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Volcom has offered $20,000 for the first kickflip on a surfboard “above and off the lip.” Santa Cruz’s Zoltan Torkos has submitted several videos in the competition (one of his best is pictured below). Here are the rules, according to Volcom:

Volcom is giving away $20,000 to the first person that can land a “proper” kickflip while surfing! By proper we mean an “above and off the lip” kickflip where first you bottom turn, launch an air, use your front foot to flip the board, and then land on it and ride out cleanly. No chop hops, backwash, fingerflips, grabs or laybacks. Just a proper kickflip. We’re going to be strict on these following guidelines. The rules are all listed here, so get out there and put this trick in the history books. Good luck!

Rules:
1. Your entry must be on video from the start of the trick through the ride out. No photos allowed.
2. This contest is open to everyone. The contest begins today and will run until there’s a winner.
3. The kickflip must be a proper air that begins from a bottom turn, is launched “above and off the lip” and travels above the wave. No backwash, No chop hops, or anything in the flats, from the wave face, or below the lip of the wave.
4. All waves must be self caught – You must paddle into the wave. This means NO tow-ats, step-offs, jetskis, boats, dinghys, winches, canoes, oars, helicopters, dolphins or assistance of any kind.
5. No grabs of any kind. Not before, not after, not during.
6. You must completely “ride out” of the kickflip. That means if you land on the back of the wave and fail to continue surfing the wave – it’s not a make!
7. No heelflips. Or else we’d have called it the Heelflip-Off.
8. No shoes. Who surfs in shoes anyway? Regular “made for surfing” booties are acceptable.
9. You must be riding a real surfboard with at least one fin. No boogie boards, softboards, wakeboards, wakeskates, skimboards, kiteboards, trays etc.

Here’s the video explanation of the contest rules. (Volcom already paid Torklos $10,000 in its first edition of the challenge).

Here’s Zoltan Torkos of Santa Cruz in one of his submitted kickflips:

Zoltan deserves a vote. What do you think?

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.

At the Sentinel, we’re doing more with video almost every day.
Two of our ongoing projects are up and running and gaining momentum. Assistant Sports Editor Jim Seimas and reporter Andrew Matheson have been previewing and reviewing each weekend’s football games.
I have to say, I’m not the biggest fan of video of reporters in a room talking about actual action. But Seimas and Matheson, with help from designer/photographer/video editor Tony Solis have taken this to an art form. Best production values ever for the genre! Have a look:

We’ve also added artist Kirby Scudder as a regular columnist to the Sentinel’s weekly Guide. Along with his column, he also produces a video profile every week of a Santa Cruz artist. We want to help Kirby with his mission of spreading the word about the arts community in Santa Cruz, one of the best in the country. Have a look at the playlist.

One other video note: Photographer Kevin Johnson (with reporter J.M. Brown) has done some really nice work on putting together four videos that help sort through what’s happening with the desalination project in Santa Cruz. We launch that project tomorrow.

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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 Sentinel website received 3,521,933 page views and 476,167 unique visitors in the month of June. Both of those are up slightly from June, 2011. Here are the most viewed stories or pages during the month:

1. Santa Cruz County Jail escapee apprehended
2. Memorial guest book for Bruce Woolpert
3. Granite Rock CEO Bruce Woolpert dies in boating accident
4. Standout 1980s surfer Jeff Spencer found dead in Santa Cruz
5. Santa Cruz Sentinel Photo Contest : 2012 BFF
6. Talk of ‘zombie apocalypse’ increases with gory incidents
7. Man struck and killed by truck Wednesday identified as 63-year-old Soquel resident
8. Santa Cruz Sentinel Photo Contest : 2012 Summer!
9. Suspect arrested, victim identified in Aptos overpass drive-by shooting
10. Cement mixer overturns on Highway 1 northbound, traffic snarled for nearly 6 hours

We also received nearly 45,000 views on Flickr and added more than 200 followers on Instagram (@scsentinel). Thanks for connecting with the Sentinel online!

By Christina Gullickson, cgullickson@santacruzsentinel.com

Sometimes we journalists will come across a story that captures our interest on another level. It may not be big news or something that affects a lot of people, but it’s something we really want to cover, something we want to tell our friends about because we’ve been touched or inspired in some way.

