The Telegraph is launching a bit of a public awareness campaign to talk about some of the things the paper does to be part of our community. As part of the campaign Chief Photographer Don Himsel produced this short video:

Perrine competed with photographers from across New England by entering photographs published in the newspaper each month.

His winning entries from throughout the year are below:

MAY
2nd Place Sports: Vaulted Ceiling

Nashua South’s Mike Insley can’t clear 10 feet on the pole vault Tuesday, May 6 at Nashua High School South. Insley would eventually clear on his final attempt.

JUNE
1st Place Feature/Multiple Picture: Mr. Mom

John Iaquinta drives home his daughter Cameron, 3, from pre-school June 9 in Nashua. Since 2007 Iaquinta, of Nashua N.H., has been a stay at home dad while his wife Maura works in the medical recruiting industry. Her success there vs. his long hours as an accountant caused them to think it be more economical and less stressful if he be the homebody. John is one in 159,000 at home males, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. While roles are reversed from traditional social norms, the love that permeates in their home resonates the same as any other New England family. While it’s uncertain how long they plan to live this way, one thing is for certain, it works for them.

JULY
3rd Place Sports: Ahead of the Game

Merrimack Post 98’s Joe DeMember falls down after attempting to grab a shallow outfield pop-fly ball while teammate Ian Vrquhart runs by Tuesday, July 8 at Merrimack High School. Nashua downed Merrimack 16-4 in seven innings.

AUGUST
3rd Place Feature/Single Picture: In Unison

Cast members of “Schoolhouse Rock Live! Jr.” rehearse Tuesday, Aug. 5, at the Boys & Girls Club of Souhegan Valley in Milford. Around the Bend has returned to stage for its second summer show with a musical based on the Emmy Award-winning cartoon “Schoolhouse Rock.”

3rd Place Sports: Disbelief

Well after the call, Nashua’s Argenis Tavarez can’t believe he is tagged out at third base against the Tornadoes Friday, Aug. 1 at Holman Stadium. The Tornadoes edged the Pride 3-2.

SEPTEMBER
2nd Place Feature/Single Picture: Laying Low for Lilies

Wanda Roscoe of Nashua photographs a water lily Saturday, Aug. 30 at Camp Sargent in Merrimack. Dozens came out to celebrate the lives Eaton D. Sargent, Frederic E. Shaw and George R. LaRocque as they were posthumously inducted into the Camp Sargent Hall of Fame by the Nashua YMCA. Families spent the day playing games, eating and reminiscing about growing up around the camp. “I thought it was great,” Roscoe said. “It brought back a lot of good memories for my husband as a child.”

1st Place Feature/Multiple Picture: 51st Hillsborough County Agricultural Fair

Patrons ride the ferris wheel Friday Sept. 5 at the Hillsborough Couty Fair in New Boston.

1st Place Sports: Blocked Shot

Nashua South’s Brian Goleman blocks a shot from Pinkerton’s Donald Dane Wednesday, Sept. 3 at Nashua High School South. Pinkerton edged South 3-2.

3rd Place Sports: A Coach’s Glory

Bishop Guertin’s Kristiana Purington hugs head coach Steve Duprat after the win over Nashua North Thursday, Sept. 25 at Stellos Stadium. The Cardinals edged the Titans 2-1.

2nd Place Illustration: The Life Aquatic

JP Gorham of Hollis/Brookline High School is this year’s 2008 boys student-athlete of the year. Gorham was a stand out in swimming this year capturing a state title in the 100 and 200 meter breastroke as well as placing at New Englands. Not only talented in the water, Gorham excels in the classroom, posting a 4.3 grad point average and will attend Dartmouth College this fall and swim on the men’s team. Gorham also played soccer, helping to lead the team to a Class I final four finish. He also ran for track and field. “I am honored,” Gorham said. “Because even just in my school there are a lot of good student-athletes as well the (Nashua) area.”

OCTOBER
3rd Place Feature/Multiple Picture: Mrs. Palin Goes to Salem

Republican Vice Presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska signs autographs for fans after delivering a speech Wednesday, Oct. 15 at Salem High School. Palin came to support John McCain’s bid for president as she was greeted by faithful thousands. Her talk lasted about 45 minutes followed by greeting supporters.

1st Place Sports: Wide right. Leap. Goal.

Nashua South’s Brian Goleman can’t stop a goal from Exeter Tuesday, Sept. 30 at Nashua High School South. Exeter edged South 2-1.

