April 25 2007

Six months into the Herald running its own website, and we were invited to attend a prestigious industry award-ceremony, not bad going - if I do say so myself. Now, there are several industry awards ceremonies each year, just like the film industry has its Oscars, Golden Globes, Baftas, TV Quick Awards etc etc.

So which of the newspaper industry gongs are the most prestigious? Hard to tell, everyone has their own opinion. One quick test is - the most prestigious awards are whichever ones you just been shortlisted for a prize in. The least prestigious are the ones you just walked away from empty handed, vowing never to enter again because 'it's all political'.
Fortunately for us, we swanned, or more staggered, out of the Hilton Park Lane with a commendation for thisisplymouth in the Most Innovative Technology category. Not the top prize, but like I say we've only been running the site for six months and we were beaten by the Financial Times, so I don't think there's any shame in that.
It was an eye opener, not just the £50 a bottle wine, the steak to die for and the best dessert ever created by man (an indescribable chocoalte souffle), but also the chance to talk with some of the other nominees. They included the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Mail on Sunday, some international newspapers and many, many more. Elite company.
Sitting next to me was the deputy editor for the BBC's world news website. We started comparing sites .They're coming up on their 10th annivesary...and have a team of 250 dedicated journalists.
I almost spat out £4.75's worth of Bordeaux at that point.
"You mean you share them with TV?" I managed.
"No, no, just for us..."
"And the radio?"
"No, just for the website
"And that includes all your production staff and technical team and coders?."
"No, just reporters."
"Huh!" was my considered response.
As I say, six months, but its good to know what we're up against. Taking the Herald forward online puts us in direct competition with people like the BBC's national and international news websites. The fact the judges would put us in the same room as leading national and international titles is more evidence of that, and of the fact that we are competing at the right level.
For example, at the time of the Iran captive crisis, people from across the world were logging on to thisisplymouth to discover the latest, as well as visiting sites like the BBC and Sky News.
The circulation of the Herald no longer stops at the River Looe in one direction and the River Dart in the other. Now at least 10 per cent of our online readers are outside the UK, and many more are in the Uk but outside the Herald's traditional heartland.
So how are we approaching this huge opportunity? What are we doing to make thisisplymouth the best site for the people of Plymouth and beyond?
Six months ago just a fraction of the Herald's content appeared online on thisisplymouth. Every day a few articles would be blasted along the cables to a small team of technicians outside the city who watched it flow into the site, checked it looked okay, pressed a key or two then went on to one of the other three-dozen sites they managed.
Okay, there may have been a little more to it than that, but you get the picture.
Since November we have been working hard to ensure all content goes online, and that we make the best use of it all. Which is why you can see new folders and sections for everything from our features content, reviews and previews and our motoring section to euchre results and American Football.
Every news story that appears in the Herald now appears online, and it appears earlier than before. Back then nothing appeared before 12pm, then you had to wait until 12pm the next day for more.
Now we start adding content in earnest at 7am, then we don't stop updating until 10pm. Any breaking news overnight will also prompt a dash to the nearest keyboard to make sure it hits your screens as soon as possible. People start commenting straight away by adding their thoughts to stories, sending in emails or joing the debate on our bulletin boards.
And its paying off. the figures show 250 per cent increases in traffic to our news and home pages, and a 450 per cent increase year on year in new visitors.
On top of that we also now offer you a host of online exclusive content, like this blog. We have well over a dozen bloggers writing on everything from Polish community and Islam to basketball and fishing. In the first six months you've read these pieces more than 20,000 times.
We've also added video, including footage generated by headmounted camera by Herald reporter and fellow blogger Tristan Nichols in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and the Falklands.
Talking of the Falklands, I've been busy beavering away to update my programming skills, which were somewhere at the level of being able to write a version of Space Invaders for the Spectrum48, to take in HTML, Java, Javascript, ASP, JSP, CSS, MFI, B&Q and D.I.S.C.O. and we can now create minisites like the one holding all our content for the Falklands 25 commemoration at www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/falklands.
We've also built sites for Face of Plymouth 2007, the forthcoming election, last year's school nativities, the Royal Marines deployment to Afghanistan, Entrepreneurs Bootcamp, Gold Star and others - including Battle of the Bands 2007. This site, similar to the others, included picture slideshows, audio, video, a discussion board where the judges, bands and audience talked about the evenings before they happened, then disected them afterwards, band profiles, latest news and more. In its six weeks it drew in close to 20,000 hits.
During the last six months thisisplymouth has also been extensively redesigned. We've added online photosales so you can buy all Herald pictures online, we've added a new video section with our reporters trained in filmwork and we add audio files to some stories, like Ollie's latest rant or one of Martin Freeman's excellent interviews.
So are we happy to have come away with a commendation after a busy six months? Yes, very. But personally I'm even happier that we've added 4,000 new registered users to the site, boosted registered users on our bulletin board by a quarter and that the site has had well over six million page views in the last four months, because that means that we're providing what you - the users - want, and that is what it's really all about.
So any tips to those out there hoping to become a succesful web editor? When you find one, ask one!! The best advice I would give today is "If you've got to sit the first part of a nine hour exam in advanced web deign at 6pm in Paignton, try not to be drinking at an after-party in a bar in Soho at 2am that same day."