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
    

We’ve added a photo page to the Sentinel website at www.santacruzsentinel.com/photos.

Digital Producer Christina Gullickson, designed and launched the page this week.

It’s built to feature our best images, and promote our Instagram account, where we have more than 1,100 followers, (display via snapwidget.com).

The page is also about sharing the wide variety of images of Santa Cruz County, and providing easy links to shots from our partners from Santa Cruz Waves, to our photo contest, to all the different ways we feature photos. We welcome submissions the community, tagged photos on Facebook and we make the most of our longtime staff photographers. Images are evolving and become a bigger part of everyone’s conversation as they are easier to share. We’re building slide shows, we’re connect to a new media center, to Flickr, Pinterest and other social accounts.

In our last gathering with the Santa Cruz Community Media Lab, we talked photography with Shmuel Thaler and were encouraged to build this kind of page.

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.

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!

We started a partnership yesterday with Santa Cruz Waves. This comes after bumping into great photo after great photo from Tyler Fox’s website on Facebook and Twitter, and then some exchanges about possibilities, and a couple face-to-face meetings. The idea is that we help Santa Cruz Waves promote a uniquely Santa Cruz site, we share some of their work with our audience (more than 5 million visitors in 2011), and help them grow.

The goal of this partnership is to become the world-wide authority on all things surf in Santa Cruz – led by Santa Cruz Waves, supported by us.

It’s exactly the kind of partnership we’re going to pursue in a variety of areas. Photo and content sharing is a start, business and revenue possibilities are part of the discussion. We plan to collaborate in coverage of big events and on breaking news at the beach. We’ll also regularly run Santa Cruz Waves photos in the print edition.

The reason this makes so much sense to us is Tyler Fox. Read his profile. But also, check out the photos and his site.

Interested in similar types of content sharing and exploring the possibilities? Send me a note and/or join the Santa Cruz Community Media Lab.

Here are the 10 most viewed stories or pages on the Sentinel website from Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2011:

1. Santa Cruz Sentinel Photo Contest : 2011 Pets on Parade
2. Woman’s body found under train trestle in Aptos
3. Documentary features Santa Cruz County serial killer from 1970s
4. Secrets of the Deep: Are 3 million gallons of oil sitting off Monterey Bay in a sunken WWII ship?
5. Police given few details on Sunday stabbings
6. Upper Ocean Street neighbors working to combat crime
7. Ginger, the golf-ball hunter, has retrieved more than 300 balls at Pasatiempo
8. Documentary features Santa Cruz County serial killer from 1970s
9. Jay Moriarity movie team begins filming in Santa Cruz
10. Santa Cruz Sentinel Photo Contest : 2011 Babies!

Link of the day: We enjoyed seeing the pet photos pour in yesterday in the latest photo contest: Pets on Parade

One of the first things I remember starting on the Sentinel website was photo contest for Halloween 2007. After more than 4.6 million photo contest page views, it’s still going strong. Thanks for the shots!

Here are the 10 most viewed stories or pages on the Sentinel website from Monday, Oct. 3, 2011:

1. Santa Cruz Sentinel Photo Contest : 2011 Babies!
2. Mountain biker flown out after rough landing
3. Man found with pounds of pot
4. Cops and Courts: Oct. 3, 2011: Motorcyclist critical after Highway 9 crash
5. Stabbing victim flown to trauma center
6. Man arrested for stomping pet parrot to death in Boulder Creek
7. Santa Cruz County’s Most Wanted: Oct. 2, 2011: Domestic violence edition
8. Kim Tuson: Note to college students who may consider parties in our neighborhoods
9. Man accused of hacking into county computers speaks in Santa Cruz
10. Police: Teen robs man, brandishes knife

Link of the Day:

One day left in Baby Photo Contest 2011. Love the entries

Posted from Los Altos, California, United States.

We just added a great photo of Finland’s Seppo Paju to our Photo Blog.

Paju earned $500 by hurling a disc from the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf to into a basket on Main Beach on Thursday afternoon. Random thought: Does anyone else think Paju looks a lot like another great pitcher – Little League World Series hero Cody Webster?

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).

The Sentinel reporting staff has been working on a handful of shark stories this summer.

This week, our Fish Rap columnist Allen Bushnell relayed a report on a kayaker who went face-to-face with a shark. It wound up our top story on the website for three days.

Today we had a short story on an abundance of shark-chewed otter remains washing up on beaches of Norther California.

Earlier this year, Capitola beaches were closed after several shark sightings.

Today, we received this photo from Tracy McAvoy:

We’re checking on the photo and the story, but Tracy said the shark was found Thursday at Hidden Beach Park, alive, and that his dog was curious about the creature. Stay tuned for a few more details.

Here are a few more links to Sentinel shark stories:

If you’re a fan of sharks, you’ve probably already watched Chuck Patterson’s video from San Onofre, ‘Me my shark and I,’ posted last week. (It’s received nearly 2 million views this week):

Me my Shark and I from Chuck Patterson on Vimeo.