Web Up the Newsroom

I spend a few hours every week at work updating Community Post, the social-media channel of PalmBeachPost.com that I created last spring. It’s a small part of the website that most people in the newsroom pay little attention to, and it’s been a struggle to get it promoted on our homepage and in print.

But our readers seem to love it, and that’s what keeps me going. Every week I connect with local people who are thrilled to have a place on PalmBeachPost.com to share their stories and read about their neighbors. Every week, I am reminded that people in the community like and respect The Palm Beach Post brand.

And the fact that someone at The Palm Beach Post is listening to them, interacting with them and publishing their stories, I am convinced, makes them feel more connected to their hometown paper.

To me, that’s what social media is all about – much more so than things like being the first to switch to Facebook’s new Timeline. (The modern profession of “social media” is filled with people so obsessed with being seen as the first to be in the know and the first to use the latest tools that they often forget about the audience they’re supposed to be connected with.)

Anyway, part of the Community Post channel is a reader-generated blog, moderated and edited by me. I get several dozen submissions a month, many of which turn into print stories, listings on our entertainment website, or guest blog posts. The latest submission made my day. Continue reading →