Sentinel.com blog

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
    

When 15,000-plus runners came to Santa Cruz on Sunday for the 40th annual Wharf to Wharf race, we were ready to meet them. We received more than 40,000 page views on the Sentinel website.

We put to use the following services:

• Twitter – asking any and all to use #wharftowharf hashtag, we added that to the page for continuous updates. Our reporters and photographers also used the tag. Through twitter, we posted photos and video (using the twitvid service) as well as other updates. We were also able to send directly to the Sentinel home page by using another tag, #scsnews. We’ve used an advanced search widget to display tweets from our staff using that tag and always ask reporters to break news on twitter.
• Storify – we gathered photos, video, tweets from our staff, runners and spectators throughout the day, and embedded the collection in the top of our home page. Our collection has received more than 4,000 views. (See below).
• Flickr – We posted staff and contributed photos to the Sentinel Flickr account, where our set has received more than 6,500 views. We took the easily-embedded slideshow and dropped it into coverage and its own article page. We also shared links to the slideshow on Facebook
• Google maps – We updated a map we built long ago to include Panoramio photos from various points along the beautiful race route, shot by Sentinel digital intern Eric Brown.
• Brightcove and YouTube – We shot video along the route. I got to the race early with a smart phone and a Handycam. I tweeted, collected video, sent photos from my phone (DroidX, which went from fully charged to dead in two miles) and then eventually ran most of last four miles of the race (with my daughter in a stroller) while collecting sights and sounds on the Handycam. We posted the video to our site through Brightcove, embedded the video in an article page and have Brightcove set to automatically post to our YouTube channel.
• Instagram (we’re @scsentinel) – we posted just five photos to Instagram, a couple from the race, and a couple of the best from photographer Shmuel Thaler.  We also liked every photo we found for Wharf to Wharf and followed anyone who ran and posted about the race. Our photos received more than 200 likes, we picked up more than 50 followers.
• Digital producer Christina Gullickson orchestrated the show, handling all of the content flowing her way, and she worked to open the doors to user-contributed photos and promoted all our content on the social channels above.
• Sports reporter Andrew Matheson also immediately had final results and compiled his own video, so we had the first stories about the race that were updated in the afternoon
• Two other easy moves added nearly 5,000 views – we posted an early “Wharf to Wharf Information” page and we embedded the results page within our site.

Congrats to all the runners! We probably overdid, but the Sentinel loves the Wharf to Wharf!

The iPad is becoming a bigger part of everything we do in the news world.

More people are using it to consume news. More people are using it for social sharing. More people are using it for web browsing, and if you want to show anyone photos of your kids, there’s nothing better.

More people are finding the iPad takes the place of a desktop computer, or a laptop computer. And the iPad’s productivity tools continue to get better.

When the Sentinel offered a plan for employees to buy iPads through a payroll deduction, we wound up with a stack of 26 of them that were handed out last month.

How are reporters using them?

Well, they’re learning. They’re working on typing stories into Google docs and sending them back to the desk (pro tip – work through the Google search app, rather than the browser). They’re working on photo sharing on Twitter and Instagram through the iPad. They’re exploring apps like Evernote (for note taking with multimedia) and Dragon Dictation. They’re looking at photo editing tools through Photoshop Express, video editing with iMovie.
They’re getting their own news through Flipboard and Zite.
They’re looking at Storify as a way of gathering social reaction to events.
They’re looking at AP news.
They’re checking out Cloud On (for accessing excel and Word files).

Sentinel reporters Shanna McCord and Jason Hoppin browse through app stores for iPad and iPhone and talk about productivity tools for journalists.

My advice for journalists – be curious. Imagine how your audience is getting your work and try to shorten the distance between you and the reader. Imagine how the audience of the future will receive your work, and meet them there. I think a lot of reporters are thinking they report, write, send to an editor, who sends to page designer, the story prints and somehow winds up on our website. There are a million ways for reporters and editors to improve you own brand, improve your own digital skills, improve the information you receive about your beat, and serve the audience. With regard to the iPad, it contains all the tools needed to perform your daily work in the journalism world. Consider taking a day to cover your beat using only that tool – progress on the learning curve will be worth the effort.

Make a point of seeing what’s possible for readers, and of thinking about how you can help create that experience for your own readers.

Here are a few of the apps you may find helpful:

• Twitter, a must for being informed and breaking news
• Storify – for collecting and re-sharing social media and other links
• Evernote – multimedia note taking in the cloud
• Dragon Dictation
• Photoshop Express – photo editing
• Instagram- social photo sharing
• iMovie – video editing
• AP mobile – breaking news from Associated press
• iA Writer – simple writing template
• Zite, Flipboard, Feedly – readers
• Google – if you’ve been a gmailer and fan of google’s productivity tools, use the app, where applications and services are optimized

Other suggestions: Here’s a discussion in Quora (thanks @ivanlajara): What are the best iPad apps for journalists?

We all welcome your tips.

Posted from Los Altos, 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 .

