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Peoria, Ill. —
For several years the Journal Star has published a weekly political bits and pieces column called Word on the Street.
Because this column has been handled by an assortment of different beat reporters, we have traditionally shied away from over-spicing it with opinion. It was for that reason that we were reluctant to migrate the column into the blogosphere.
However, earlier this year we tossed caution to the wind.
The column’s current drivers, Karen McDonald, who covers politics and Peoria County government, and John Sharp, who covers Peoria city hall, agreed to give it a go.
On Feb. 22 Word on the Web debuted on pjstar.com. It has been a smashing success. In slightly more than a month, the blog generated 10,663 hits. We are bent on building on that success. Last week we began exploiting both the column and the blog with a quick, home-grown video promo that appears on pjstar.com. The video was produced by photographer Fred Zwicky. We will follow with related house advertisements in print.
We plan to produce similar promotional videos to showcase our regular bloggers and columnists.
As managing editor, I am fed up with the steady drum beat of cheap-shot artists who claim our lines of print and digital products are insignificant. We know that those claims are not true.
However, keeping rebuttals on the high road can be challenging – particularly in these days when marketing budgets are dried to the bone. It is our hope, therefore, that devices like home-grown promo videos will serve to remind readers that our journalism is still relevant and valuable.
Plus, there is no harm for video viewers to get a glimpse of what we see every day in our newsrooms: The people behind our journalism have passion, personality and are downright cool people.
John Plevka is the managing editor of the Journal Star.
For several years the Journal Star has published a weekly political bits and pieces column called Word on the Street.
Because this column has been handled by an assortment of different beat reporters, we have traditionally shied away from over-spicing it with opinion. It was for that reason that we were reluctant to migrate the column into the blogosphere.
However, earlier this year we tossed caution to the wind.
The column’s current drivers, Karen McDonald, who covers politics and Peoria County government, and John Sharp, who covers Peoria city hall, agreed to give it a go.
On Feb. 22 Word on the Web debuted on pjstar.com. It has been a smashing success. In slightly more than a month, the blog generated 10,663 hits. We are bent on building on that success. Last week we began exploiting both the column and the blog with a quick, home-grown video promo that appears on pjstar.com. The video was produced by photographer Fred Zwicky. We will follow with related house advertisements in print.
We plan to produce similar promotional videos to showcase our regular bloggers and columnists.
As managing editor, I am fed up with the steady drum beat of cheap-shot artists who claim our lines of print and digital products are insignificant. We know that those claims are not true.
However, keeping rebuttals on the high road can be challenging – particularly in these days when marketing budgets are dried to the bone. It is our hope, therefore, that devices like home-grown promo videos will serve to remind readers that our journalism is still relevant and valuable.
Plus, there is no harm for video viewers to get a glimpse of what we see every day in our newsrooms: The people behind our journalism have passion, personality and are downright cool people.
John Plevka is the managing editor of the Journal Star.
