Month: July 2007

Back in May, our special-projects team here at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive built washingtonpost.com’s new Facebook app — The Compass.

I wrote a pretty dang long post about it at that time.

I still probably get at least one or two e-mails and/or phone calls about it each week. And I’m surprised how much it still gets blogged about.

One of the questions I often get via e-mail is “would we do it again?”

Absolutely.

We’d do it differently, but we’d definitely do it again. And probably not for the reasons people think.

I think more and more traditional media companies ought to do more experimenting and reaching out to sites like Facebook. The experiences and discussions we went through as an organization were hugely valuable.

I feel our industry tends to be isolated from a lot of what’s happening with new media. Working with the “pure dot-coms” (as one of my old bosses used to call them), as well as with other technology companies, really helps us understand how things on the Internet work outside of a newsroom.

And that can only help us if we’re really serious in our mission to reach our audiences however they want to get our content.

Getting out of your comfort zone can only be a good thing when you do it for the right reasons — especially if you work for a newspaper company.

So, what’s been the impact of our Facebook app?

Nominal, if you’re measuring the impact by looking for a direct increase in page views or revenue.

We never once believed that of Facebook.com‘s roughly 40 billion pageviews a month, we were going to start to get a bunch of those at washingtonpost.com because of The Compass. Our expectations were pretty much in check in that regard.

We did this because we thought we should be in front of Facebook’s huge audience. In many ways, we thought of this as more of a marketing opportunity for the washingtonpost.com brand.

Still, the numbers for our Facebook app are very respectable. For the first several weeks, The Compass was one of the Top 10 most-downloaded apps on Facebook, and even cracked the Top 5 a couple of times.

As of today, The Compass has about 300,000 Facebook users who have it on their profile page, which still puts it in the Top 50 most-downloaded Facebook apps.

So, what would we do differently?

In our description of the app on Facebook, the first sentence begins: “All in fun …” but some people took the app very seriously.

Armed with that knowledge, we would now give the app’s users at least two options for the political quiz, and possibly even three. This still wouldn’t fix some of the criticisms of the app, but we would feel a lot better about it.
🙂

When you install The Compass Facebook app, you get asked 10 questions that are basically the hot-button issues surrounding conservative and liberal views in the United States. We opted for a short quiz with 10 questions because we thought readers wouldn’t want to spend a ton of time answering questions.

If we can find some time to tweak this app, it will likely have at least two quizzes in the updated version — a shorter quiz like it currently has, and a much longer quiz that gets into more detail. A possible third survey option might be tied to current events and prompt those who pick that option to retake the quiz each time it is updated.

We really like the idea of having a constantly updated quiz that could then track your thoughts throughout the year on various current issues.

Another thing we would do if we update the app would be to ask each person how he or she would classify themselves, and then have The Compass compare the self-evaluation with the answers to their questions.

But probably the biggest change we would likely make to the app would be how it appears on the Facebook profile pages.

The way the app works now, after you answer the survey, it places a graphic of a compass on your page that shows where you fall between liberal and conservative.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, an updated version would also show where you thought you should be on the compass based on the self-evaluation question we would ask when you first installed the app.

But as we suspected when we were building the app — and as the last few months have kind of proven to us — the most interesting part of The Compass isn’t so much where you fall on the political spectrum but where the friends in your social network fall.

You see, one of the options for The Compass is to see this info for your friends who have taken the quiz, which is much more interesting on a ton of levels.

As I noted in my initial post about this app, the ability to integrate something like this on Facebook in a way that leverages the social network is what makes it cool. That, to me, was the genius of the Facebook Platform app, and it was what we thought was the most interesting part about trying to build something for Facebook.

The map is the coolest part of the app, and we should have made an option that would allow the folks who installed The Compass to choose what they wanted on their profile page — the graphic of where they stand politically or the map of where there friends stand.

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But not all of the questions we get regarding our washingtonpost.com Facebook app center around the philosophies behind it.

Many are much more practical … as in, “so just how did you actually build this thing.”

And I now have a much easier answer for those questions.

Go read a couple of recent blog posts by our team’s brilliant programmer, Deryck Hodge.

In these posts on his personal site, Deryck gets into a lot of the technical details of how The Compass app was built.

Deryck’s first post about our development on the Facebook Platform came shortly after we launched The Compass, and was titled: Washington Post and Facebook Platform Development.