On Monday, we launched the Santa Cruz e-Edition for the iPad.

It’s a great way to read the Sentinel print edition on the iPad, sparing trees and ink. The app is free, the e-Edition subscription costs a dollar a week, and there’s a free trial period.

We have a wide variety of projects in the works, including a re-design of the Sentinel site, a new content management system project, a re-examination of all things we do digital, both in advertising and the newsroom.

The new content management system is intended to improve our workflow, give us better tools for presenting a wider variety of content, including video, documents, databases, audio, and photos. It will also allow us to be more location-based, connecting readers with what’s happening in their neighborhoods. We’ll be able to publish content more efficiently to more platforms, focusing more on tablets and smartphones.

We’ll have better tools for reader registration and better tools for allowing you to determine where, when and how you read your news from Santa Cruz. The change also includes a better commenting system (no longer through Facebook),

And, not least important, we’re told the upgrade will help the site load quicker. Stay tuned for more updates.

But if you love your iPad, the e-Edition app is worth checking out and exploring. As always, let us know what you think. – Tom

Posted from Los Altos, California, United States.

Here are the 10 most-viewed stories or pages from Monday, Sept. 13, 2011:

1. Deputies: Two arrested in Live Oak after accosting man walking with family
2. Autopsy results show slain Santa Cruz attorney Celestial Cassman died of asphyxiation
3. Teen girl robbed at gunpoint in Soquel
4. Cops and Courts: Sept. 12, 2011: Two arrested after man is accosted
5. Deputies: Two arrested in Live Oak after accosting man walking with family
6. Capitola bank robbed by man claiming to have a bomb
7. Most Wanted suspects surrender in Santa Cruz
8. Database: Santa Cruz County pension obligations, 2011
9. Retired accountant who was in south tower on 9/11: ‘The buildings shook like an earthquake’
10. Orin Martin, Santa Cruz County Stories

Link of the Day: We’re adding football highlight video to this YouTube playlist throughout the season. Assistant Sports Editor Jim Seimas has been great about gathering several clips and uploading them from each game he covers. You’ll see more of this as smart phones get better, video editing tools get easier and we think more about using all available tools for storytelling.

We’ve heard from plenty of readers that they were interested in an iPad/iPhone app for the Sentinel and we’re working on various possibilities locally. (Want to help? let us know.) And at the same time, there are a variety of corporate strategies in the works for tablet users.

The coolest out there, and the biggest jump forward in technology is a product called TapIn Bay Area, which was launched this week.

You’ll see more of TapIn on our site, but it’s optimized for the touch screen. It’s hyperlocal and regional at the same time. It integrates news, advertising, deals, events, a business directory and user content, and is easily navigatable and searchable and gamified.

Here are a few links to reviews of the new app. Free trials here. (It will cost $4.99/month in the future).

• Ken Doctor: MediaNews’ new TapIn bets on the tablet
• From Poynter: How TapIn plans to master location-based news for the iPad
• From Street Fight: Local news + Google Maps + Social Media = TapIn

You’ll find Sentinel written stories and events from our online calendar all over the Santa Cruz map, but most of the links will send you to the Mercury News version of our content. (We’ll see if we can fix that).

Everywhere we turn, our enthusiasm for gadgets, especially smart phones seems to be growing. Is it just me?

I have a beat-up Blackberry that has been a great friend. I’ve bounced it off a lot of pavement. I took pictures of my newborn daughter with it. It wakes me up in the morning, sends me messages all day. I tweet with it, browse with it, take fuzzy video, get directions, occasionally even take a phone call.

But I’m upgrading to a Droid X in a couple weeks. I’m just one of the herd, according to today’s article by the Mercury News’ Mike Swift. According to the article, Android operating systems by google are on the verge of catching Blackberry, but the most interesting stat was the survey that showed 71 percent of people pondering their next smart phone purchase are leaning toward Android.

Mercury News graphic

We’ve got an informal poll that’s been running for a few days on the Sentinel home page. With apologies to Blackberry, which announced the ‘Torch 9800‘ today, we asked if the future of smart phones belonged to iPhone or Droid. Voters as of Tuesday afternoon leaned toward Droid – 384 votes to 323.

Right now, a certain Sentinel editor is puzzling over his new iPhone 4, trying to hook up his work e-mail. Another supervisor is considering whether he can drop all cable service and get internet and all the TV he needs through the Droid X.

The possibilities for smart phones and the newsroom are endless. From immediate scene-to-web photos, to easy streaming video, to twitter updates, to live conversations, video chat, audio recordings directly to the site. We’re thinking about all of the above.

We also want your help – if you’ve got a breaking news picture – send it our way. E-mail sentinelnewsroom@gmail.com. If you’ve got video sports highlights, we’d love to share it.

Want to help us build a Sentinel app for iPhone, iPad, Droid? We’re interested in partnerships.

I’ll miss the Blackberry Pearl. I feel like I’m trading in a beloved car.

Tom Moore's beat up Blackberry.