in the county) accounted from more than 85,000 views.

Of the total of close to 5 million views, about 20 percent (just shy of 1 million) came from mobile apps for iPhone, Android and iPad that didn’t exist in January 2011, and more than 370,000 came from m.santacruzsentinel.com – viewed on mobile web browsers.

Upcoming projects include the launch of updated tourism pages, a new commenting system (hint: Disqus), calendar updates (hint: Eventful), site redesign, continued work with the Santa Cruz Community Media Lab, more extensive use of photos.santacruzsentinel.com for local photo presentations, updates to Sentinel staff blogging platforms, an updated content management system, development of local apps from our newsroom, and we’ve been experimenting with interesting possibilities from rebelmouse.com.

With all kinds of hard work from Kirby Scudder and Wallace Baine, we’ve also launched The Muse blog – for all things related to the Creative Life in Santa Cruz County. Sign up for e-mail updates for all new posts (bottom right of the blog) to be connected with the best art & entertainment coverage.

Thanks to all who visited the Sentinel online, on your phones, tablets, and to our print and e-edition subscribers. We’re taking your news tips and suggestions 24/7.

Most viewed stories for January:

1. Man drops drawers during fight challenge on West Cliff Drive, police said
2. Galactic surprise: New find overturns theories how our galaxy evolved
3. Teen with dad, dog drives off Santa Cruz wharf
4. Driver strikes cyclist on Branciforte Drive, then crashes into concrete divider
5. Killer whales on the hunt in the Monterey Bay
6. Newsmaker 2012: Fatal party bus incident under review by Santa Clara County prosecutors
7. Dave’s Gourmet Albacore ends 13-year run in Santa Cruz
8. Scotts Valley-area man missing since Friday
9. Images released of fake doctor in Santa Cruz hospital heist
10. Felton woman injured in 2009 Mount Hermon Road crash dies
    

The story of the effort to steer the San Lorenzo River away from the historic Santa Cruz Boardwalk was among the most viewed of 2012 on the Sentinel website. Dan Coyro photo

Crime, surf and sea creatures were among the most popular subjects on the Sentinel’s website in 2012.

The site received more than 41 million page views through early December of 2012 and the Sentinel’s mobile apps (iPhone and Android introduced in February, iPad in November), received another 6 million views.

The Sentinel welcomed more than 4.6 million unique annual visitors to the site.

The most viewed local story of 2012 was on the tragic stabbing death of Shannon Collins on Broadway. Collins, who ran a popular downtown business, was walking during the morning of May 7, on her way to a hair appointment, when she was attacked and brutally murderd. Charles Edwards, who was arrested and charged with the crime, was a felon with a violent history who had been earlier released on parole due to a clerical error. Readers grieved, struggled to understand the senseless loss, and offered their support to Collins’ loved ones.
The story received more than 70,000 page views during the year.
The second most viewed story of 2012 was about a woman who gave birth to a baby girl in the lobby of the county jail. The woman had been arrested on suspicion of being drunk in public on a Sunday afternoon. Jail staff initially refused to book her because she was pregnant and intoxicated. She was evaluated at Dominican Hospital and then brought back to the jail Sunday evening for booking. On Monday, sober and being released, she gave birth in the lobby, with help from jail medical staff. The baby girl was estimated to be 2 or 3 months premature. The Drudge Report posted a prominent link to the story, which was viewed more than 59,000 times.

Fans of “Chasing Mavericks” may have gone home from the movie and searched online for more information on Santa Cruz surfer Jay Moriarity. When they did, one of the top results was Wallace Baine’s 2010 column marking the 10th anniversary of Moriarity’s accidental death. The story was read more than 44,000 times.

Other most viewed stories included an embedded video made by a Santa Cruz fisherman who captured incredible underwater shots of dolphins swimming with his boat. A shark attack on a kayak near Pleasure Point closed beaches and captured the community’s attention and the story drew more than 20,000 page views. It also prompted Sentinel reporter Jason Hoppin to build a shark attack map, detailing all reported shark attacks in California history. The map also received more than 16,000 page views during the year.

The Sentinel’s online audience continues to grow (page views were up 17 percent this year), and our newsroom is committed to delivering news and the community’s stories across all platforms and devices. We break news on twitter, we share community stories on Facebook. We built a Community Media Lab to connect with and highlight local bloggers (more than 10,000 views of that page). We’ve added more than 1,300 followers on Instagram this year. YouTube videos produced by the Sentinel were watched more than 300,000 times.

Readers were drawn to sex (Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show photos drew more than 60,000 views), to the absurd (Shark falls from sky, lands on California Golf Course – 8,400 views), to up-to-the-moment election coverage (nearly 600,000 page views on election day and the two days following), to the in-depth (Our investigative project on the $123 million proposed desalination project in Santa Cruz generated more than 60,000 views).