His most recent (and detailed) post came back in June, simply called: Washington Post and Facebook, Part Two.

He ends that post by saying he will try write a little more about this subject when he gets the time. But with the launch of our new site, LoudounExtra.com, it looks like he hasn’t had a lot of extra time to write for his blog.

None of us have had much time for anything other than Loudoun.
🙂

Anyway, I hope this helps. And I can tell you that I become a bigger and bigger Facebook fan everyday. I really like the site and all of the thought that has gone into it.

Our team will definitely be doing much more with Facebook in the coming months, I assure you.

Today on washingtonpost.com, I was a part of a live online discussion with Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive CEO and Publisher Caroline Little.

We (well, mostly Caroline) answered questions about The Post’s new/first hyper-local site, LoudounExtra.com.

Here is a link to chat’s transcript on the washingtonpost.com site.

In all of my years of helping to set up live chats on our sites, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually participated in one, so this was a little different for me.

🙂

Our team’s first “hyper-local” site for washingtonpost.com launched this morning — LoudounExtra.com.

Because — as far as we can tell — no one knows what in the heck “hyper-local” really means, we decided we’d try to take a stab at what we thought it means with this site. More importantly, we didn’t think it meant a site that was essentially just community publishing.

I *love* community publishing. One of my core beliefs is that newspaper web sites need to be much more of a dialogue. But building a site with essentially just community-publishing tools and calling it “hyper-local” seems a little lazy/crazy to us.

It’s like having a nice big cup and going to your readers and saying, “we really don’t have time to fill this bad boy up for you all, but maybe you can do it for us.” We wanted our first local site at The Washington Post to be like a cup that was already pretty dang full, and the readers could then top it off to give it the personalized flavor that they want.

To us, the key is that the site should be a real local destination even without the content from the readers.

The irony here (or would that be goofiness?) is that even though community publishing is going to be a huge part of LoudounExtra.com, we actually launched the site this morning without any of those tools.

That’s a long story that I don’t want to get into right now. Not because it’s bad. Just because it’s long, and I’m already pretty dang tired as I write this post.

But once you see how we’re doing community publishing on LoudounExtra.com (which shouldn’t be too long), it will definitely make sense why it’s taking us a little longer to get rolling. We think it will really be worth the wait.

And that’s not all that’s missing. In some ways, the site is currently just the Ellington publishing system filled to the gills. And I mean filled to the gills.

But that’s not what it’s going to be by late August or so.

We have done more custom development for this site than we have for any other project we’ve ever worked on. The majority of that work just isn’t quite ready yet.

We’re thinking all of those new features will likely roll out in two phases: the end of August and the end of September. Knock on virtual wood.

So, how did we define hyper-local?

Well, I’ll try to list what our core strategies for LoudounExtra.com are (though not all of these features/strategies were ready for this morning’s launch):

* Constantly updated “Big J” and “little j” journalism from Loudoun County.

In trying to achieve this goal, the buy-in we’ve received from editors at all levels of The Washington Post and at the newspaper’s Loudoun bureau has been phenomenal.

The basic premise from the bureau will be that it will continue to write the bigger stories out of Loudoun County that work well for The Post’s entire print readership (and that will also go on the site), as well as the smaller stories that run in the newspaper’s twice-weekly Loudoun Extra zoned tabloid that’s inserted into The Post.

The bureau’s journalists also will work with LoudounExtra.com’s editor to produce daily stories that only appear on the site.

The site’s editorial team here at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive also will create daily web-only stories. These stories will include smaller police blotter-type stuff that we’ll work hard to get posted by 8:30 or 9 in the morning. Along with these police reports, we’ll also have weather reports, community news, newsworthy press releases, etc…

Though it could change once we see how things really work, our hope is to have between three and six updates a day to the site.

The local news on the site doesn’t stop there.

There also is a daily blog dedicated to checking out what others are posting. The Linked Up In Loudoun blog is a continuously updated look at interesting items published on other sites by newspapers, news organizations, local home owners associations, area volunteer fire departments, other bloggers in the region, and any other sites that mention noteworthy happenings in Loudoun.

* Exclusive databases filled with things that people want to know.

+ A searchable local calendar that has every school event, every community organization get-together, every local government meeting, every county fair, every bar band appearance, every local art exhibit, every Bible-study group, etc …

Like other sites built on the Ellington publishing platform, the site’s calendar will soon be able to send event reminders to your e-mail account or call your cell phone.

