As part of my social work, I am working on reinvigorating the OCRegister’s main Twitter account @OCReggie.

One change is I added two new people to the account’s management crew (we now have eight). This allows for one permanent sub and for one person to be the on-call night and weekends person (alerts are sent by our newsroom editors, but this person jumps in to listen and help people during big off-hours events). The two new people lets us have more people available during disaster times (such as wildfires) and to embed social into the newsroom’s core, rather than just being managed by geeks (like myself) in the corner.

I also sent out my goals and thinking behind the account and I’m following up with staff to make sure the account is less formulaic and more engaging.

Why does OCReggie exist?

• To learn about the community (story ideas, reader-generated content we should include in our publications, topics we should cover, sources)
• To enrich the community (send alerts about breaking news, help people find answers, begin or join in on conversations about o.c.’s daily interesting news and information).

I’d like for us to do more of the following:

• Listening to people
• Talking with people
• Finding story, source, topic and content ideas
• Sending out relevant content – not just OCRegister staff-created content

I took the lead on building a new OCRegister mobile website soon after the Freedom mobile project was approved.

The first version of our mobile site had these goals: be built by the Freedom IT department (rather than hosted and developed by a third-party), include multiple photos when included with stories, and add full metric tracking so we can learn how people use the site.

The new site may not be flashy, but it has solved numerous problems we experienced with the third-party mobile site and having access to full metrics has been invaluable as mobile traffic grows.

The newsroom’s first large transition during my time was from print-only to web-first. The newsroom’s new movement is to be audience-focused evenly across multiple channels.

The image at left shows the workflow steps for every journalist in delivering to our many audiences (print, web, mobile and social).

Link: Video of surfing at the Wedge

I worked with a video producer to change code in our Brightcove system so that people can watch our videos right on Facebook. Being able to post the videos on the Register’s Facebook page (that I maintain) lets people watch the video without going to OCRegister.com. Video pre-roll ads are still attached to the videos, when included.

In the past, the Register has had two normal work modes: general news coverage and big breaking news coverage. One of the main efforts with the new disaster plan was to make the Register’s coverage of every day and small breaking news coverage mirror the way we cover large wildfires and mudslides. Mirroring our disaster workflow with every day workflow will ensure more consistency and better preparedness among newsroom staff.

We also adjusted the disaster plan to account for an increasingly mobile audience who want breaking news alerts and more timely information available on phones. More staff was trained on how to send breaking news text alerts and we added alerts channels just for wildfire updates and mudslide updates.

The disaster plan was also updated to make social reporting, public service and customer service a role fulfilled by newsroom reporters and editors rather than just the web team. During large disaster events the Register will staff one reporter who only reports using information and sources found online and in social networks – rather than sending every reporter out to the field.

One of my main frustrations is that all efforts to allow Register’s to share content have not been as successful as hoped for. So, I set out on brainstorming over a few weeks about why those efforts failed. Rather than being upset about the situation, I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to come up with my idea for user content.

My idea is #shareoc. Rather than building a website, or a mobile app, or a group on a social networking site – I want to build a system. And, I want the focus to be about why people share content.

My ideas on why people share content:

Status: People naturally want to be seen as having some sort of worth by other people. This is not about people being conceded – but it is about having ideas and contributions validated by the community.

Results: People want to share something so that it impacts someone else. People tweet about being stuck in a bad accident so they can complain and so that others might be able to be saved from sitting in the same traffic. People report potholes to city hall so that the potholes can be fixed.

With ShareOC – I want to provide a way for people to easily share content with the Register’s valuable audiences. I want the system to be built across channels – rather than being based around one thing (like how iReport is built around a website – which means less social and mobile integration at the core level).

Thanks for following and we’ll see how the project goes!

I worked as the web reporter and editor during President Barack Obama’s visit to Orange County on March 18, 2009. I organized online content, helped with web publishing and live-tweeted on the Register’s @OCReggie account. The link above points to a wrap-up of my live tweets about the event.

Part of the fun of being on the Register’s web team is finding gems of interest in web analytics. I was able to share that interesting information in a wrap-up of top content for 2008. In year’s past wrap-up coverage was always editor’s picks of the top stories. My article was a chance of showing the web side of things along with some reader picks such as the top stories dugg on Digg.com.

• Brea Fire
• Corona-Yorba Linda-Anaheim Hills Fire
• Heroes/Your Stories
• Ortega Fire

During the 2008 Freeway Complex Fire I (as part of my temporary blogstress role) I acted as a web editor, blog manager and social media contact. On the first day of the fire I relieved Amy Stevens as manager for the night. This work included assigning tasks to the web team, coordinating with David Whiting and his content planning and filling in on necessary tasks. In the following days I filled in as needed on social media management, collecting user-generated content and web editing.