Scale in newsrooms isn't just about numbers & metrics, it's about IDEAS!

My ideaLab colleagues and I were given 30 days to address a need in our newsrooms. After considering several possible projects, I settled on something in my arsenal of favorite tools: Google maps.
So, the plan was to teach my fellow reporters how to plot sites on a Google map so there always would be someone in the newsroom with that skill, even on nights and weekends when we often have breaking crime, fire, accident and other stories that lend well to using maps.

Simultaneously, I was data mining for a separate ideaLab project and planned on doing an enterprise story about 27 brownfields in New Haven County. These locations are targeted by the state and several municipalities as priority sites for economic development, among dozens of eyesores that are languishing.

As part of the ideaLab, we have semi-monthly teleconferences as a group. On one of these calls my mentor Jon Cooper, vice president of content for our parent company, Journal Register Co. and supervisor of the ideaLab, urged us to work harder at getting the knowledge and skills we're learning into the daily workflow at our newsrooms.

That got me thinkin': Why don't we work as a group to map the brownfields and craft the enterprise story?

It seemed the perfect way to foster skills learning and meet Jon's challenge.

I pitched it to my colleagues who cover the towns on the brownfields list I was working off of and they not only participated in the Google maps training, they did reporting leg work, shot videos and built this map:

View New Haven County Brownfields in a larger map

I'm talking about shoe-leather reporters Amanda Pinto, Abbe Smith, Michelle Tuccitto Sullo, Mark Zaretsky and Ann DeMatteo. I invited reporters who did not have an affected town, as well, so here's a shout out to Alexandra Sanders, who came to the training and subsequently made this map, using satellite view, to go with a daily story about neighborhood reaction to a controversial excavation site:


View Horse Pond Rd & Dairy Hill Rd in a larger map

City Editor Helen Bennett Harvey and Managing Editor Mark Brackenbury came to the training and project planning meeting as well. Everyone made this project better than I envisioned with their feedback and questions.

We've had great conversations about the fact that maps don't apply to everything we file, but we all have more open minds now to new applications. Alexandra had a great idea about using them to map polling places and here's an example of how I now use them to tell people what's happening in New Haven on weekends or upcoming civic events during the week.


View Elm City Happenings in a larger map

A nice feature is that Google tells people how to get there by car, foot, bike or public transportation. It's just an amazing tool.

And participating in the ideaLab has been an amazing process of personal and professional growth for which I am grateful.

I hope this encourages you to think about using Google maps in new and different ways and engaging your colleagues in what can be a fun project for your team and an interactive, informative package for consumers.

Our package went live on Sunday morning, May 8 (Mother's Day) and ranked among "Most Popular" all day on the New Haven Register's website.

Sunday evening Pam McLoughlin and Jordan Fenster got a Google Form loaded into the package, using the story itself as an engagement tool. It was posted later than the full package, so I'm still collecting data on that for a separate post.

Hold the faith that people will read content other than crime, accidents and news of the weird if it is engaging, interactive and speaks to their quality of life (Digital First). Thanks, again, everybody!

So, let's keep the ideas flowing - how are you using Google or other mapping programs in your news organization?

'East Coast Rapist' Revealed: Covering breaking news with elbow grease, teamwork and digital tools

 I can't say enough about my city editor, colleagues and the corporate team that gave us tools to hit the pavement on this story in ways we could not have done only a year ago.

Let's go back to Monday, Feb. 28. That's when the FBI and local law enforcement officials launched billboard campaigns to draw out tips throughout the footprint of Aaron Thomas, 39, the so-called 'East Coast Rapist.' He has been linked by DNA to 17 rapes in Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island and the New Haven Register's anchor city, New Haven, Conn.

I covered a press conference announcing the campaign and my colleague Chris March and I built this map to give the public a visual representation of the trail of devastation left across four states by Thomas, an unemployed trucker.


View 'East Coast Rapist' Attack Area in a larger map

Four days later, our ace police reporter William Kaempffer and our standout city editor Helen Bennett Harvey got word that a suspect had been arrested. In a mix of the old and new when it comes to reporting, all three of us hit the phones calling sources and we jumped on that superhighway of digital information - the Internet.

Bill is trusted by his sources and has a solid reputation for honoring the journalism industry's standards on fairness. He scored the suspect's name, Helen used public records online to confirm a tip that Thomas had a court appearance the day before his arrest and our very bright, well-known court reporter/columnist Randall Beach scrambled over to the courthouse and found Thomas' address of record. But there were two, so I looked up real estate assessment records online using the HP Mini netbook that our parent company, the Journal Register Co., provided to those of us participating in the ideaLab project, supervised by Jonathan Cooper, vice president of content.

Chris and I are part of this year-long experiment to discover ways of improving our performance as journalists and to better engage the communities we serve; as well as identify tools, in both hardware and digital form, that can advance our Digital First approach to delivering news accurately as it unfolds.

Our CEO John Paton (@jxpaton) gave all reporters in the company Flip video recorders and those in the ideaLab also have netbooks, iPhones or Droids and iPads. Additionally, Verizon Wireless is allowing me to test the Samsung Galaxy Tablet alongside its Apple counterpart.

Getting back to last Friday, I grabbed my tablets and used the map programs to get me to the houses we had to visit in order to nail down where Thomas actually had been living. I knocked on doors in the neighborhood and Bill used an online directory to call people who had publicly listed telephone numbers.

Helen kept updating the story at http://www.nhregister.com/ as Bill, Randy and I came up with new information and we made sure to have fresh content for the paper the next morning. She is masterful in the use of social media and uses Twitter and Facebook to alert followers, friends and readers about up-to-the-minute developments. Follow Helen's posts @newsgirlct or @nhregister. You can also see an example here of how she uses Scribd to upload documents to enhance our story packages.

Our stellar photographers are using cameras, video cameras and MacBook Pros out in the field and getting pictures and video clips online so fast, Melanie Stengel and Peter Hvizdak had the only available photographs and video of Thomas arriving in court for a brief arraignment on March 7. Other news organizations made the appropriate arrangements to use them as well.

I sent out Tweets from court using our account for live coverage set up by Helen @nhrlive. As this case moves through the court system you can follow our updates using the Twitter hashtag #eastcoastrapist.

Chris, Helen, Managing Editor Mark Brackenbury, online producer Shawn Rychling, Valley Bureau Chief Michelle Tuccitto Sullo and several photoraphers have all tracked down records and information or kept our Web site rich with multi-media elements on this story.

I must give a shout-out to Andria Carter and Joe Kulkin at our sister paper, The Trentonian, for their support and sharing resources in coverage of both the 2010 Census and the East Coast Rapist case.
Well, I must sign off for now. I'm headed back out into the field for a community angle on this story. Stay tuned...