The year in review - 2010 at The Record

This was a transformational year in the history of The Record. We took a firm step into our digital future while buttressing our legacy print business. The year in review:

Digital First
In February, Journal Register Company (our parent company) named a new CEO, John Paton. He met with JRC publishers on his first day on the job and told them to embrace a new “news ecology”, which includes the empowerment of citizen journalists to help us report what is going on in our communities. He demanded we be mobile-first in news delivery; and employ technologies to give consumers what they want, how they want it, when they want it.

To that end, the Record has changed the way it reported news in so many ways:
- All of our journalists were equipped with video cameras in the the spring; we now broadcast an average of about 70 new videos a month.
- Staffers began blogging, and we invited the community to blog on our site as well. Today we have over 30 bloggers.
- We began engaging our audiences more using social media. We launched a Facebook page, which today has 767 "fans". Now more than a dozen staffers use Twitter.
- We live-streamed all of our editorial board meetings with candidates during the election season, and our sports team has been particularly active with the above tools - regularly blogging, tweeting and posting video from games, and setting up special events such as Will Montgomery's high school football chat sessions, and Andrew Santillo's and Tretonian sports reporter Ben Doody's weekly chat about MAAC college basketball.

We promoted one of our staff writers, Tom Caprood, to lead our digital first efforts in the newsroom this spring, and he was named to JRC's Idea Lab in July. The concept is to have 15 employees companywide devote 10 hours a week for a year to helping the company "think differently about what we do and how we do it". Experimenting with technology is a big part of the charge.

We also opened the first phase of our Community Media Lab - a space designed to bring the community in to collaborate with us on all types of projects - from citizen journalism (ie. blogging) to forums on topics of interest to business owners to dialogues with local business, arts, education, government, and non-profit leaders.

And lastly, we added journalists in our newsroom in early 2010 - aiding both our digital and print efforts - and launched a few new features throughout the year. (Among the highlights were two in sports: a roundup of local athletic accomplishments each Sunday, and the presence of an in-depth sports feature that day as well.)

Our audience is growing
Our audience is larger than it has been in some time. Our digital audience is now up to over 163,000 unique visitors a month, and our print audience over the same period exceeds 93,000 adults.

The Record has been defying newspaper industry trends this year - as of last week our paid home delivery circulation was up 9.8 percent vs. the same week last December (while our overall circulation is relatively flat due to declining single copy sales).

Not only have readers have responding positively to changes in our operations; the Capital Region's alternative news weekly Metroland cited The Record in its Best of the Region announcement in late July for "Best Newspaper Turnaround". They said, in part, that we "re-imagined" our product, and "now regularly produce the most satisfying read of any paper around".

Legacy structure
None of the digital first focus represents an abandonment of our print products. In fact, this effort will enhance our newspapers as we refocus our resources to use newsprint to present more compelling journalism.

In many instances our company, as CEO John Paton has blogged about, we have outsourced to reduce our legacy costs so we could invest more in technology and journalism. Buildings, presses and delivery trucks have all been shedded. But in some cases where it  made sense, some locations were identified as printing centers in JRC. So Troy is a print hub now for our Troy, Saratoga and Kingston products. To that end, we invested in our building and printing technology here:

•  In February we went live with new computer-to-plate equipment, which cut down on our prepress costs.
• And in November we went live with new inserting equipment, which improved efficiency in that end of our operations in the week leading up to our becoming printer for a sister newspaper, Kingston's The Daily Freeman, on Dec. 7.

We have also invested in our building, repairing our roof and facade over the summer and fall, renovating two areas of the building for the aforementioned CTP equipment and the Community Media Lab, and installing a new T1 line.

More community engagement
We were active with a number of new community organizations during the year, and we expanded our Clothe the Child effort to a second annual campaign called "Camps4Kids". Proceeds sponsored camp scholarships for Troy Boys and Girls Club kids to its Camp Barker, which was struggling with funding.

Another exciting project came late in the year as The Record rallied to bring the 2010 World Series Trophy to Troy. After a five-week campaign, the San Francisco Giants - whose Major League roots are in Troy - agreed to bring the trophy here in May.