NOVEMBER
2nd Place Spot News: Aftermath

Nashua firefighters walk to the backyard of the remains of the mobile home at 44 Fotene St. Wednesday, Nov. 13 in Nashua. A fire started around 10:00 p.m. at Pitarys Homes Inc., a mobile home park near West Hollis Street. Phil Johnson, 61, and his border collie died in the fire, according to Jim Pitarys, owner of Pitarys Homes. Johnson had owned the home for about 20 years and lived alone. The cause of the fire is currently under investigation by Nashua Fire & Rescue, local and N.H. state Fire Marshal’s and the Nashua Police.

DECEMBER
2nd Place General News: Save me, protect me daddy.

From left, Steve Dahl, comforts his daughters, Emily, 1, and Angelica, 3, and Bethany, 11, Thursday at their home in Nashua. Last Sunday, the family experienced the next door neighbor’s apartment burning, causing heat damage to their home. The two youngest girls have been emotionally traumatized from the flames and firefighters breaking down their door, Steve said. To help the girls Steve taped a plastic bag, top, over the window so they don’t have to be visually reminded of the charred remains. “All day I hear, ‘People are coming, people are coming in,’ or ‘Save me, protect me daddy,’” Steve said. “They are so traumatized they now run in circles when someone comes to the door, not knowing where to be safe.”

1st Place Feature/Multiple Picture: Becoming Cynthia

Cynthia receives a complimentary shot of hairspray from Cindy Poulin at Spider Bite salon in Manchester. Since 2006, Cynthia has lived full time as a woman. She has come out to her friends, family and co-workers. However, she still needs that one operation to make it offical. Known as John Jay Tebbets growing up in Manchester, John would buy women’s clothing, dress up in secret, then realized something was different, he didn’t want to be a boy anymore. Almost 40, he spiraled into a depression pushing him to the brink of suicide. That scare forced him to throw a light on a secret he’d been keeping even from himself: in order to live, and to be happy, John Jay would need to change. After a few years of saving the $20,000 necessary for the surgery, Cynthia’s change would come.

2nd Place Feature/Multiple Picture: Just Be Claus

Children raise their hands to be called on next to sit on Santa’s lap at the Schalk residence Dec. 14 in Nashua.

1st Place Sports: Face Off

Merrimack’s 130-pound Sean Mooney, left, faces off against Bishop Guertin’s Dan Barowsky during a regular season dual meet Wednesday at Merrimack High School. Mooney won by technical fall and the Tomahawks ran over the Cardinals with a team score of 54-9.

1st Place Illustration: Soccer POY

(Left) Kailey Blain is this year’s girls soccer player of the year. The junior forward from Merrimack lead her team to a Class L state championship runner-up finish behind Manchester Central. “Anything can happen in a soccer game,” Blain said. “You don’t always have to be the best team to win, always. It is very hard working. You have to be an athlete to play.” (Right) Sean Joseph is this year’s boys soccer player of the year. The senior center midfielder from Merrimack lead his team to a Class L state title lass year and a semifinal finish this year. He has been playing soccer since age six and is looking at UNH, UConn and Roger Williams University to study business or finance. If he chooses Roger Williams University, he will play NCAA Division III soccer. “The biggest lesson I’ve learned is team work,” Joseph said. “Because you can’t achieve the championship unless everyone pulls together.”

3rd Place Illustration: St. Nicholas

Various Santa Clause characters from the Southern New Hampshire region. From bottom left clockwise, Ron Belhumer with wife Debi both of Nashua. Pat Morrison of Billerica, Mass. Norm Benjamin of Nashua. Konrad Kayne of Bristol. Michael Butler of Nashua.

We have a number of major projects on the horizon - including a complete replacement of both our print and Web content management systems. That transition, which is planned for late summer, will require us to rebuild every Web site we own (including nashuatelegraph.com, nh.com, cabinet.com, nhbr.com, telegraphneighbors.com, feastnh.com, encorebuzz.com and more.)

Because of the huge amount of work involved - most sites will probably not see major design changes immediately, but they should see improved performance, better usability and a slew of new features.

Some of the pieces of that transition have already started. Last week we turned off our old email & cell phone notification system (previously at alerts.nashuatelegraph.com) as we consolidate vendors in preparation for the new system installs. This does mean we are currently not offering email and text alerts, but we plan to offer this service again in the near future.

As part of the rebuilding process we launched beta.nashuatelegraph.com today. This site (which is fairly sparse at the moment) will be a testing ground for new tools and toys for which we are seeking feedback. Right now you can see examples of two pages using Twitter and Flickr that include features we might want to include in the new sites this Fall. The third page currently live is an extension of our current video player which includes a list of archived multimedia on the side.

Flickr is a new project for us - this week we launched a Nashua Telegraph group that we hope to use to gather and promote good local photography. Please add us as a contact and join the group and drop some photos into the pool.

