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Re: Seven Points To Improve The Times-Union and Jacksonville.com

Marilyn_Young — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:23:07 -0000

Hi Reid,
Thanks for your comments.
Unfortunately, our business can't just be about the physical newspaper anymore. By concentrating on just that would be career suicide because many people are turning to the Web for their news. And there's no better place to get it at than jacksonville.com.
The characteristics you say make a good newspaper are to report and do it well. And I totally agree with them. We do that pretty well and will continue to get even better.
But we have to do that on jax.com, too, for the growing number of readers we're getting there. Doing that means adding audio and/or video, although we're still working to figure out a strategy for both of those.
I definitely agree with you that a lot of people still want print. I find that totally awesome. And we're giving them a great newspaper.
You say the suggestions from other in this thread aren't what you would want us to do. Please share what ideas, suggestions, concerns, etc. that you have for the newspaper.
I'd love to hear them. You can post them here and/or email me at marilyn.young@jacksonville.

Re: Seven Points To Improve The Times-Union and Jacksonville.com

Marilyn_Young — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:53:19 -0000

Hi Claire,
No need to clarify anything. I understood what you were saying. I didn't take any offense to anything you said, and I certainly didn't think you were questioning our commitment to ethics.
I agree we need someone or several someones to moderate the conversation online, both to get us more engaged in it and to hopefully keep people a little more in line.
And we will do a better job telling folks on big stories about what it took to get it done.
Feel free to contact me anytime with questions, concerns, thoughts, etc.

Re: Seven Points To Improve The Times-Union and Jacksonville.com

Marilyn_Young — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:45:46 -0000

Thanks for the follow-up. Examples will definitely help. Looking forward to hearing more.

Re: Seven Points To Improve The Times-Union and Jacksonville.com

Marilyn_Young — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:40:46 -0000

Johnsantangelo: I'll pass on the comments about drop downs. What would you rather see?
More original content? Fire away about what ideas you have.
I honestly don't know if there is someone submitting stories to digg/reddit/etc. Let me ask Jonathan Bennett. He might know.
Can you give me a few more details about your concern with the advertisement system? Thanks. You can either post them here (and I'm fine if you do) or you can email me at marilyn.young@jacksonville.com

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birdilicious: Should I answer you in haiku? I'll give it a shot.
Thanks to Twitter friends
We thank you for loyalty
And return favor

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Claire: Thanks for being a loyal reader of the T-U and I'm glad you love it. (I do, too.)
I can assure you that no matter what the T-U and Jax.com do to keep up with the changing profession, we will never abandon the principles that got us to the dance.
I don't see us bringing back the ombudsman, but we do have a social media editor (@jaxdotcom also known as Jonathan Bennett). Several people try to monitor online comments but it would be a full-time job for more than one person.
Interesting suggestion about adding the "read 20 responses" link as a way to keep people from having to read the sometimes crazy comments online. I just assumed that if people didn't want to read them, they wouldn't.
Great idea about sharing more about how we do things. We sometimes do it with major projects but not as much as we should. People are often curious and surprised about the amount of work/effort/hours that go into a story or a project.
As for anonymous sources, we rarely use them because most of the time there is a way to get the same information from another source. In the rare times we use anonymous sources, we are very careful about who they are, what ax they may have to grind, what their motivation is, etc.

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Audrey_Keith: Thanks for the drop down menu tip. What other navigation tool would you suggest?
I understand the desire for better management of the comments but sometimes people just say mean and stupid things and we can't delete them just for that. (Or we'd lose half our comments and spend all day doing it.) Often times, really dumb comments are patrolled by other readers on the site.
We typically only take down something if it's racist or libelous or something along those lines.

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Jon Bosworth: We'd love to talk to you about topics that are interesting to you. I know Jonathan's trying to set up a lunch with you. Hope you'll do it.
I think once you meet us, follow us on Twitter (come on, what can it hurt to try us out) and really give us a chance, you'll dig us. We've changed the minds of folks who never, ever, ever subscribed to the T-U or gave a darn about jax.com.
Want to try?

