Sentinel.com blog

You may have noticed things look a little different at www.santacruzsentinel.com. That’s because we’ve decided to start the new year right, by going through and doing some housekeeping on our home page (Thanks, Christina Gullickson!). Here are some highlights of how our site is different in 2013:

1. Bigger headers, with RSS feeds and links to cleaned-up section pages.
2. New section feeds including Food and Wine, and Home and Garden. Our features department regularly produces helpful and informative pieces that now will be more prominently displayed. Because these are weekly sections, they will be boosted from the bottom of the page to higher up when they publish.
3. We removed some of the clutter. Many of the items that were creating the NASCAR effect on our home page have either been cleaned up or removed (where possible) for a better viewing and reading experience.

Coming soon: Updates to our social media feeds on every page. We’re going to update and improve our events calendar. Redesign of the entire site, courtesy of Digital First Media, is also in the works.

Suggestions? There are some things we just can’t change due to advertising obligations or our content management system setup (also scheduled to be updated this year), but if you have an idea, it’s possible we can make it happen. Let us know!

PS – We’re also working on a repository of the vast “Weird” news from Santa Cruz – follow @weirdsantacruz on twitter, like us on Facebook and visit the Weird page.

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.

The story about Jay Moriarity, from June of 2011, was among the Sentinel’s most popular this month

In the month of November, the Santa Cruz Sentinel website received 3,574,475 page views with 486,647 monthly unique visitors. In addition, Sentinel mobile apps received more than 700,000 page views.

The most-viewed story, about an employee who grabbed a robber’s gun, was helped by landing on the front page of fark.com. The second most popular story, Wallace Baine’s story from June of 2011 about Jay Moriarity, received attention from search traffic for Jay Moriarity as the movie “Chasing Mavericks” was released.

Other popular pages included the local election results page, which received more than 15,000 page views, the Sentinel online calendar (more than 90,000 views), and a nationally generated Victoria’s Secret slide show (63,000 views). The Sentinel’s media center, which features photos of interest updated daily from around the world, received more than 155,000 views.

Thanks to all for visiting. Here’s the list of most viewed stories.

1. Employee of Santa Cruz business thwarts armed robber by grabbing his gun, police say
2. On the 10th anniversary of the death of iconic surfer Jay Moriarity, his widow reflects
3. Obama’s speech on Election Night: The full text
4. Election Live Blog: Results and commentary on Bay Area, California and national races
5. Whale skeleton fossils in Santa Cruz area draw gawkers
6. Police: Ben Lomond man found lying in the middle of Ocean Street
7. Surfer who died at Privates Beach identified
8. Capitola Police: BMW chase suspect is wife of Soquel homicide victim
9. Police arrest three in Friday night homicide near Depot Park
10. Hundreds climb aboard for inaugural train ride up the coast; $14.2 million acquisition

Advertise on the Sentinel website.

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.

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.

In the past week, we’ve noticed a good handful of people expressing good feelings, through their social media accounts, about being covered in the Sentinel. We’re going to gather together those tweets and posts and watch the collection grow over time.

For the purposes of this project, we’re probably more likely to find people who are pleased with our coverage, although we realize that’s not always the case.

Want to get our attention? Use this hashtag: #iwasinthesentinel

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The best way to read the Sentinel on your smart phone is on our news apps. They’re free and they’re part of the Sentinel’s commitment to delivering Santa Cruz County news to you in any way you want to receive it. Available now for Android and iPhone.

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.

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