Twitter is an ‘old’ project - meaning we have been running with it for over a year now. But in the past month we have expanded our involvement with several new accounts:

• @nashuatelegraph (the original - breaking news)
• @telegraphedit (Nick Pappas - opinion pages)
• @graphfeatures (Deidre Ashe - food and more)
• @telegraphencore (Donna Roberson - local entertainment)
• @telegraphpats (Patriots news and updates)
• @telegraphsox (Red Sox news and updates)

We are always looking for new ways to be involved in the local community, both online and off so please drop us a note or leave a comment below if you see other interesting projects or technologies we should be testing out.

(apologies if this is offline by the time you are watching - it was cute at the time.)

The interview was done with a Nokia N95 and of course, Qik.com.

However, it is about politics and real or perceived bias.

Staff photo by Bob Hammerstrom

Here is the story from the Telegraph’s political reporter, Kevin Landrigan:
McCain predicts NH victory
MANCHESTER – A defiant, Republican presidential nominee John McCain said today he’s confident he’ll confound the pollsters and pundits and win New Hampshire’s four electoral votes. McCain gave a localized version of his stump speech at the St. Anselm College ice arena that had more than 1,000 people in attendance, but was half full.

Not much controversial there - except for that very last line “more than 1,000 people…half full (arena).” Well not controversial - except to at least one commenter on the above story:

From Uncle Sam: Absolutely not true. I was there, the arena was FULL. Aside from the media stand set up 2/3 of the way on the floor, the bleacher areas (that were not obstructed) and the floor surface was packed.

Now - that is the same complaint newspapers get every day. “You over-reported the number, you under-reported the number, you didn’t report the number, you can’t count!”

Since Kevin filed shortly after the event, and the comment followed quickly, I decided to see what other media outlets had to say. I assumed they would all be pretty close - but I was surprised:

Boston Herald
McCain told the roughly 3,000 supporters in an early morning rally at St. Anselm College that he’s always had a soft spot for the Granite State.

MSNBC
“Does anyone seriously believe that these trillions of dollars are going to come from only the very highest income earners?” McCain asked the crowd of over 2,000 gathered at St. Anselm College.

Wall Street Journal
McCain pleaded with the crowd—even though there were only about 2,000 of them there listening.

LA Times
Speaking to a cheering crowd that filled half a hockey rink at St. Anselm College,

Fox News
McCain told about 1,000 supporters at a hockey arena on the campus of St. Anselm’s College.

Union Leader
John McCain returned to familiar territory today, urging a crowd of more than 1,000 at Saint Anselm

You can do your own political math there, aligning those outlets on your own personal political spectrum, but I don’t see any correlation between political positioning and crowd size report. In fact, I see almost the opposite.

Full disclosure - I did not ask Kevin where he got his number, and I did not check closely to see which of the other reporters were actually in attendance. But I will hazard a guess that the Telegraph’s “more than 1,000″ looks like a safe estimate based on the grading curve involved.

If I can draw a completely unsubstantiated conclusion it is that most of what gets highlighted as “media bias” is nothing more than human beings doing their job the best they can. OK - I have NO idea how the Boston Herald can count to 3,000 when the Union Leader saw 1,000 - but I doubt it was due to politics.

P.S. - Sullivan Arena which hosted the event has a capacity of 2,700 for non-hockey events. So, half-full would be about 1,300 people.

————-

More references as I find them:

Slate.com: McCain in the Mountains
The crowd of a few thousand filled only about half the arena, some standing on the part of the rink that had been covered.

Concord Monitor: Body paint and pompoms
I know I can count on you again,” McCain told the crowd of more than 1,000 at St. Anselm’s Ice Arena.

From Barbara LeBlanc the Director of News and Information at Saint Anselm College
For what it’s worth, the manager of Sullivan Arena estimates that the McCain rally drew a crowd of just over 2,000.

—-

From: Lumpkin, John O (Associated Press)
To: Solomon, David
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2008 11:48 AM
Subject: AP complete versus basic
——-

David -

As promised, here is my second response.  Your staff has obviously studied the material we provided on Member Choice and has a good handle on it.  Suffice to say we also are watching the feedback from members closely.   See below and thanks again.

John Lumpkin
———

Lifestyle Editor: I was under the impression that the AP Breaking News would not include things like recipes and general lifestyle-type stories because those are not considered newsy, breaking-news-type things.

Your Lifestyle editor is correct.  Breaking News is defined as “news that can’t wait.”   There will be some Lifestyles material that will be breaking news.

Sunday Editor: My understanding of the deal is that we will no longer get the following:
* Travel stories

Correct on feature travel stories, but not travel stories that have a breaking news component, like airfares.

* Much of the health,entertainment and lifestyle stories we regularly get. We’d get the stuff they move for the next day on studies being released, or entertainment people or fashion shows, but not the more useful in-depth stories.

This is generally correct.