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Tiffany: Ditto what I said to Jon. More specifics will help.

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Abel: As always, I appreciate your feedback and support.
About the comments on stories: We are working on a system where reporters will be involved in conversations on their stories. That should help some. But there are other things we can do. We do turn comments off when they cross a line or if we know they're going to. That is a rarity, though.
Thanks for subscribing -- and I'd love a Kindle version, too.

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Skink: I'm glad we've told some of the stories you've wanted told. Tell us what we're missing. Be honest. We can take constructive criticism.
And I definitely agree with you saying give everyone raises. The staff that has stuck by us through really tough times deserves a payback for their loyalty. Until raises come, though, how about we all just say thanks to them for a job well done.

And from your second post:
We will always hold ourselves to a higher standard. Always.
While we are embracing things like Twitter it doesn't mean we are forgetting that we do things no one else can or will do.
The community expects and deserves that from us.
We know we're the only ones who will do things like tell the full story about the Trail Ridge issue, make sure council members aren't breaking the Sunshine Law and lead the conversation about the high homicide and police-involved shooting rates.
That's our job. That's our mission. That's who we are.
We are leaders in this community and we will never, ever, ever overlook that.
And if you ever think we are, call me (359-4271), email me (marilyn.young@jacksonville.com), come visit me (One Riverside Avenue) or smack me around on Twitter (twitter.com/editormarilyn)

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Hey Dan: Hope you're doing well. Does the "print" option in the little blue bar between the headline and byline not work? I'm at home and not connected to a printer to find out? Let me know. If not, I'll ask about it.

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Thanks again, everyone.

Re: Seven Points To Improve The Times-Union and Jacksonville.com

Marilyn_Young — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:57:28 -0000

First, thanks to Joey for such a thoughtful and thought-provoking list of suggestions. It's obvious you spent a lot of time doing this.
I'm glad you've enjoyed the team effort of using Twitter to tell you what's going on in Jacksonville, in our own newsroom, with our company and even in our personal lives. And we like hearing the same things from others.
Now let me address your suggestions one by one, then I'll respond to others made on the post in a separate post.
1. Design: I'll pass on your comments/concerns/hate about the drop-down menues. I think it's OK to say this (if not, I'll deny it) but there is talk of another design or at least a tweaking of the design of jax.com. More later.
2. The comments on our stories often concern us. Sometimes they're racist (and we delete those) and sometimes they're off-point (and others blast them for that).
But sometimes -- and this is my favorites sometimes -- they're really thoughtful and inspiring, even on the stories you'd never expect it one.
We are talking about getting reporters to get involved in the conversation on their stories. That would help drive that discussion.
Good suggestion about the blogs from folks who leave good feedback. Of course, we're always looking for new (and good) bloggers.
We can talk about the community manager's duties, too.
3. Video is a tricky thing for us. Honestly, we have put a lot of manhours into it, and so far, we aren't seeing the views we expected for most things, whether it's a quick hit video or a beautifully produced masterpiece by someone like Jon Fletcher.
There are a few exceptions (like the video when the Jaguar showed his crooked finger went viral and got a ton of hits).
Let me talk to others about the success of our audio clips and of podcasts. I truly don't know how well they do/did.
I like the concept of the roundtable idea and I think we could expand it some by asking for questions from readers/viewers.
4. Totally, totally, totally agree. And we will, we will, we will. No offense to our competitors or anyone else, but no one else can do what we can do.
5. Interesting idea that I've never thought of. Let me see what others think.
6. We'd love to be an industry leader and thought provoker but honestly, I think we have some housekeeping to do first before we can spread the gospel to others. And then we'll change the world!
7. We've tried many different approaches to investigative reporting -- a team just for them, a team to work with beat reporters, letting beat reporters do the bulk. All of those things can work with varying degrees of success.
But the key is setting up a system so you having meaningful enterprise and investigative pieces on a more consistent basis. We're better than we were at that and I'm working on a system to make sure we get into a better rhythm at that.

So, there you have it. Thanks again for taking the time and for caring about helping us get better.