+ A huge restaurant guide with a detailed look at the more than 300 restaurants in Loudoun County. Wanna know where you can get a steak at midnight in Loudoun? Now you can find out.

+ An in-depth look at the more than 150 churches in Loudoun.

+ A massive school guide that details the roughly 80-90 schools in the county.

We talked to every school principal in the county — both public and private — and took photos and steerable 360-degree virtual reality images inside each school. The site’s school guide can tell you which schools have full-time nurses, if foreign languages are taught, how many special-education teachers are on staff, etc …

So, who did all of this work?

Well, no surprise if you’ve been reading my blog for a while: new-media editor extraordinaire Tim Richardson and multimedia content producer Cara McCoy did a ton of it.

They also got a lot of help from Emmy Crawford, our killer intern from George Mason University.

The work ethic of these three people always blows me away.

Tim estimates that it took a little over two months to get all of this information collected, with him and Cara working about 30 hours a week on the project during that period.

* Databases of public records.

Like the community-publishing tools, we haven’t quite finished these for the public version of the site, but we’re hoping to have them up some time in August. We are building searchable databases of building permits, homes sales, and many other publicly available records.

* A commitment to local multimedia journalism.

Using photo galleries, video, audio and other multimedia tools, we are committed to using LoudounExtra.com to tell the stories of our community in new and innovative ways. For a great example of this, just check out Bill Snead’s story on First Baptist Church-Watson.

(We were very lucky to have Bill work with us throughout the development of the site, as he focused on local storytelling for us. The guy is the best multimedia journalist I’ve ever met.)

* Alternate delivery/platform independent.

Though some of our alternate-delivery features are already working, more are coming. We’re hoping that by the end of August, LoudounExtra.com’s features will work on just about any device or web tool you can dream up.

* In-depth coverage of local high schools.

If you’ve seen what we’ve built in the past, this shouldn’t be a huge surprise. High school football season begins on Sept. 7 and we’ll be ready!

* Evergreen content.

Despite the new subdivisions and businesses popping up on every corner, long-time residents know that Loudoun County is steeped in history. From its central role in the Civil War to its more recent emergence as a tech hotspot and booming population center, LoudounExtra.com’s local history primer and gallery of historic photos really show the rich history of the county.

We also built an evergreen section related to moving to Loudoun County that’s filled with lots of practical information.

* Community publishing that works the way the Internet really works.

We’ve put a lot of thought into the community-publishing section of the site, and we all can’t wait to get it implemented on the LoudounExtra.com site.

Along with this content, we’re also doing a lot with local blogs, and have two staff-written blogs on the site — the one I mentioned earlier and another written by washingtonpost.com staffer (and longtime Loudoun resident) Tammi Marcoullier.

We’ll also be implementing lots of other Loudoun blogs on the site very soon.

+++

Let me tell you what I believe in my heart is the key to success for LoudounExtra.com. It’s not the crazy-deep databases. Or the cool multimedia. Or the ability to read a story on your iPod.

Those things are all important for lots of different reasons, but they aren’t the most important things.

The most important things we have to do on LoudounExtra.com are the daily news and breaking news. Databases are cool, but if there’s a big fire, you gotta have the latest information about it on your site or readers will just think you stink.

We’ve got to do a great job with the latest news in Loudoun County for this site to be a success. Period.

+++

Well, that’s a look at the ideas behind the new LoudounExtra.com site and how we defined what hyper-local meant to us.

We’ve got a ton of work/hours in the site, and we’ve still got a ton more to do. As I mentioned earlier, we have done more custom development for this site than we have for any other project we’ve ever worked on.

And it won’t be that long before these new custom apps we’ve built begin to appear on the site.

Well, I say “we” but it wasn’t really “we.” It was mostly lead programmer Deryck Hodge, along with some help from our summer programming interns — Sean Stoops and Chris McMichael (both from my alma mater, Emporia State University).

I can’t wait until you see some of the tricks that Deryck has up his sleeves for this site. Really cool stuff that I’ve never seen before.

If you’re wondering who made LoudounExtra.com look so dang cool, it was our team’s senior designer, Jesse Foltz. Yep, the same guy who designed the “onBeing” project.

Jesse kicks some serious backside.