* Things like best-sellers, box office and other lists

In the original product, there is material like box office statistics that could be considered spot news.  We have some of these under review as we continue to receive feedback.

* Computer-related content like the “On the Net” column and product and software reviews

Correct.

Entertainment Editor: What I will lose without the complete AP service:
* On the Net.
* Movie reviews.
* AP on TV.
* Now Hear This. The quotes that run on Page 28.
* Music Reviews and associated photos
* Upcoming DVD sales.
* Nielsens list for the Top 10 feature. May be able to get online.

Correct, but note above that we have a process for review.   Nielsens is another good example of what some would consider news that can’t wait.   We studied scores of fixtures from numerous legacy AP wires before decisions were made about what would be in each level of our new service.   That resulted in the product guide that your staff has so diligently studied.

What happens next in the transition to Member Choice is a real-time view of what is in each level in members’ AP Exchange accounts.  Members will receive both levels until the end of the year without additional charge.  We will entitle the accounts before the end of the month.  We expect more feedback from that and suffice to say that we are watching it closely.

Even so, it is important to note that members’ AP feeds will be enriched tremendously even if they take Breaking News and decide to purchase items from AP Complete a la carte.

————————-

David Solomon is vice president for news of The Telegraph of Nashua, N.H., and its sister newspapers at the Cabinet Press Inc., based in Milford, N.H.

When members of the New England Newspaper Association gathered for their annual Newspaper of the Year luncheon in March, the judges had many positive things to say about New England newspapers.

One criticism they agreed on, however, was the general lack of attention paid to selecting and editing wire stories.

The judges complained that world and nation news from The Associated Press seemed to be relegated to “filler” status in many of the dailies. One judge commented: “After personnel and newsprint, wire services and syndicates are my third highest expense. I would think more care and attention would be put to that resource.”

Their observation is right on, and I think it reflects the shifting priorities of newspapers that I described in last month’s column. Editors are not paying enough attention to how wire stories are used because, quite frankly, it’s not high on their priority list right now.

We are focused on providing the news our readers cannot get anywhere else, and connecting them to each other for discussion and debate on those issues. The world and nation stories that make up the bulk of the AP report are available to our readers in many other venues in a more timely fashion. By the time we publish a wire story, it has already been updated several times online.

Given the shrinking news hole many of us are experiencing, we are using less and less AP content, and paying more and more for the privilege. The Telegraph recently moved from a four-section to a two-section format, loaded with local news in the front section. As a result, we are now using only the top two or three world/nation stories of the day, along with a package of briefs.

The rest of our AP content on a typical weekday consists of two or three business stories, a small stock listing, coverage of professional sports, lottery results, and some celebrity news. We use more in our Sunday edition, especially in technology, travel and education sections. Our use of AP content, however, hardly justifies the $131,000-a-year cost, especially not when we’ve been losing reporter and editor positions.

Editors asked AP to develop a new cost structure that would enable us to purchase smaller packages at much lower prices, consistent with our reduced space and reduced interest in AP content.

What we got instead was a two-tiered plan with an offer to get less than what we are now getting for about $129,000 or an opportunity to pay more ($134,000) and get much more than we use now, and much more than we’ll ever need.

We could use some of the AP copy to flesh out the world and nation report on our Web site, but AP forbids newspapers from posting any AP material not previously published by the same newspaper in print.

Meanwhile, AP deals with “pure play” sites such as Google, Yahoo and MSN ensure that all AP copy is available online long before it can be published in our newspapers. This is not a criticism of AP as a news-gathering organization. William Dean Singleton, chief executive officer of MediaNews Group and chairman of the AP Board, said in a recent interview that “AP has become the whipping boy for an angry bunch of editors who want to blame somebody for their woes.”

That’s not the case at all. I certainly don’t blame AP. I just think they’ve become way overpriced for the value offered, especially for small newspapers, and have been overconfident in their monopoly. Many newspapers throughout the nation have given AP notice, and more come on board every day.

The prospect of leaving AP was once so daunting that the monopoly was invulnerable. That’s no longer the case. As more newspapers give notice, more options will evolve in the two years it takes to get out of the AP contract.

That would be April 2010 for The Telegraph. Newspapers in several states are already sharing stories to make up for the weak AP statewide report. Several New Hampshire dailies have had an open copy exchange for more than a decade, and are making better use of it every day.

There are many supplemental services, such as Washington Post/Los Angeles Times, or New York Times News Service, that come at a fraction of the price – only $400 a month or so for a paper the size of The Telegraph. If those services became more timely with breaking news, they would be an adequate substitute for a paper of our size.

There are a la carte photo services such as Getty, online services for sports agate, lotteries, weather, and many other AP staples.

At The Telegraph, we believe entrepreneurial journalists, many displaced in the current economy, will see an opportunity.

