Blogger

I contribute to several of the blogs on the website. Details are listed below.

The Book Club

1. Each week, I post a blog entry detailing upcoming events related to area libraries, books and authors. Click here for a list of links to my "Odds & Book Ends" from April 2010 through January 2011.
2. I've been posting a series of blog entries labeled Countdown to Sweet Valley Confidential with fellow copy editor Danielle Capriato. Each post includes a widget counting down until the next book is released.
3. I recently started a monthly feature on the blog called LitSoup that involves contributions from the newsroom.

Northern Ohio Local Politics

After using Scribd to post the Congressional voting records online, I embed them into blog posts labeled with voting records. I began doing this in December 2010, the same week I created The News-Herald's Scribd account.

Tuned in to Pop Culture

1. Most weeks, I post the Top 10 movies at the weekend box office with links to review and articles that ran in The News-Herald: Weekend box office.
2. From Nov. 26 to Dec. 26, I posted a video each day that was related to the holidays and pop culture: Christmas countdown.

Pets Unleashed

I wanted to ensure our pet blog was updated frequently and realized that people like to watch videos of animals. So I created a weekly post called Animal Crackers. The entries go live around lunchtime every Wednesday and include one or more animal videos. In October, I was pleased to post two videos I had filmed, edited and produced after a visit with alpacas.

Behind The News-Herald

While many posts on this blog give a personal twist to articles that were published, I tried to show readers what it actually is like at The News-Herald.

1. 09/16/2010: A look back ...
2. 11/08/2010: Corn toss tournament for the United Way
3. 12/29/2010: A new look in the newsroom

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Making Blogger benefit The News-Herald

When I logged in to Blogger one day last May, I saw the opportunity to upgrade our account. I installed the update, which gave us a modified editor that provides bloggers more options without needing knowledge of HTML. The upgrade also introduced statistics for the blogs. Now, all bloggers can keep track of the number of hits, topics and keywords that are generating traffic, and what websites led readers to the blogs.

I also changed the commenting option on all of the blogs to match the policy on News-Herald.com: users can leave anonymous comments, which will be posted after approval. I added the GMail account I used for the Ben Franklin Project as an administrator on the blogs I update, and listed myself to be notified when a comment is left on any of The News-Herald's blogs.