Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Illegal Spice and the New Standard Examiner

A few weeks ago I had a blog post about my concerns of the Standard Examiner.  It was titled, Is the Standard Examiner Failing?

It was clear our newspaper was falling behind the rest, in more ways than one.  But yesterday we got a glimpse of a potentially new Standard.  Today's paper has a nice article on a police sting looking for illegal spice.  For those of you who do not know what spice is, (because you have missed the bi-annual KSL reports on the "Evils of Spice") it is an herb sold over the counter and gives Marijuana like affects to those who smoke it. Whether you agree with the new law or not, I would like to focus more on the reporting.

The Standard Examiner has really made attempts to ramp up it's social media usage, including more usage of twitter.  They are making a few beginner mistakes but have been really open to feedback and suggestions.  Yesterday they tweeted live as the went along with the police sting operation.  We were able to interact closely with the paper as they experienced this police sting live.  This brought a new element to news and made it very interesting.  It would have been great to have seen Ogden residents tweet in potential locations to give the paper even more info.  Overall it was a great start.

My only recommendations are these:
  • Keep going!  I think you are headed in the right direction.  More readers and social media users will follow.
  • We don't just want to talk to @standardex, we also want to talk to reporters too.  Mark Shenefelt and Scott Schwebke are really getting into it, but we want to hear more from the other reporters and staff.  UPDATE: Forgot one of my Favs @dilewis aka Di Lewis!
  • Take the Laugh a Minute Videos off of the front page, it slows down your load time a ton.  If you have an add deal for this, then sorry but it is messing with your whole page.
Great Job guys keep up the great work! I look forward to more in the future.

Feel free to comment on your thoughts and suggestions.

4 comments:

Mister Michael K said...

Some other pro-active Standard Reporter/Tweeters: @jm_miller @dilewis @ctrentelman (reporter, columnist, whatever)

I agree about their social media coverage improving. Here's to hoping it keeps up!

BenJoeM said...

I am so lame, I forgot @dilewis, she is one of my favorites!

But as for miller, she doesn't post that much and it rarely is about the news. She did post on Monday she was looking for news. She is great and I like her writing but I don't think she is fully committed to twitter yet.

I miss Carlos, he was trying to get something going.

Unknown said...

I agree with the need of news to get out quickly. I will say I'm a little concerned from a practical standpoint that the news is real timing a sting. That can have some impact on what law enforcement is trying to achieve. Let's make sure we're not causing problems with the prosecution of cases. It's the same issue that Dateline is having now with their "To catch a predator." Many of the cases are having problems because of the media being involved.

BenJoeM said...

Good Insight Rick, you are right. I think this was probably a joint effort to make a point. But in the future it would be tough. But how about just live tweeting, blogging etc when other types of news happen. Like the Herriman Fire, what happened online that night was amazing.