The large dailies in New England would do well to pool their professional sports coverage and syndicate it for the smaller players.

It won’t be easy, and there are many unanswered questions, but life is possible without the Associated Press, and the potential savings are too good to overlook as journalism retools in the digital age.

“What don’t you know and how will you learn it.”

So - who knows Peggy? Who is she - email dkiesow(at)nashuatelegraph.com or comment below.

thanks

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An archive of our Parkway coverage is available at Broad Street Parkway

Photojournalist Bob Hammerstrom produced a video of the event:

We also broadcasted some of the event live using some new gear we have been putting together over the last few months.

Don Himsel was on the scene for the live coverage. His gear consists of a Canon HV30, Mac laptop, a Cradlepoint wifi router and a Verizon wireless cell card. Don had everything plugged into his car today - just to save the batteries. See the set-up below:

But - overhead images can be difficult to place sometimes - so if you know - leave a comment below. Click on the image for a larger version.

Or - watch the full commercial:

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The address is the same: http://blogs.nashuatelegraph.com and all of the old blogs are here - but we have simply changed the software that runs the site. The new software is WPMU - also known as Word Press Multiple User - the same back end that run the free blogs at Wordpress.com.

So - excuse the dust while we we get things settled in on a new server. Some things like blog logos and such are still being installed, but for the most part the place is open for business.

Please leave a note below if you notice anything broken. Thanks for visiting.

We eneded up with a hybrid system. if your email address is unverified, your comments go into a queue for moderation. If you are verified, you can post directly and immediately.

Now - six months later, we have about 25,000 comments, a ton of registered, verified users and what looks like a pretty healthy community growing strong.

So - the verify or get moderated system must be working smoothly?

Yes and no. We are getting a lot of comments, and registered users are growing. But, there are still a large number of people who comment regularly but do not wish to or just have not verified their accounts. So - the number of comments that need moderation before they are published grows daily.

The problem there is moderating comments (sometimes 150+ daily) takes a lot of work - and people tend to get irritated when it does not happen quickly.  On nights and weekends especially, moderation can take 8 - 12 hours.

The easy answer would be to move to a fully verified user system. If you are not registered, you do not get to comment. That would reduce the moderation load. We would only need to remove comments that were offensive, not moderate the vast majority that are perfectly fine. Of course, that would also likely reduce the number of comments

So - in hope of finding a compromise we can support logistically, but that does not shut anyone out of the system - we are going to start moderating unverified comments twice daily (possibly once on weekends.) This is a change from our current practice of  reviewing and approving comments as often as we can, whenever we can.

So if you are a verified user (again, just meaning you have registered with a valid email account) you will continue to be able to comment and have your post appear immediately. if you are unverified, you comment will be reviewed in the morning (8 - 9 a.m) and afternoon (4 - 5 p.m.) During those times every unverified comment will be reviewed and moderated.

The upshot is - we hope this will enourage more people to verify their accounts - but we also hope it will eliminate the frustration people feel when they post a comment and wonder why it does not appear in a timely fashion. We will post a note above the comment box in each article explaining the timing - with a link to this blog post.

Registration is quick and easy, and does NOT stop you from using a handle or screenname. We are not looking for ‘real’ names necessarily, we just want to know you are a real person, who is posting with a single account. We still have some people taking advantage of the current system by posting under multiple names, sometimes carrying on conversations with themselves.

If you have tried to register in the past and the system has not worked from you - please send a note to help@disqus.com and the team there will work to fix the problem for you.

This new approach is not perfect, but we hope it is a practical and sustainable solution. please leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Two of a kind Audio and Video brought to you by boston.com

 Found this on Journalism That Matters

So - I am gathering video of some of the best Journalism quotes/videos in popular culture - as they relate to newspaper convergence.

The best example so far of course - The Simpsons:

Ha Ha, Your Medium is Dying

Classic.

Any suggestions welcome.

Stuff White People Like draws fans, criticism - and 16 million hits - The Boston Globe

Apparently it has gown a huge audience in two months - and drawn some charges of racism.

My question though is - am I missing it or is there no actual link to the Blog from the Globe story? After doing a text search of the page - I did find this link:

10 things White People Like

Which takes you to a photo gallery - from which you can find a link to the actual blog! The Globe does a lot of things right - but I see this ‘failure’ to link far too often in newspapers big and small. It is one of the easiest and most basic things we can do online - and it is always a mistake not to.

For the record: Stuff White People Like And, despite the list - "The Wire" was one of my favorite shows on TV.

Increasingly, Longworth told me, decision-makers get their news from elite sources and too many voters don’t get any news at all.

Chicago Reader | Hot Type | The Rust Belt Reader: Could a regional newspaper improve the midwest’s prospects?