For a digital producer like myself (who spends far more time at her desk managing content than getting out in the community meeting people), that turned out to be the case when I tagged along with my colleague Kim White one afternoon last month after she invited me and my little point-and-shoot camera to sit in on an interview with paramedic and firefighter Chris Stubendorff.

As he talked with us in a conference room at the Scotts Valley Fire Department, where he is employed, I found myself gripped by his story and the details of the horrific car accident he survived in 2010. Later, I was able to meet his wife of five years, Rameena, at their home in Aptos where they live with their three dogs. Listening to Chris and Rameena’s story, I got chills, I thought about life, and I became awe-inspired by their perseverance and positive attitudes.

This video was the result of my time with them. I sincerely hope you find their story as inspiring as I did.

Now, I didn’t show it much in this video — because Chris and Rameena focus so much of their energy on trying to have a positive outlook toward the future — but it was clear parts of them are still angry with the driver who caused the crash, as I am sure you can imagine. Rameena gets emotional when she talks about the time they were considering what actions they might take against the other driver and having a district attorney tell her that he “has more rights than you.” (You may find it a small consolation that the other driver was reported to U.S. Immigration and Customs.)

I also found it interesting that, despite help from the Fallen Officer Foundation and the Stubendorffs’ insurance covering many medical costs, the couple accrued bills for other items (renting a hospital bed for home) and necessities (Rameena had to stay in a hotel in Southern California just after the crash) to the tune of about $10,000.

It’s amazing to me — with all the negatives one might take away from that night on Highway 46 and its aftermath — that Chris and Rameena are able to focus on the positives after their lives were incredibly and forever changed.

If you’re curious to know more about how Chris is doing that in his return to duty this coming week, Kim’s article talks about his personal experience influencing how he plans to approach patient care.

Posted from Scotts Valley, California, United States.

It was with great excitement that we cajoled and argued for the purchase of a GoPro video camera for the Sentinel’s online team. Cool device, cool company, it’s perfect for our community filled with performers and free spirits of all kinds, it’s very Digital First.

It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to our GoPro camera, which is now at the bottom of Monterey Bay. Reporter Kimberly White took it out on a scuba adventure this weekend, likely got some incredible video of the world below the Santa Cruz Wharf, but the camera and Kim’s dive partner got knocked around. No major injuries, although there was some blood, but the camera went to a watery grave, despite Kim’s partner’s insistence on going back in to search for it.

So, we’re crowd-sourcing the rescue of the camera. We’ll provide some reward if you come across it. We always wanted to attach it to a humpback whale, so perhaps that’s in the works.

Here’s Kim’s account of the final minutes of the GoPro:

“We did a beach dive at Cowell’s Beach, entering the water around 1:30. As we were gearing up on the beach, Chris (my dive buddy) and I were trying to decide who should wear the camera. Since I haven’t been in the water much in recent years, he offered to wear it so I had one less thing to worry about.

We’d been down for about 20 minutes and encountered a lot of surge as we neared the pilings at the dock, and the visibility was less than two feet. We lost sight of each other, and as I was turning in circles to try to find him, I felt something bashing up against my legs and fins (probably a sea lion), all while trying to stay buoyant in heavy surge.

I wasn’t able to find Chris, so I surfaced. I heard a shout and saw him about 10 feet away, so swam up to him and saw he had a huge gash across his forehead. He said as soon as he realized how violent the surge was, he pushed me out of the way so I wouldn’t get caught up in it, then got thrown against a barnacle-covered piling (hence the gash).

We swam back toward shore and as soon as we got back onto the beach, I started asking him questions to make sure he hadn’t gotten a concussion or something. I was so focused on that that I didn’t notice the camera was missing until he yelled that it was gone.

He was determined to go back and try to find it, and I told him not to because it was too dangerous with all the surge and waves. But he said he had to at least try, so he said to call for help if he didn’t surface within 10 minutes. Long story short, he wasn’t able to find the camera. We also wandered among the pilings, hoping it’d washed ashore, but there was no sign of it.