We published all public salaries in Santa Cruz County, and those databases drew more than 100,000 views. We worked harder than ever to involve our readers in polls, commentary, in tipping us off to news, and to connect with local bloggers and experts in their fields. The Sentinel events calendar was viewed more than 800,000 times.

We also built partnerships with Santa Cruz Waves (a new surf photo every day on the Sentinel home page), and Cruzio (our top referrer of traffic, more than 340,000 views from their site) and updated our weddings page, updated all subscriber services online, launched community pages and offered an online-first series on the Top 10 Things to Do Before You Die in Santa Cruz (20,000 views). We also offered our first annual Readers Choice voting, and we’re pleased to say that our audience is always reaching out to us, with the “contact us” page receiving more than 60,000 views.

The 10 most-read local stories on the Santa Cruz Sentinel website in 2012:

1. Police call Monday’s stabbing of downtown Santa Cruz business owner ‘unprovoked and random’
2. Woman gives birth to baby girl in lobby of Santa Cruz County Jail early Monday morning
3. On the 10th anniversary of the death of iconic surfer Jay Moriarity, his widow reflects
4. Santa Cruz County Jail escapee apprehended
5. Employee of Santa Cruz business thwarts armed robber by grabbing his gun, police say
6. Daughter of surf shop owner dies after falling out of party bus, CHP says
7. Tuna fisherman posts video of dolphins swimming with underwater ‘torpedo’ camera
8. Shark attacks kayak near Pleasure Point
9. Crews fight off San Lorenzo River to save Boardwalk
10. Granite Rock CEO Bruce Woolpert dies in boating accident

Editor’s note: This post has been updated with the correct count of story views, showing that the story on the stabbing death of Shannon Collins was the most viewed of 2012.

We’re adding new feeds to every page on the Sentinel website featuring relevant content from our news staff, Media Lab bloggers, public officials, trusted news sources and as wide a variety of voices as possible. It’s a big project and we’d like your help. Want to connect what you do with the Sentinel website? Fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch about ways we can connect and collaborate.

We’ve been working in a lot of directions on the Sentinel website. You’ll continue to see changes over time, but here are a few that have gone live in the past couple weeks and a few that are in the works. We’re doing our best to connect with your local story, your voice, and being accessible in as many ways as possible.

• Media Center: Digital First launched the WordPress based Media Center just before the Olympics. It will allow us to make the most of our local photos in a wide variety of formats (including tablet) and also to bring readers the best shots from around the world on a daily basis.
• Presidential Election coverage: New site includes the latest on the Presidential election, local election stories, and content from partners including MediaNews organizations, Pro Publica, The Atlantic, National Journal, and Democracy Live. We’ll also link out to blogs including the New York Times FiveThirtyEight and many more. Readers can also find our local elections coverage, endorsements and voter information broken down in more detail on our elections page, and we’ll carry live local and state results in November.
• Readers Choice awards: We’re launching the Sentinel’s first-ever readers choice awards, asking your opinion in hundreds of categories. All voting will be online and we’re building the voting platform now for any device you choose.
• iPad app rollout this month: The Sentinel’s iPhone app, launched in February has been popular. More than 3 million page views since its launch. We see even more potential for the iPad app, scheduled to be launched this month in the iTunes store. For a look at the format, check out the Denver Post’s (free) app for iPad.
• Redesign: Long-awaited, you’ll see a full redesign of the website in the months ahead.
• New content management system: Again, long-awaited inside the newsroom, the new CMS will give us better tools for sharing content with partners, building partnerships in the community, publishing in a wide variety of formats and connecting more kinds of digital content. It’s also integrated with the print content management system, and includes a commenting system through Disqus. Stay tuned on this.
• A new toolbar: At the bottom of every page, we’ve updated a toolbar, to include latest headlines, story suggestions, display ads and national content from Digital First (currently from American Homecomings). The updated version is also less intrusive and quicker to load, and also shows readers the “next” story on article pages.
• Football season: More live results, more photos, video, a special section and a redesigned Football page.
• The Community Media Lab: With all these other projects on our list, we haven’t given the Media Lab the attention it deserves. Still our lab has more than 150 local participants. We’re working on a project to give Santa Cruz artists prominent connections. We’re also working with bloggers writing short profiles of other bloggers, and featuring the best weekly content every Friday.
• Cold Water Classic: This year’s event may be the biggest surf event in Santa Cruz history, as we become the focus of the professional surfing world. We’re collaborating with the Santa Cruz Waves team, planning to go all out.
• Instagram: We’re just getting warmed up on Instagram, but our longtime photo staffers Dan Coyro and Shmuel Thaler both recently adopted iPhones and are exploring the possibilities. Follow us (@scsentinel), and stay tuned for contests, photo walks and more.