Sneak peak at '11
We have a bunch of new products, technologies and ways of reporting news and engaging with our readers that we will employ in 2011. I am happy to announce two projects today to provide a sneak peak:

• The Record's Rensselaer Forum will be a regular gathering of community leaders in the arts, education, health, public service and local business to discuss issues of importance to local residents. The goal is to provide an ongoing process for residents to envision the future of their community. Topics and invited guests will vary, but the format will be the same: The public will be invited to participate in the discussion. A transcript will be published at troyrecord.com, as will stories. And video will be shot and excerpts made available on our web site.
• We'll call it a working name for now - troyrecord.com's CML Concert Series (the CML standing for our Community Media Lab) - is also coming soon. We're inviting in music acts from the region to perform live in our media lab, and we'll post videos from each session and a brief artist biography on our Web site.

Also:

• Electronic and mobile editions of our newspaper will roll out early in the coming year.
• As announced this week by the Business Review, we are looking to expand our Community Media Lab into our newsroom. More on this as the project progresses.
• And we are investing in a new front-end system for our editorial department this spring to make us more efficient, to push news more readily to mobile devices and the Web, and to make it easier to share content with other publications in our company, among other reasons.

In closing
I recommend those interested in the transformation at JRC see the video released this week on our progress in 2010.

And I want to take this opportunity to wish all of our readers, advertisers and employees the merriest of holidays; we look forward to engaging our community even more in 2011.

It's coming ... San Francisco Giants' World Series Trophy coming home to Troy, N.Y.

After a campaign lasting over five weeks, The Record has done something that may have seemed a little far-fetched to some when we began it: We've convinced the San Francisco Giants to bring the World Series trophy home to Troy this spring.

The Record learned last night that the San Francisco Giants confirmed they will bring the trophy to Troy and Cooperstown the weekend of May 6-8. The stop in upstate New York will be part of a victory tour the team has set to celebrate its first World Series championship since 1958, and the first since moving from New York City to San Francisco.

Several days after the Giants beat the Texas Rangers in six games, The Record launched a Web and print petition asking the Giants to bring the trophy to Troy, the franchise’s original home. Petitions signed by Capital District residents and Giants from the Midwest and East Coast were presented to San Francisco Giants officials last week.

The back story on why the trophy belongs here, according to The Record Sports Editor Kevin Moran: The Troy City Trojans, an original member of the National League, competed for four seasons, 1879-1882. The Trojans failed to produce a winning season and struggled to attract fans, and that was a concern to other National League owners because of a threat from a rival league, the American Association. In December 1882 owners from Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, Providence, Boston and Detroit decided to remove Troy and Worcester from the National League and place franchises in New York City and Worcester. The vote was illegal  because according to National League charter teams could only be removed from the league if it failed to complete its schedule. Troy completed its schedule all four years.

Troy representative A.L. Hotchikin at first balked at resigning Troy’s franchise, but eventually did so with concessions. Troy would be an Honorary Member of the National League — a distinction its holds today. National League teams would return to the Collar City each season to play a series if exhibition games to help Troy raise revenue to start a new National League franchise. Of course this never happened.

The petition drive was envisioned and orchestrated by Moran, who also labored hard to get the story picked up by local, national and West Coast media. Digital specialist Tom Caprood assisted in bringing attention to the event by marketing the effort through social media. And editor Lisa Lewis kept the project moving forward despite a steady diet of breaking stories that needed coverage. Congrats to all for their hard work. And thanks to everyone who signed our petition.

We'll keep you update on the events surrounding the homecoming, and of course, have full coverage at troyrecord.com and in The Record.

Journal Register CEO John Paton delivers frank assessment of challenges to newspaper industry

The CEO of the Journal Register Company, parent company of four NY papers - The Record (Troy), The Oneida Daily Dispatch, Saratogian and Daily Freeman - delivered a frank critique of the challenges the newspaper industry is facing at an industry event today.

John Paton told colleagues at the International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA) Transformation of News Summit this morning in Cambridge, Mass. "(we must) profoundly change how we do business". He then spent the rest of the presentation explaining to folks the Digital First transformation he has led in JRC since he joined the company earlier this year, and the results so far. The short version is, in John's words, "the company’s expenses are down and its profits are up".

But if you have any interest in the newspaper business, the story is more compelling. Read/view John's presentation.

Journalists describe Digital First changes this year in The Record newsroom

I often write about the Digital First efforts at the new Journal Register Company, parent company of this Web site. Journalists in the newsroom at The Record in Troy recently reflected on the changes in the nine months since CEO John Paton came aboard. View their commentary:

The Record effort to bring San Francisco Giants' World Series trophy to Troy, N.Y. gains momentum

As reported last evening at troyrecord.com, The Record's effort to bring the San Francisco Giants' World Series trophy to Troy for a visit is gaining momentum.