All of the front-end coding of the site was done by Levi Chronister. Levi’s a hard-working sucker who was the editor of KUsports.com when we were both still in Lawrence. Man, do I love that guy and feel blessed to be working with him.

Before our team arrived in October of 2006, the hyper-local mantle at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive was being carried by Jonathan Krim. In fact, it was Krim who picked Loudoun County as the first market washingtonpost.com should try this strategy in.

Throughout the development of this site and the other upcoming washingtonpost.com hyper-local sites, several of Krim’s ideas will likely find their way as key components that prove their popularity and importance.

It’s never easy being the first guy with a new job that represents a new direction, and that’s what Krim did for a long time. He paved the way for LoudounExtra.com to happen.

+++

I guess the big question now is will The Washington Post’s hyper-local strategy work?

We just don’t know. But we also weren’t about to wait around and do nothing.

If doesn’t work, maybe I can still get hired to throw newspapers back in Lawrence.
🙂

+++

Here’s a link to the the note I posted on the new LoudounExtra.com site that kind of walks through all of its features, if you’d like to read it.

I’m back in San Francisco, this time for the California Newspaper Publishers Association conference.

On Friday, I give the morning keynote for the group’s summer conference.

A couple of months ago, the organization asked me to answer ten questions, which I think ran in the group’s monthly or quarterly magazine.

Here is how I answered those questions:

+++

No. 1 — Why did you decide to work for a newspaper? What interests you in journalism?

I’ve wanted to be a journalist since I was in third grade. It’s all I can ever remember wanting to do.

I was editor of my high school paper back in Osage City, Kan., worked sporadically for my university paper at Emporia State, and was a stringer for a ton of newspapers all throughout my time in college.

I thought I wanted to be a high school journalism teacher, but telling stories was just too much fun, and I couldn’t imagine giving it up. For me, seeing my byline each morning was better than Christmas.

I love journalism and all that it stands for — both Big “J” journalism and little “j” journalism.

No. 2 — What is your biggest praise of the newspaper industry during this transitional time?

For the last decade or so, there have been a handful of newspapers that have worked incredibly hard to make sure that they continue — and even grow — their relationship with their readers. Their work, investment and creativity have been amazing.

But they are the exception, not the rule.

When I read and hear things from some publishers in the U.S., I definitely get worried about the newspaper industry.

Then you meet newspaper leaders like Dolph Simons (Lawrence Journal-World) and Don Graham (The Washington Post), and you realize some of these great news institutions are going to be around regardless of the disruption that surrounds us.

Dolph Simons always used to say that we had to be “driving with our brights on,” and he was.

I think this might be the most exciting time in American journalism. I love all the change.

No. 3 — Your biggest criticism?

Uhh … see above.

No. 4 — What can small/community newspapers learn from big/metro newspapers and vice versa?

I think it’s just the opposite: What can big metro newspapers learn from small dailies?

When I look at the most innovative news sites in the U.S., I think of Roanoke (Roanoke.com), Bakersfield (Bakersfield.com), Bluffton (BlufftonToday.com) and Lawrence (lawrence.com), as well as a couple of other papers that aren’t in Top 25 markets.

The Washington Post and The New York Times are doing some really cool things with new media, but if I were back at a smaller paper, I wouldn’t be looking at the big-market sites for inspiration.

I’d be looking at the smaller newspaper sites I listed above.

Look at the community dialogue being created in Bluffton, look at the willingness to experiment in Roanoke and Bakersfield, and look at dang near anything you want on lawrence.com or KUsports.com.

My gut tells me that smaller papers are going to learn more from other smaller companies, and they’ll probably relate better to the lessons learned. Plus, I think there is a hotbed of innovation in some of these smaller markets.

No. 5 — What is one of the biggest challenges of working in the newsroom today from your personal experience?

In years past, it was really hard getting buy-in from the newsroom in some markets. But it doesn’t seem that way anymore. Most of the “traditional” reporters I work with now are very open.

It definitely feels like the mindset has definitely changed in the last year or so.

What I’ve found is that once the reporters and editors understand that you just want to create kick-ass journalism, then they’re pretty dang helpful.

No. 6 — What does a degree in Integrated Studies entail?

I basically just took the classes that interested me. I had a lot of hours and none that added up to a more traditional degree. Luckily, (the school) eventually came up with a degree for people in my situation.

I went back to college several years after I had left Emporia State to finish my degree once “Integrated Studies” became an option.