Posted from Los Altos, California, United States.

On late notice, we invited the Santa Cruz Community Media Lab bloggers to stop by our out-of-the-way office in Scotts Valley and have a discussion about blogging with anyone from the newsroom interested in attending.

It was a cool meeting. We occupied some space on the white board. We had coffee and one of our favorite bloggers brought cookies for us all. The publisher, Michael Turpin, whose new blog will be up and running next week, stopped in.

Reporters Jason Hoppin, Shanna McCord and Vidur Malik joined us. Digital Producer Christina Gullickson organized the whole thing.

And we had a great bunch of CML bloggers:

• Jim Coffis from SLVnews.net
• Christine Candelaria from The Aums
• Elizabeth from Motherhood: A Descent Into Madness
• Mary Andersen from the SLV Chamber
• Angus McMahan from Angus-Land
• Vicki Wees from History Discussions: Santa Cruz Mountains and San Lorenzo Valley

After talking about community connections, possibilities for the CML, the Sentinel and its website, technical advice, parenting, and business models in the digital world, there was unanimous agreement that we would have more gatherings with more members of the Community Media Lab.

I like where this is going, and I have no idea where that is.

Thanks to all the 130 bloggers who are participating!
- Tom

Here’s a short collection of tweets about Thursday’s meeting:

Posted from Scotts Valley, California, United States.

Here are the 10 most viewed stories and pages from the Sentinel website in February:

1. Santa Cruz Sentinel Photo Contest : 2012 Happy Face!
2. Santa Cruz Sentinel Photo Contest : 2012 Only in Santa Cruz!
3. 15-year-old Aptos girl sliced in fight at her birthday party
4. Santa Cruz pro surfer Anthony Ruffo sentenced to jail for drug dealing
5. Police: Drunken man packs loaded gun at bar, patrons take him down
6. Santa Cruz Police: Woman arrested three times in five days
7. Apple road trip ad boosts Santa Cruz profile nationally
8. Owner of three Santa Cruz markets arrested, Santa Cruz district attorney says
9. New dog leash warnings divide Santa Cruz County residents
10. Ristorante Barolo due for Restaurant: Impossible TV makeover Wednesday

For the month of February, we had 3,294,380 page views, up about 300,000 from January and up more than 500,000 from February 2011.

We had 449,495 unique visitors, up more than 40,000 from January and more than 65,000 from February 2011.

One of our favorite photos from the popular 'Only In Santa Cruz' contest in February.

Among projects, we launched the Santa Cruz Community Media Lab – connecting with more than 90 bloggers on the landing page. But running behind that landing page, we’re connecting on twitter, facebook, google+, youtube, tumblr, and building lists, meeting face-to-face and talking about ways to get more voices heard more often in more ways.

Also in February, we’re breaking more news on twitter. Reporters Donna Jones and Jondi Gumz, relatively new to the twitter world, both went past 100 followers, as did the @santacruzfood. Reporter Jason Hoppin broke news of how much a proposed food truck bill would impact the industry in an attempt to offer better meals for kids. Hoppin broke down the data, built maps, and tweeted them to a wide audience before the story appeared in the paper.

Reporter Jessica Pasko went over 1,000 followers. All our reporters know that news breaks on twitter and that they can tweet what they’re seeing and learning directly to our home page.

In other social media, the Sentinel twitter account is approaching 5,000 followers. We’ve maxed out on 5,000 facebook friends, but we’re adding fans (2,269) and subscribers (nearly 800) daily. Our Flickr account has had more than a half million views in the past year, and we plan to make photos and video a bigger emphasis as we go forward.

Our award-winning sports staff also had one of its biggest months of web traffic, we launched a new version of the weekly Guide section, including QR codes linking smart phones to web pages. And, we’ve quietly launched news apps for Android and iPhone – much more about those soon! And finally, we put a GoPro video camera on the helmet of a roller derby ref.

Thanks for connecting with the Sentinel.

