Sentinel.com blog

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’s the link to the Bay Citizen’s story about Santa Cruz surfer Anthony Ruffo, which appeared in today’s New York Times: A Surfing Legend Conquers Addiction, but Prison May Lie Ahead

Posted from Santa Cruz, California, United States.

Here are the 10 most-viewed stories or pages from the Sentinel website on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011:

1. Authorities say man who killed himself at Capitola City Hall was from Redwood Estates
2. Gang task force nets felon with loaded gun in Santa Cruz
3. UC Santa Cruz salary database: 2009-10
4. Cops and Courts: Sept. 14, 2011
5. Federal indictment leads to several arrests
6. Santa Cruz County bans plastic bags, imposes fee on paper bags
7. CHP releases details on Live Oak hit-and-run suspect; Santa Cruz woman in critical condition
8. Cafe Rio, Restaurant Review: Seaside restaurant gets new lease on life
9. People: New book says Palin used cocaine, bedded basketball star Glen Rice
10. Wrong-way driver arrested after leading police on chase on Highway 17

Link of the Day:

One of my favorite videos we’ve ever had on our site. Video correspondent Chloe Lee did a great job covering the Santa Cruz County Fair on Wednesday. Check it out.

Yesterday evening, my e-mail started overheating with messages from the Facebook group, “You know you grew up in Santa Cruz when …”

Mariah Hicks, who grew up here and is the little girl in the Louden Nelson mural, started the group last night at about 9 p.m. As of this afternoon, it has more than 1,400 members and the content is nonstop. All are having fun. Here’s a sample of recent posts:

“You seen the movie The Lost Boys a million times and still love it..haha”

“You remember The Walking Lady.”

“The Skyview Drive-in! Only saw one movie there, Mary Poppins, as a kid. But loved to drive by it on the freeway and try to catch a glimpse of one of the screens.”

“Macfarland’s coffee candy, A&W baby burgers, Maple Street. What was the name of the old comic book store on Pacific?”

Hicks, from Utah, says she misses Santa Cruz. Probably now more than ever.

We’re working on a story about Thursday night’s raid on Pacific Avenue. We’ll post it on santacruzsentinel.com shortly

Here’s the press release on the raid that involved 49 officers.

One of the most read stories on our site today is about preschool teacher Tiffany Chapman, who described her shock Monday when escaped fugitive Maurice Ainsworth smashed through a locked door and threatened her with a loaded gun.

She was singing nursery rhymes to three babies, including her 8-month-old daughter, when Ainsworth broke down the door and put a gun to her head.

We just added audio from Chapman to the story. Here’s what she told Sentinel reporter Shanna McCord about the moment:

Our website’s readership has never been higher than for the five hours that the armed fugitive was loose in Santa Cruz. We were receiving more than 35,000 page views an hour. Our views for the day of the ordeal were 252,430, sixth best day in our history.

Here’s what the traffic spike looked like:

Here’s the list of all-time best days for the Sentinel:

Aug. 6, 2008:         399,413 – Baby photo contest
Aug. 13, 2009:         307,331 – Lockheed Fire
Aug 14, 2009:         266,804 – Lockheed Fire
Jun 21, 2008         260,111 – Trabing Fire
Sep 10, 2010:         255,386 – San Bruno explosion
Nov. 29, 2010:        252,353  -  Fugitive loose in Santa Cruz
Jun 12, 2008         236,002 – Martin Fire
Jun 20, 2008         212,032 – Trabing Fire
Aug. 5, 2008:         210,808 – Baby photo contest
Nov. 2, 2010:        198,176 – Election

We were first on the story, quickly added a google map of events (which has received more than 100,000 views – not counted above) updated often, received pictures and video by cell phone and from photographers and reporters at the scene. We added a slide show, updated the photo blog and posted an early version of our A1 that evening.

The main story was recommended by more than 3,000 people on Facebook (most I’ve ever seen for a Sentinel story). We also sent out our updates and photos on both Twitter and Facebook and we added more than 50 friends during the day.

For the month of November, we received 3,475,482 page views and had 429,262 unique monthly visitors. That’s up from 2,941,376 views and 355,158 visitors last November. November 2010 was also our biggest month ever for total daily unique visitors. Here’s a graph of what our daily unique visitors looks like since Jan. 1, 2007:

The Penny Ice Creamery in Santa Cruz has created a viral hit. Or at least its video in praise of the recovery act for its help in getting the new venture off the ground has received the attention of the White House.

After the YouTube video went out, it was acknowledged and shared by the White House social media operators and yesterday the Vice President called up the Santa Cruz business and offered his appreciation and an invitation to the White House.

Listen to the entertaining Biden (below), and read Sentinel reporter J.M. Brown’s story.

As the O’Neill Coldwater Classic gets going today, we’re going to be updating results throughout the week as soon as we receive them. We’ll also be posting links, official twitter updates, our own staff photography and video, and sports department coverage.

Enjoy the world class event! The O’Neill crew offers the best live coverage here:
www.oneill.com/cwc/

At the Santa Cruz Triathlon on Sunday, we got out a DroidX smartphone, took photos and video, tweeted, posted to Facebook and sent short video clips to YouTube.

We also shot the event with a Sony Handycam, posted a hastily edited video to our home page, and posted a slide show by Shmuel Thaler to Sentinel.com and to our Photo Blog (and above).

We’ve also got images from Thaler for sale in this album.

Oh yeah, we also wrote stories and packaged them all together. Great event. One of our commenters posted about a man proposing at the finish line and we’re interested in following that one up. Anyone have details?

And because we might as well, we experimented a little with Tumblr, too.