I really want to agree with the thesis here - that newspapers are obliged to give people all the news they need, not just want, because that information is important to a functioning democracy. Specifically - global news is important to local and regional papers because of the global economy.

I would like to whole heartedly agree with it - except this morning I switched over from ‘Morning Joe’ on MSNBC and instead watched BBC America for my morning news. I then listened to a 2 or 3 minute foreign report on NPR on the drive to work. Then at work, I surfed through several international news sites based on some found links in del.icio.us and Google news (mostly Tibet & Olympics related as I recall.)

So - as important as international & national news is (or should be) to the average reader - there is no shortage of it available from multiple media.

Of course - you can argue that the average reader is not going to go seek it out on NPR or the BBC. Well, hate to say it but the average reader probably was not getting it in the local newspaper either, Just because we printed it doesn’t mean people were not skipping it for Dear Abby and the comics pages. No matter what they say in the market research surveys.

Global news takes on a different priority in the post-scarcity information economy. Local newspapers were obliged to cover everything back in the day - because they were the only source for ‘everything.’ That just is not the case any more.

So - we can legitimately argue about coverage priorities - but we need to do it with the realities of 2008 not 1958 in mind.

Tags: news, coverage, media, online, global

The latest I have been looking at (not sure how recent it is?):
Google Visualization API Gadget Gallery - Google Visualization API - Google Code

Along with a sort of similar product from MIT: Simile Project

These are the kinds of tools that used to require a designer and/or flash developer along with several days worth of effort to produce. And now basically anyone with an XML or JSON feed and some basic knowledge can get it done. Amazing. Now we just have to figure out how to use them somewhere on the site!

Tags: Google, API, Data

Portland is a great city to live in and the PPH has always been well designed and a good read - so aside from the general economic downturn in the industry - this probably has as much to do with the Blethen family’s ownership of the Seattle Times as it does with the Portland/Maine market.

The paper has been going through the usual online growing pains - with control over online ‘news’ recently switching from the MaineToday.com portal site back to the individual newsrooms at the PPH, the KJ and the Morning Sentinel.

This has got to be disruptive in the newsrooms - though the owners indicate they would like to sell it to ‘community investors’ which could be good for the papers if it happened. The fact that the price will probably be in the $100 million range - not the $200 million Blethen paid in 1998 could also help.

That newspaper group covers about half the population in the state so this sale is of no little importance to residents.

Tags: Portland, newspapers, sale

Pretty happy so far - it allows an easy XMLRPC connection to multiple blogs, as well as instant access to other social web services such as Del.icio.us, Flickr, Twitter and others.

I am probably the last to this party - but looking forward to testing it out

Tags: Flock, blogs, twitter, social

Thankfully, Summer approaches and I hope to get back to blogging a bit more often.

Our Chief Photographer, Don Himsel captured me in action at the Northern Short Course on Saturday:  On Assignment

We are up against some tough competition in the finals - but even being in the top three in these categories is a huge honor:

We wish him the best - but as a result, we have an opening on the Telegraph photo staff - see the job posting below:

The (Nashua) Telegraph, a 26K daily, 30K Sunday newspaper covering southern New Hampshire is on the cutting edge of multimedia journalism. We have an opportunity for a photojournalist to come aboard and work with us.

Our newspaper, the New England Press Association and New England Newspaper Association Newspaper of the Year in 2006 regularly publishes audio slideshows and video productions on our Website.

We’re a team of three staff photographers, a shooting photo editor and a year-round intern. Photographers are encouraged and expected to be proactive in covering our communities through audio slideshow reporting and compelling video storytelling in cooperation with a talented reporting and editing staff. The ideal candidate will be an experienced photojournalist who works in a documentary style.

Experience with audio field recording and video production is helpful. As our craft is dynamic and change occurs rapidly training will be provided as necessary. This will most likely be an afternoon or night shift. Flexibility is required.

We are currently transitioning to Canon camera gear, including a pool 300 f2.8. Incoming candidates will be expected to have a basic still kit for use during the transition to company-owned gear.  Our multimedia equipment includes two Mac multimedia/video workstations, Final Cut Studio, Marantz digital recorders three mini-DV video cameras, and a video/still photography studio. We have laptops for field editing.

Mileage is paid. The company provides a 401K plan, health insurance, flex spending plan, paid vacations and regular performance reviews.

If you’re up for the challenge of community journalism within the new world of multimedia reporting, and the satisfaction of working at a quality news organization, not just a newspaper, send your digital portfolio to:
Don Himsel
Photo Editor
The Telegraph
17 Executive Dr.
Hudson, NH 03051

Submissions should include resume, digital examples of still images with a sheet of accompanying thumbnails and cutlines, slideshows and/or video examples.  Include a concise narrative on your thoughts on community photojournalism and digital storytelling. No calls. Emails ok at dhimsel@nashuatelegraph.com

“AP’s state wires, which include member content, are not licensed to Google and other online aggregators.