No. 7 — Where are some places where you look for inspiration for innovation?

I watch my family and learn from them all of the time. I spend a lot of time on non-newspaper sites. Heck, we got the idea on how we should use cell-phone text messaging for KUsports.com from a bank in Sweden back in probably 2001.

No. 8 — What is the best advice anyone has ever given you on working in the newspaper industry?

Bill Snead (Lawrence Journal-World senior editor) taught me it’s about the content, not how the audience gets your content. The technology means nothing if your content sucks.

Focus on doing things that delight and inform your audience. Connect with them.

No. 9 — Where do you get your news every day?

I check my e-mail on my cell phone first thing when I wake up, and I get my first news of the day from a couple of different e-mail editions that I subscribe to.

Then before I head to work, I usually spend about 15-20 minutes going through The Washington Post print edition while eating a bowl of cereal. I spend most of my “print newspaper time” with the sports section, then probably the business and metro sections.

On my drive into work, I have a couple of different podcasts that I listen to each morning – both from fairly traditional media companies.

I listen to the PTI podcast (which is a daily television show on ESPN featuring a couple of Washington Post columnists that I think works really well as an audio podcast), and I listen to the NBC Nightly News podcast, which can be really good as a podcast when it stays newsy.

From there on out, I mostly use the RSS feeds on my iGoogle page, which I probably check 5-10 times a day.

I go to a lot niche sites that relate to things I’m interested in — some from traditional companies, but most of them are independent.

I read a lot of blogs. I like to see what topics are the most blogged about each day on technorati.com.

No. 10 — Regular Mountain Dew? Or Code Red?

Do I have to choose?

They’re both so good!

+++

When I checked into my hotel room this evening, the CNPA had a six pack of Mountain Dew waiting for me. I already love these guys.
🙂

My recent trip to meet with several newspaper folks in Scandinavia was great. Every single time I go to Europe for something like this, I get so much out of it.

I kept asking the folks who had brought me there why they had asked me to come talk with their newspaper staffs because they all were doing so many great new-media things really well. They didn’t need any help or suggestions from me!

And these aren’t huge newspapers. Most were right around the 50,000-circ level or lower.

The common theme of these newspapers is that they all are partners in something called Citygate, which is a newspaper-owned technology group that helps all of these newspapers with new-media strategy and enterprise software.

Let me go over some of the highlights:

+++

On my first day in Sweden, I got to visit with the folks from Östgöta Correspondenten, in Linköping.

One thing that I found very interesting is that all of the newspapers I visited have full names, and shorter names that everyone really calls them. No one called this newspaper Östgöta Correspondenten. Everyone just called it Corren.

This shouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone, but one of my favorite projects at Corren was the newspaper’s amazing coverage of its schools’ local proms.

They had formal photos of every single person who attended the proms, but my favorite thing they did was shoot the dances.

Now these aren’t dances like you would see at proms in the United States. These were very formal dances that had been rehearsed every Saturday during the school year. It looked like incredibly choreographed ballroom dances.

And Corren shot the dances with multiple cameras, and then edited them very, very well.

Of course, all of this was posted on the newspaper’s website, but the paper also released all of this coverage in DVD format, which has already sold more than 700 copies.

It’s really, really great coverage that was incredibly well done. And Jörgen Bengtsson, the leader of the web department at Corren, told me the traffic to the coverage has been really strong — that nearly all of the dance videos had been viewed about as many times as what a big local breaking story might get on the site.

(I don’t have a link to this project right now, but I will try to get one soon.)

+++

On the next day, I visited Vestmanlands Läns Tidning in Västeras. Again, no one calls the newspaper Vestmanlands Läns Tidning. It’s simply called VLT.

Again, I saw a lot of really great things at this newspaper, and the buy-in for new-media coverage at VLT from its editor-in-chief — Elisabeth Back — was really impressive. It reminded of the buy-in we had at the Naples Daily News from Executive Editor Phil Lewis.

I learned in Naples that the easiest way to new-media success was to have great buy-in from the top editor, and we had that in Naples. They also have that at VLT.

The VLT newspaper building was amazing.

One of the ideas of the newspaper is that it “reflects” the community, so when they built their new building, they made the building actually reflect the community. It was one of the best and most interesting newspaper buildings I’ve ever seen.

Now that’s taking a mission statement and really taking it into the real world!

