Weekly, now through the end of summer, I’ll be posting one of the winning Digital Edge Award entries from the 2008 awards. All the entries are available in the report “Behind the Winning Entries,” but posting them here over time may make them more digestible and spark ideas in your newsroom as different issues come up in your communities. Here’s our latest installment:
Most Innovative Visitor Participation (circulation 75,000 – 250,000): Knoxnews.com: School Matters
Entry submitted by:Jack Lail
Managing Editor/Multimedia
Knoxnews.com/Knoxville News Sentinel
(865) 523-3131
Strategy: A redrawing of school district lines early in 2007 got parents “engaged” in exactly what was going on in their children’s schools. They held their own public forum and began getting online discussions going. But to get it to the next step, they turned to Knoxville News Sentinel editor Jack McElroy for help in creating a real broad-based community dialogue in schools.
We set up the site, School Matters, in the form of a social network where like-minded people could meet and interact with each other and discuss topics and issues facing schools. Everymember has a personal page with a blog application. Memberscan also create and join groups and discuss issues on forums.The site also displays an RSS feed of News Sentinel stories oneducation.
Seven adults help moderate the site and promote discussions to the homepage, while an online editor helps with technical issues and promotion.
Innovation: The most innovative part of this site is its social network application. With social networking being very popular (MySpace and Facebook), we thought this would be a good utility to work with a niche audience (local parents and educators). And it worked well: since the creation of the site in early August, there have been 66,165 page views. As of October 2007, the site had 218 members, 55 groups, 129 forum topics and 102 blog posts.
Adaptability: This idea can be done with any newspaper at any level. We’re using a third-party vendor, Ning, and pay about $20/month for service. Ning provides the blog, forums, social networking infrastructure and some technical support. We set up the initial stylesheet and are promoting the site in print and online. Future plans include using content from the site for print.
Impact: We’ve heard from many readers how much they appreciate the service. In fact, a local grad student e-mailed us raving about the School Matters site. I hope I am not overreaching in my estimation, but School Matters is exceptional in that it may be the first Ning network that seeks to unite education stakeholders across a large semi-metropolitan community.
As mentioned, School Matters is very special and has lots of potential. I have found a variety of educational Nings, for librarians, teachers, teacher trainers, and educational technologists. My favorite is Classroom 2.0. It has grown into a wonderful, international community. But I haven’t identified one in which community members, school board officials and parents are sharing and talking as they are on School Matters.
With the creation of School Matters, we’ve been able to get involved in issues that our readers are concerned about and work with them for a solution. And by harnessing the wonders of technology, we’re able to get reporters, teachers, parents and school board members from Knox County on one digital platform where they can discuss the fate of our schools.