Thanks to the Post-Dispatch; now, Patch.com
Today, I head to New York for three days of orientation at my new job with Patch.com. I’ll be a regional editor in St. Louis for the fast-growing company. How fast growing? When I started interviewing for the position in early June, there were about 60 Patch sites up and running; now there are more than 80. And the feeling I get is that the pace is only going to increase.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Tuesday was my last day at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where I spent eight years as online news director and, in the past couple of years, as an assistant city editor. I had eight good years there and I am am greatly appreciative of the time I spent at the P-D. The people I worked with were all professionals, who cared about journalism and their public service mission. They made me a better journalist. I have always been impressed with the standard my colleagues set for their work, and for the kinds of stories that deserved front-page play. They never settled for the best of the that day’s news; they expected front-page stories to live up to a certain standard before they were considered. It was a wonderful environment in which to work. Read more
Bloggers and mainstream media can cooperate
One of Toby's dino pictures, from the Sinclair station in St. Louis at South Broadway and California, near Interstate 55.
I weary of the drama that exists sometimes between the pure “blogging community” and the so-called “mainstream media.” If we can just communicate, we can work together nicely. I think we’ve missed some opportunities to do that at the Post-Dispatch, but I think we did it right this week with a story that ran on Wednesday.
The story was a brite about the disappearance of the Sinclair Oil dinosaur mascots in St. Louis in the wake of a takeover of the company-owned gas stations. My colleague Matt Hathaway found the tip on a blog called BELTSTL.com, which writes about local preservation and architecture.
It wasn’t hard news, but it was a worthy feature, given how ubiquitous the dinosaurs are on the Sinclair logo and the toys that the stations sell.
While Matt wrote his story, I reached out to the blogger, Toby Weiss, to ask for permission to run some of her pictures of one of the dinosaurs in the paper. She granted it, asking that we credit her by name and by the name of her blog. When the story ran, Matt included this paragraph in the story.
After rebranding of the stations started early this month, a local preservation blog — beltstl.com — broke news of the dinos’ disappearance. And since then, Sinclair enthusiasts have been ramping up their searches.
Toby was also happy to have us work on the story, apparently, because she was “ultra-curious to know” what came of the statues. Toby sent us a nice follow-up after the story ran: “Great reporting makes a good story. So glad you guys did that!”
Data visualization: Rise and fall of Missouri jobs
Rise and fall of jobs in Missouri and the St. Louis area.
I love this visualization of how jobs have fluctuated over the past five years in the St. Louis area. Link to see the functioning graphic on my colleague Steve Giegerich’s blog, STL JobWatch. The graphic shows expanding and contracting circles each month over the past five years, representing how many jobs were added or subjected to the economy each month.
Post-Dispatch interactive designers Brian Williamson and Erica Smith created the graphic based on research I’d done with data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which adjusted the data for seasonality.
The graphic, a snapshot of area employment, reflects the counties and cities where the employed and unemployed reside and not, necessarily, the business locations where they work or worked. The graphic includes representations of the rise and fall of jobs in the St. Louis metropolitan area and the major metro areas of Missouri.
A similar graphic of the national employment scene, designed by TIP Strategies, provided the inspiration for this map.
Moxie irony: It might be improving morale
My colleague Erica Smith blogs over here about the campaign that began at my company this week: “Turn up the Moxie!” The internal campaign is designed to raise awareness about how many people use the Post-Dispatch newspaper and our web site.
Erica correctly notes that moxie “has become the most popular word in the newsroom. Something doesn’t work? Not enough moxie. Something does work? You’ve got moxie!”
Erica even launched a wildly successful Twitter-counter-campaign, in which words of favorite quotations, movie lines and song lyrics are replaced by #moxie. There’s been a wealth of submissions (I was late to the party, so a lot of mine are showing up more recently).
My wife, however, points out the irony: Everyone’s having such a good time poking fun at it, it might actually be boosting morale.
Social Media Club of St. Louis kicks off this weekend
I was privileged to attend the inaugural meeting of the Social Media Club of St. Louis on Saturday. Truly, felt like I was the student at school with a bunch of folks who have been blogging, Flickr-ing, RSS’ing and whatnot for a lot longer than me — and I’m no slouch at this stuff!
There were folks representing some of the big companies in the St. Louis area — including Fleishman-Hillard, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Martiz. There were independent bloggers and programmers, entrepreneurs (James Durbin among them) and more.
It was quite invigorating to hear so many people gathered at Kaldi’s in Kirkwood to talk about something they were all so passionate about. I’m eager to help work on the next step for the club.
Here’s some of the other notes about the meeting: Durbin’s post here. Todd Jordan’s post here.
And links to some the folks who were there (thanks, Jim):
Brandstorming.com
Life In A Venti Cup
TannerHobin
Andrewnagy.net
socialmediamom.com
justinspeak.com
jedimom.net
news-bitch.com
toddjordan.wordpress.com
www.reemabeidoh.com
donkrutewicz
twitter.com/s00nami
StlDevelops.com
Kurt's Tweets- Why is this not a national story? Maybe I missed it. Appalling. Disabled woman was tortured and held as a sex slave http://ow.ly/2CiAq
- Bravo. RT @pwthornton: "Banning unsigned online comments undermines the media’s role as a forum for debate.” http://bit.ly/bmZsOn
- I would like to just take the two steps forward and skip the one step back. How about that? Would that be OK?
- Still seeking talented journalists to run #Patch sites in two south St. Louis County communities. Know anyone? http://ow.ly/2Axnv
- Waiting for a listings collector to give her more #Patch marketing cards. The work never stops.