This week, VLT built a huge section with lots of multimedia coverage of something called a Power Meet. From what I could gather, the Power Meet is essentially a massively huge car show.

But one of my favorite things at VLT was how the newspaper used cell phone text messaging to get content (which I think is way more common in Sweden than in the United States).

You see this all over the VLT site, as well as in the print edition.

But my favorite reference to this strategy is right on the front of the newspaper’s building, where there is a huge sign with the number on it.

I love that!
🙂

After sitting in a meeting with members of the VLT staff, I’m convinced this is a local news site that our industry is going to want to pay attention to over the next year or so.

+++

The final newspaper that I visited in Sweden was Nerikes Allehanda in Örebro.

Yep, you’ve probably already guessed it by now. No one calls the newspaper Nerikes Allehanda. They just call it NA.

Before I talk about this newspaper, I’ve got to show you its building:

I remember the first time I saw the Chicago Tribune building and thinking how traditional and cool that it felt. Well, the NA newspaper building takes that “traditional feeling” and really amps it up a notch.

There actually is a real, honest-to-goodness castle right across the water from the NA building.

I can’t even imagine how cool it would be to walk past those sorts of things as you walked to work each day!

Just like at VLT, the editor-in-chief at NA has amazing buy-in for new media. His name is Ulf Johansson, and he’s a real go-getter who moves quickly. I loved the guy!

In fact, he just re-designed the entire news desks so that all of the main print and new-media editors would be together.

So imagine walking into this very historic-looking building and then seeing a newsroom that looks like it’s out of Star Trek.

It was awesome!

Yes, it’s very reminiscent of the Tampa Tribune newsdesk or the newsdesk at the Lawrence Journal-World. But when you put that sort of newsroom in a building that looks like the NA building does, well then you’re doing something a little different!

+++

My favorite project that I saw while I was on this trip wasn’t from a newspaper. In fact, it wasn’t even from a traditional news organization.

And to me, there is a *huge* lesson to be learned from this project.

There is a magazine in Copenhagen, Denmark, that is published by one of the labor unions there. The leader of the magazine there is an extremely talented guy named Jesper Berg.

Jesper calls himself a “media conductor,” which might be the most appropriate (not to mention, coolest) title ever.

The union’s magazine was producing a story about how a worker cleaning lights/windows at the top of the building was severely injured when he fell. To tell the story, the magazine staff put together one of the most interesting examples of multimedia storytelling I’ve ever seen.

The link to it is here.

Jesper admits he loved the design of a recent project at LJWorld.com so much that the look of this project is very similar to that. This project has all of the standard new-media tools, such as video, photo slideshows and steerable 360-degree panoramic photos.

But the most impressive part of the coverage is an animated re-creation of the accident.

Not even the most eloquent writer could have explained what happened as well as that animation does. It’s very powerful and very well done.

The lesson here is simple: If newspapers don’t get off their butts and start embracing this sort of storytelling, then the very folks we normally cover will just do it themselves.

If you don’t believe me, spend about 15 minutes on the MLB.com site for your closest Major League Baseball team, and then tell me if the hometown newspaper for that team covers the team as well or as deep.

I’ve always been impressed with these official sites, and I’ve been bugging the Newspaper Association of America for several years to put together a panel at one if its conferences with the folks behind MLB.com, NBA.com and NFL.com, but to no avail.

I think it would shock the heck out of most editors at not only how good these sites are, but how large the traffic to them is.

This past winter, I was amazed at how good the blog by Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas was on the team’s official site. (Though it’s much more of an online diary than a blog. Readers can’t post comments.)

The NHL’s Washington Capitals are owned by a big-wig from AOL, so you know that team’s site kicks some serious backside.

And then there’s this union in Denmark doing something like this.

As I said before, I learned a ton on this trip, and I’m positive I got more out of it than any group I spoke with got out of my little spiel.

Scandinavian news organizations are doing lots of things right when it comes to new-media storytelling, and I’m convinced we ought to be paying more attention to what the newspaper industry outside of the United States is doing.

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And if you’re really bored …

Here is another link to photos taken on my camera phone from the second half of our trip (Stockholm and Paris). Yes, I fully expect to be made fun of because of how much time we spent at Disneyland Paris while we were in France.

We can’t help it! Our family loves Disney.
🙂

And if you missed it from my previous blog, here is link to photos from the first half of the trip (Copenhagen, Denmark).