San Francisco Giants president Larry Baer, while being interviewed by Brian Murphy of KNBR radio in San Francisco this week, acknowledged The Record’s effort to bring the World Series Trophy. He also stated the Giants are planning a tour of the World Series Trophy and that Troy would be included among its stops.

If you haven't signed our petition, please do so today. And keep reading troyrecord.com and The Record for the latest on when and where the trophy will come to our area.

Community members discuss their troyrecord.com blogs



Troyrecord.com digital specialist Tom Caprood
talks with blogger Marcie Pry at the web site's
Community Media Lab.



Some of troyrecord.com's bloggers came by The Record's Community Media Lab on Wednesday night for a discussion/reception to preview a video featuring several of them talking about their experiences writing for us.

Digital special Tom Caprood led the discussion and previewed the video he created.

More on the event.

See the video:

Petition by troyrecord.com to bring San Francisco Giants' World Series trophy to Troy gains momentum



Your News Now's Megan Eaton interviews
The Record's sports editor Kevin Moran.

I blogged Tuesday how the recent World Series winners, the San Francisco Giants, can trace their origins to a late 19th century National League team, the Troy (N.Y.) Trojans. And how troyrecord.com was rallying Troy folks and and baseball fans to petition the Giants and Major League Baseball to bring the World Series trophy to Troy.

Our effort is gaining momentum. Sports editor Kevin Moran has been interviewed from San Francisco on stations KCBS and Newstalk 810 to Albany on YNN-TV. News reports are also proliferating on Web news sites - from the Wall Street Journal to Huffington Post to USA Today to the San Francisco Examiner, among others.

If you haven't joined the effort, please sign the petition today.

Sign troyrecord.com's petition to bring World Series trophy to city of S.F. Giants' origins - Troy, NY

The recent World Series winners, the San Francisco Giants, can trace their origins to a late 19th century National League team, the Troy Trojans. A long story, but Troy's NL team was hijacked to NYC; part of the stipulation moving the team from Troy to NYC was that major league teams would come to Troy to play exhibition games, which was never done.

To correct this slight, The Record is attempting to get the Giants and Major League Baseball to bring the World Series trophy to Troy to let city residents view what it rightfully theirs to share.

Please sign our petition, visit our Facebook page, and follow our progress at troyrecord.com.

Celebrations abound in late October around the Oneida region

There were many celebrations in and around the greater Oneida area late last week:

• On Wednesday, the Madison County Historical Society held its well-attended annual dinner at Johnnie's Pier 31 Restaurant on Oneida Lake. Solsville native and guest speaker Jim Ford spoke about his book, "Sweet Cider Days", recounting the story of the world-famous Mott family of Bouckville. Executive director Sydney Loftus also reviewed the organization's highlights from the previous year and new board members were voted into office (including yours truly).
• Oneida Healthcare Center celebrated the completion of the second phase of an $18 million expansion effort on Friday morning with a ribbon-cutting and a breakfast at the Kallet Theater for nearly 250 supporters.
• A crowd of over 260 feted Madison-Cortland ARC Executive Director Ray Lewandowski as he received the 2010 Distinguished Service Award at the Greater Oneida Chamber of Commerce annual dinner, also held at the Kallet.
• And lastly ... and admittedly how you feel about this depends on where you live and/or attend(ed) high school ... Oneida had a thrilling 28-27 overtime gridiron victory Saturday over rival V.V.S. in a Class B semifinal football game in Chittenango. It was quite a transformation from a 33-6 Oneida loss to V.V.S. just two weeks earlier.

November is shaping up to be just as exciting. Among the many events and activities on tap: Oneida football faces Cazenovia in the Class B finals this weekend. And the new Pepi's Pizza on Route 5 opens its doors soon. Keep reading the Oneida Daily Dispatch and oneidadispatch.com for all the news of these happenings and much more.

Congrats to Oneida's Marcia Warham!

When I started my career at the Oneida Daily Dispatch in 1981, Marcia Warham was already one of the most - if not the most - veteran employees in the newsroom with nearly a decade logged in here. A number of reporters, edtiors and publishers have come-and-gone since (including me with a 28-year gap in my time here) but Marcia is still working along side us. She manages our calendars and obits, and is responsible for many of our news briefs.

Today is Marcia's 38th anniversary at the Dispatch. Congrats and thanks Marcia for all your years of hard work and dedication!