Home / 15-year-old Aptos girl sliced in fight at her birthday party		11,424	0.3%
17.	Verve / SantaCruzSentinel.com: Local News		11,079	0.3%
18.	Mobile Obituaries Pages		10,361	0.3%
19.	Obituaries		9,405	0.3%
20.	Home / Santa Cruz pro surfer Anthony Ruffo sentenced to jail for drug dealing		9,120	0.3%
21.	Home / Police: Drunken man packs loaded gun at bar, patrons take him down		8,242	0.3%
22.	Home / Santa Cruz Police: Woman arrested three times in five days		8,201	0.2%
23.	Verve / SantaCruzSentinel.com: Cops and Courts		8,145	0.2%
24.	Home / Apple road trip ad boosts Santa Cruz profile nationally		7,983	0.2%
25.	Home / Owner of three Santa Cruz markets arrested, Santa Cruz district attorney says		7,918	0.2%
26.	Letters		7,775	0.2%
27.	Home / New dog leash warnings divide Santa Cruz County residents: Rio del Mar beaches remain open af		7,693	0.2%
28.	Weather		7,459	0.2%
29.	http://www.uclick.com/client/scs/gpd		7,208	0.2%
30.	Home / Ristorante Barolo due for Restaurant: Impossible TV makeover Wednesday		7,098	0.2%
31.	http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/santacruzsentinel/obituary-browse.aspx		6,919	0.2%
32.	Local News / Police: Mayhem motorcycle gang members some of 9 arrested		6,709	0.2%
33.	Home / Man stabs wife in face, teen daughter in mouth, deputies say		6,547	0.2%
34.	Home / Police: Mayhem motorcycle gang members some of 9 arrested		6,501	0.2%
35.	Home / Food Network’s chief chef Robert Irvine gives Ristorante Barolo a new look		6,421	0.2%
36.	Home / Two arrested after allegedly trying to retrieve friend’s body from Santa Cruz crematorium		6,291	0.2%
37.	Home / Capitola economy: Vacancies in Mall, Mercantile; Blockbuster closing but new construction on		6,162	0.2%
38.	http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/santacruzsentinel/obituary-search.aspx		6,113	0.2%
39.	Home / Fisherman dies on Rio del Mar Beach after getting caught in riptide		6,044	0.2%
40.	Home / Elderly man falls over cliff near Felton, plunging 250 feet to his death		5,665	0.2%
41.	http://www.santacruzsentinel.com		5,379	0.2%
42.	Home / TV murder mystery to air Monday on Santa Cruz woman’s slain husband		5,176	0.2%
43.	Home / Highway 17 northbound lanes closed for more than two hours Sunday night near Summit		5,090	0.2%
44.	Home / Santa Cruz landlord issued correction notice for roach infestation		5,050	0.2%
45.	Home / Proposed Montessori charter school creates education divide: Parents want choice, while other		5,019	0.2%
46.	Verve / SantaCruzSentinel.com : Cops and Courts		4,972	0.2%
47.	Home / ‘Mavericks’ movie crew returns to Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay for big-wave shots		4,960	0.2%
48.	Opinion		4,938	0.1%
49.	Home / Woman accused of stealing hundreds of dollars from local nonprofit organization

Posted from .

We’re continuing a project that’s been around as long as our paper has been around.

The idea is to connect with the community.

We’ve been doing that in print in all kinds of ways for more than 150 years. That includes all the time spent by our reporters around the community, all the letters to the editor and guest opinion pieces in print, all the photos we’ve taken and shared. The tradition includes all the kids who grew up with their first job delivering papers.

We’ve been connecting with readers online in a wide variety of ways as well. We’ve offered forums, we link out to all kinds of relevant content in stories, we’re friends with some of you on Facebook, some of you follow us on twitter. More and more of our readers come to us through their mobile devices. We’ll be promoting news apps for Android and iPhone this month.

We’re in the business of connecting our local readers with local businesses as well, with more options than ever before for local advertisers to connect with our growing audience.

Today, we’re adding another piece, launching a page called the Santa Cruz Community Media Lab. On that page, we’re feeding the latest posts from a wide variety of community bloggers. We’ve opened a twitter account: @santacruzcml. We’re on Google+. Want to be involved? Send us your information. For those of you who have been in touch with us and sent information about your blogs or sites, keep talking with us. E-mail when you’ve got a post you’d like considered for promotion and sharing more widely in our print edition.

The project is part of our commitment to being accessible, and our understanding that the news from Santa Cruz County includes more than our hard-working news staff is able to cover. Many of you are spreading the word on subjects about which you are passionate. We want to amplify your voice.

As we get started, we’ve connecting with a wide variety of great blogs, covering everything from food (see the Smoking Whisk), to sports (see Tommy Zaferes’ Living the Tri-Life), photography (Sunrise Santa Cruz), science (UCSC science writers: The Crashing Edge), parenting (The Super Mom Blog), entertainment (Kuumbwa Jazz updates), public agencies (Santa Cruz Police) and some that are personal (James Durbin’s wife, Heidi, shares The Good News). Thanks for connecting with us!

Want to include your blog? Let us know. The same idea is behind the twitter lists and widgets we’ve added to every page on the site. We’ll also be working to display your YouTube channels, tumblr posts, Pinterest projects, Flickr photos and whatever the future of digital communication holds, in the ways you want to say it.

That’s an ambitious project. In some ways we’ve been working on it since the Sentinel started printing papers. And with regard to Community Media Labs, we’re just getting started. Let us know how we’re doing, what you’d like to see, where you want this to go.

Posted from .