As a result, only a tiny fraction of the national and international stories sold by AP to aggregators originated with members of the cooperative – typically scoops credited to the members.

Except for this tiny fraction, the stories sold to Google and others are original AP reports by agency staffers.”

I have no objection to the AP/Google deal at all but I think AP's explanation misses on a couple points.

1) 'Credit' is an outdated concept in the digital realm. Giving credit is one thing - linking to the original source is the real thing.

2) Only a tiny fraction of member stories make the national wire - but local newspapers are crowded out of the Google news listings every day by regional/national media.coms that subscribe to and do publish the AP state wires.

The Google/AP partnership is not 'the' problem. But, what it does is highlight and exacerbate a problem newspapers have been facing in regard to Google News for years now. It also creates the opportunity for a solution to our concerns.

Case in point - stories that are picked up for the state/region wire quickly appear on our competitor's Web sites, sometimes within an hour of our original posting. Unfortunately, when Boston.com (to pick an example) publishes an AP pick-up of one of our stories, Google inevitably gives their copy (and others) higher prominence in Google News. So an hour after we break a story, someone else is getting the traffic for it.

In the past, we have accepted this as a cost of doing business. However, now that AP and Google have a business relationship and have begun developing products I think member papers have the responsibility to ask "how does this benefit us?"

In my opinion, a benefit would be as I suggested in my blog post yesterday: AP should provide identifying metadata (possibly a URL) for member articles that are moved on the state or national wires. Google could then match the AP version of the story with the original version on the member newspaper.com. When presenting these stories within Google News the original newspaper.com story would receive greater prominence than the other 1,400 versions of the AP article on the Web.

Everybody wins this way. member papers get traffic for the stories they originate. AP & Google get to profit from AP-generated staff stories and readers get to surf the news needless duplication free.

It is strictly 'inside baseball' stuff but in their blogs Jeff Jarvis and Matthew Ingram picked up on our recent experiences with the Google News / AP partnership.

It started with some comments left elsewhere on Matthew's blog regarding the way Google News now gives priority to AP wire stories over the same stories on newspaper Web sites.

With the commoditization of news - it is actually somewhat helpful to minimize the display of the 1,453 occurences of the exact same AP story across every newspaper.com in the country. Basically, if you have seen one you have seen them all.  Google and AP figure that to be the case, so the Google hosted version of the AP story is the one they will now present first.

Curiously though - Google highlights this effort as Original stories, from the source which is curious since many some* AP stories are pick-ups from member newspapers.

I applaud the effort to streamline usability here - but to create a truly 'original source'  experience Google and AP need to figure out how to give credit (and links) back to the ACTUAL originating source, when there is one.

As a proposal - AP should embed an 'original source URL' in their article metadata. Google nows pays for and receives the AP feed - and could then parse that field, feed it into their algorithims and give the actual original source a higher ranking in Google News.

In the case of many stories this would provide the reader with access to the most recent updates, local forums, comments, multimedia and other related assets, and maybe even an archive of related articles all on the relevant newspaper.com itself.

That would be a win for Google's users, a win for local newspaper journalism and would help keep AP from the wrath of disintermediation. 

* I am reminded in an email that most of AP's articles, especially on the national wire are written by AP staffers. My comments here are really directed mostly at the need to reform the system on the state/regional wires to provide more "Google" value to newspapers doing original local reporting.

Hi Damon,

Thanks for your understanding,
Customer Support Representative
Facebook

— 

I especially like the part where they let me know how easy it is to rat out any other newspapers or groups using Facebook against their terms of service.

So - we got caught, and obviously serveral (or more) other newspapers out there have not, yet. Fair enough.

However, Facebook's apparently strongly enforced TOS and hair-trigger bans should raise some questions for any newspapers using the service or considering using it. There is no guarantee how long you will get to keep your account, and since Facebook 'owns' all of the personal information you accumulate on the service (friends especially) you are at risk of wasting your efforts at any point.

I would say: worth it if your investment is low - but definitely don't depend on it as a long-term effort to reach out to your community.

I think this type of approach is will not serve Facebook very well in the long run.

—-

Hi Damon,

Facebook profiles are intended for use by a single individual.  Groups, clubs, and other types of organizations are not permitted to maintain an account.  I apologize for the inconvenience, but you will no longer be able to use this account.

If you would like to use Facebook to bring your organization together and coordinate activities, we offer a Groups feature.  Facebook Groups allow people to come together to express objectives, discuss issues, post photos, etc.  If you have a personal Facebook profile, you can create one of these groups from that account.  The option to 'Create Group' is available at the top of the Groups page.