When we got back to the car, I immediately When I went back to the dive shop to return my tanks, I mentioned what happened to one of the employees. He said he spearfishes and can look for it when he’s over there next week (but I’m not  holding my breath).”

We learned a little bit from the camera. We put it on a roller derby ref. We took it surfing and snowboarding. We planned to give it a motorcycle ride on the Tour of California rout. We wanted to make it part of the Santa Cruz Community Media Lab, to loan it out to anyone having unique first-person experiences or good ideas. It was scheduled to take a few laps at the opening day of the Ocean Speedway in Watsonville this month.

We were just getting warmed up. We also learned that we should have put some kind of QR code sticker on it, in case it got lost, or a GPS chip, or that we should have used the right floaty attachment. We’ll get another one, “not right away,” said our publisher.

It was a glorious few months, with a few videos (snowboard adventure video will be released posthumously). Below, you’ll find an emotional look back at some of the places our GoPro went during its time with us. We miss it already.

If you find our camera, please get in touch. It’s likely an A1 story, good karma, and there’s a reward for rescuing our waterlogged friend.

Posted from Santa Cruz, California, United States.

Digital producer Christina Gullickson poured through a lot of GoPro video to piece together 45 seconds of action after we put the Sentinel’s GoPro video camera on a roller derby referee’s helmet last week. Enjoy the video!

Can we put a camera on you? E-mail us.

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The Sentinel website continued to grow at a strong pace in 2011. Here’s a quick rundown of the year-end statistics:

• We increased page views: 38,168,835 in 2012, up slightly from 38,090,454 in 2010.

In changing commenting systems in late 2010, we no longer required readers to make an extra click to get to story comments. We did away with more than 2.5 million page views because of it, but readers stayed on our pages longer, were more clearly responsible for their comments and our staff was better able to manage the abusive comments and spend more time on making the most of the news.

• We increased unique annual visitors to 5,081,707. That’s up more than 1 million from 4,036,868 in 2010.

We think unique visitors is a better measure than page views in the past year (because the growth is bigger!) and because of the comment change. But data also shows that people are coming to the Sentinel on multiple devices. We launched an e-edition app for iPad in 2011 and we’re launching a news app in 2012.

We also had several big events (the tsunami and Capitola floods) and a couple of viral moments (a story about pot in soda) that brought in a healthy chunk of one-time visitors.

• Through our Brightcove video account, we had 166,529 video plays. On YouTube, we had 519,501.

Video will become a bigger part of everything we do online as it becomes easier to upload, edit and share on mobile devices. We also added a GoPro camera at year’s end, and we hope to do cool things with it. Still seeking daredevils of all sorts to wear the camera.

• We expect to continue to grow and continue to emphasize digital products in 2012.

The Sentinel online staff has added a great producer, Christina Gullickson, and the newsroom staff’s pace of change is accelerating. The company is (still) working on a new content management system that will help us with everything from design to commenting to page creation to print workflow and multi-platform presentations.

Want to get more involved with the Sentinel website? We’ve got internships, a community connections section in development and we’re open to all kinds of collaborations to connect our audience with good ideas around Santa Cruz. Contact us!

Posted from Santa Cruz, California, United States.

On a daily basis, it seems like every member of the news staff is developing new digital skills and tools for reporting, storytelling and sharing.

Copy Desk Chief Brian Pifer opened a twitter account, and is digging into HTML and CSS text books. He’s been styling up stories and pages. His photo posted to twitter of Chris Rene downtown has been one of the most popular among our staffers in the new year.

Pifer, who is always at ease with new tools, programs, software and hardware, also designs pages, manages his staff, is asked to do a million things, and occasionally squeezes in extra time to write about the video game industry and its local connections.

He’s also got a rapidly evolving golf game – demonstrated here at Media Day for the AT&T Pro-Am:

Link of the Day: Digital producer Christina Gullickson gathered up a Storified account of the chatter among Niners fans yesterday. Highly entertaining reading as Niners fans got warmed up, ate, fretted, celebrated, but then suffered a loss just short of the Super Bowl. The good people of Storify posted the account at the top of their home page Sunday night.

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