The Northwest News Group’s McHenryCountySports.com has done very well connecting teenagers to the newspaper company through a subject that interests them. The local prep sports site includes articles, comprehensive statistics and a lot of unique video, and it has has grown steadily more popular since it launched in 2004. Learn more about the site in this Audience Building Initiative report (available through Growing Audience).

Before you go grocery shopping this weekend, play with this innovative online feature from washingtonpost.com.

The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com set about covering the topic of childhood obesity in new ways that would help readers not only understand the issue, but help them tackle the problem head-on. A key part of this was the Virtual Grocery Store. The site features allows people to choose among similar products at a virtual store to see how careful shopping can make a significant dent in the volume of unhealthy ingredients brought home.

Learn more about this project in the latest Snapshot from the Edge, guest written by washingtonpost.com Lifestyles Editor Stacey Palosky.

And, last but certainly not least, take a look at our new report on user-generated content opportunities fof newspapers.

Awareness and familiarity are the main stumbling blocks to growing usage of user-generated content (UGC) and Web 2.0 tools on newspaper sites. As familiarity and awareness increase – through aggressive promotion – so will Web site visitors’ contributions and usage of newspaper UGC features.

These are the conclusions of a new report from NAA outlining specific opportunities for newspaper Web sites in these areas. The report is based on detailed surveys conducted in five U.S. markets about people’s familiarity with and usage of UGC features and Web 2.0 tools. (We'll have more about the report in a blog entry soon.)

The full report is available at www.naa.org/ugcopportunities.