RESOURCES AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
A custom Web page makes local links easy to find

Most newsrooms recognize the value of the Internet as a source of information, story ideas and potential contacts. But few seem to have made much effort to organize that information in a useful way for everyone on the staff.

Individual journalists often bookmark their own favorite Web pages, but most stations have no universal list of helpful local sites the entire newsroom can easily access.

Why not build your own list of links? It takes very little time, and pays off daily. How do we know? We tried it.

This spring, NewsLab created a custom start page for KOMU-TV, the NBC affiliate in Columbia, MO, operated by the University of Missouri's School of Journalism. Using search engines like Google, we developed a list of relevant links for area journalists and grouped them by topic, including government, health care, local resources and news media.

The job was surprisingly easy. For a small market (#143), the Columbia area is highly "wired" in part because it is home to a major research university. Hundreds of local organizations have their own Web sites, many of them hosted for free by the local newspaper, which also provides an index of organizations involved in everything from the arts to religion and social services.

We spent less than two hours creating the custom start page, which we modeled after the local resource pages AssignmentEDITOR.com has created for a few large markets like New York and Los Angeles.

We posted the new KOMU-TV page on the NewsLab Web site in late February 2001, and within days the station's Webmaster had set it up as the start page for the newsroom computers' Web browsers.

The first reaction from news director Stacey Woelfel was succinct: "[I]t looks great...only question...no pizza places?" Despite that oversight, KOMU-TV staffers quickly became regular users of the new start page. They didn't just blow past it on their way to other favorites, they put it to use in their daily work. A survey conducted two months after the page was posted found that reporters, producers and assignment editors used it primarily "to look for story ideas," but almost as often "to see what's in the news" and "to get background on stories."

Feedback was almost universally positive. "I think that the start page has been a great addition to the newsroom," one assignment editor wrote. "It helps expedite searches and provide a starting point to useful links." A producer/reporter said, "I think the page brings several useful sites to one convenient area for everyone in the newsroom. It helps to get information more quickly." And another reporter found it made a difference on specific assignments: "I especially like the portion that contains source numbers. It was particularly helpful to me on a few stories."

Most of the survey respondents said the availability of the KOMU-TV start page has not changed the way they find information. Perhaps that's not too surprising, since the station's staff is made up largely of computer-savvy college students who already were adept at finding information online. But even these skilled searchers found the page saved them time. "It makes it easier to find information because all of the website links are at your fingertips," one person wrote. "Sites I used to have to search for are now easily available right away with the click of a mouse," said another.

Woelfel, the news director, says the start page "has been, more than anything else, a time saver." The biggest benefit for the newsroom, he says, has been in "finding facts faster." In today's environment, that payoff seems well worth the investment of a few hours to create a custom start page that puts frequently-used sites at everyone's fingertips.

home · resources · strategies · research · articles · links · index
workshops · newsletter · about us · contact us