Late Friday, we released a new Snapshot article, guest written by Ray Marcano of the Dayton Daily News. Seeing an opportunity in the pets category, Marcano and his team went into start-up mode and planned, created and successfully launched the niche Web sites 937pets.com and 513pets.com in less than two weeks.

What Marcano and his team did is really impressive. New products tend to launch slowly in most newsrooms – meetings, prototypes, more meetings, more prototypes….  At one point during the writing process, I e-mailed Marcano a question about how his staff was able to do this project so quickly while keeping the Daily News’ Web site updated.

In response, Marcano said the trick was that the team members gave themselves a deadline and made the project a priority. In other words, it was all mindset, determination and hard work.

To learn more about the process in Dayton, read Marcano’s guest Snapshot here. 

If your team is doing something cool – launching a new Web site, creatively using user-generated content or doing something great with video or mobile – let me know. Our past Snapshots include looks at The Bakersfield Californian’s Inside Guide, newspapers using Twitter and the Florida Times-Union’s My Clay Sun.