Thanks for your understanding,

Customer Support Representative
Facebook

—-

 Hmm - I would be more apt to take that as an authentic no - if it was not work-for-word the same answer they gave me 10 days ago in the first place.

The New England Associated Press News Executives Association today announced the winners of their 2007 Web Contest - and the Telegraph won first place for Reader Engagement.

Translated that means the judges appreciated some of the initiatives we have been focused on for the past year or so, Forums, Blogs, Multimedia, TelegraphNeighbors.com etc.

We also won for best Entertainment Site for EncoreBuzz.com! We redesigned that site last year and just finished some updates and tweaks earlier this summer.

Having judged a fair number of similar contests, I tend to take a skeptical view. As with any creative endeavor, the judging is quite difficult and often very subjective. However, in this case it is obvious we were reviewed by judges of the highest quality, intelligence and perception. And we thank them!

Check out the review of the Telegraph on Yahoo local In brief the writer says the Telegraph is "not a news paper, more like a rumor mill."

I happen to know the reviewer in this case is the relative of an individual who was the subject of news coverage a few months back. I would have to guess the family did not appreciate our articles for one reason or another.

The only mixed feeling I have about the review is that we do not have a convenient place on our own site for people to post reviews of our own business and others. Hopefully something we can work on some more in 2008.

In the meantime - if you are so inclined, feel free to leave a review of our performance here in the comments area, in our Forums, or even on Yahoo. I don't mind negative feedback, but hopefully people have some positive things to say as well. In any case - if you do feel the Telegraph is "TRASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I guess we ought to know that as well!

Happy reviewing

Here is the note I got from their support team today:

———–

Hi,

Facebook profiles are intended for use by a single individual.  Groups, clubs, and other types of organizations are not permitted to maintain an account.  I apologize for the inconvenience, but you will no longer be able to use this account.

If you would like to use Facebook to bring your organization together and coordinate activities, we offer a Groups feature.  Facebook Groups allow people to come together to express objectives, discuss issues, post photos, etc.  If you have a personal Facebook profile, you can create one of these groups from that account.  The option to 'Create Group' is available at the top of the Groups page.

Thanks for your understanding,

Customer Support Representative
Facebook

You can get to the site http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/mobile from any browser, but it is optimized for cell phones and other handheld devices.

Our breaking news feed is now published on Twitter and Facebook and those links will take you directly to the mobile site. As a convenience, if you surf to the mobile site by accident from a regular computer - there is now a link at the top of every story that will take you to the same story on the main Telegraph Web site.

We hope this will create some balance for those using Facebook or Twitter to follow the news from their cell phones (they get the mobile site automatically) while still making the site usable for those stuck at their desks.

thanks 

By inner workings I mean re-learning the proper format for a cron job to call PHP and Ruby scripts, digging through thousnads of PHP classes to actually get the Blogs to work and checking and rechecking permissions on all sorts of folders that were mixed up in the move.

But, on the positive side it was also an opportunity to update some processes and add a few small things.

So - not that anyone asked - but two cool things:

1) Our breaking news blog has been updating our Twitter feed for a few months using a little PHP script. But - that was originally set up before Twitterfeed.com had launched, so we switched over to that. it is not as flaxible as running the code ourselves - but it is easier.

2) We have been looking for a way to update our Facebook page with local news - and to date have been importing notes from an XML feed That is not a great solution as most people do not receive a feed of their friends notes - so the updates are basically invisible. Luckily - we came across a nifty Ruby script that solves the problem. Now - whenever we update breaking news - it feeds to Twitter which in turn updates the Telegraph's status on our FB page.

Using those same tools i am also feeding updates from this blog to my personal Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Not sure if this is progress, but it definitely is going to reduce the number of places I need to update to alert people to news and blog items.

Their latest: Paths to the Top of the Home Run Chart is simply brilliant

There is so much information in the interactive - age, longevity, production - not to mention the obvious ability to compare between the top 22 home run hitters in the game ever.

I am fairly disinterested in Bonds' pending record - but I played with the graphic for ten minutes looking at the patterns in the stats thrown up by the different players.

To participate - just make the telegraph (NashuaTelegraph) a friend - and make sure you can see our Status updates on your own home page.

Whenever we post a story to our breaking news blog - our Facebook status will automatically update with the headline and link. Unfortunately links are not 'hyperlinked' in the FB status field - but usuallythe headline tells most of the story. 

Give it a try - let us know what you think.

We managed to pull all of our data off their servers during a rare period that they were online this week - and we have relocated.

So - moving is never easy and we are still ironing out some issues. But - no information has been lost and once we get rid of the final bugs, everything will be back to normal.

Thanks for your patience.

Damon