For years individual content producers in news organizations didn’t have an easy way to figure out how popular or useful their content was with people.

But with today’s advanced site analytics, content producers have unprecedented data about users and their surfing habits. I wrote a long post about this subject over at BeatBlogging.Org. Consider this post the Cliff Note’s version with a few added tidbits.

What makes this data so important?

With Web analytics, content creators like writers, bloggers, photographers, database developers, etc can find out which content is getting the most page views and visits and from where those visitors are coming from. Content creators can also find out which search terms most often land people on their content.

Analytics will allow for content producers to make content that is more appealing to their users. For a football beat, it might mean creating more previews and Q&A sessions and less feature stories. For an education blog, it might mean writing more about teachers’ issues and less about the school district as a whole.

It also might mean different kinds of content. Your users might prefer posts that are short and comprised of lists. My users might prefer longer paragraphs. The only way to understand what our individual users want is to track their browsing habits.

The timing of posts is also extremely critical, and this varies per beat per news organization:

In general, after lunch and after work are the two peak times for Web traffic. This, however, is not universal, and detailed Web analytics will allow content producers to know the peak times to release content on their Web sites. In fact, different beat blogs at the same paper might have different peak traffic times.

Now, not every news organization allows content producers access to this information. In fact, most may not, but the content producers I have spoken to almost uniformly say it has helped them do their jobs better. Every news organization worth anything already has detailed site analytics.

It doesn’t cost a company money to give more people access to this information, but site analytics can be complicated and hard to understand without training. Some newsrooms have come up with ways of getting around that.

Suzanne Yada said her newspaper, the Visalia Times-Delta, has a daily meeting at 3 p.m. to discuss traffic figures and which stories are getting the most page views. Ryan Sholin says at the last paper he worked at he sent out a daily “Top 5.” Sholin said, however, that bloggers had full access to their stats.

Whether a news organization gives access to this data to every content producer or whether a news organization has a meeting or e-mail to discuss Web traffic, it doesn’t matter. What ultimately matters is that news organizations give content producers vital information that will allow them to do their jobs better.

To all my blogging readers, could you imagine blogging blind? That’s essentially what many news organizations are asking their content producers to do.

If your company doesn’t allow content producers access to this information, I have a question for you. Why doesn’t your company give individual content producers information about the content they produce?

Sometimes the best way to learn about a subject is just to go out and experiment.

With that thought in mind, I’ve launched a hyperlocal/beat blogging experiment, Chagrin Valley Sports. My goal is simple: provide better and more in-depth coverage of local sports in the Chagrin Valley area utilizing a beat blog. I’m starting out with high school football because it is just me right now, and BeatBlogging.Org is my full-time job.

If the site starts making money, perhaps I can hire people to cover other sports. And, yes, I can already cover football much better than any of the local papers can. Local papers tend to write a sports story about an individual school every few weeks.

These are pretty much just token stories to get schools and names in the paper, but there really is no excuse not to have at least one piece of content each week about each football team. If the site takes off, I’d like to have content about multiple sports teams from schools each week.

I’m not looking to build the coolest features or the flashiest site. I’m looking to build the most useful content. Some hyperlocal projects have been high on the cool factor but lower on the useful factor. But by concentrating on creating useful content, I can produce a lot of it, because useful content often takes less time to produce than cool content.

No, you won’t find fancy Flash graphics on my site. Nor will you find us covering high school football games with multiple video cameras.

But you will find which area players are getting looked at by scouts and which have verbally committed to play college football. If a team changes its defensive scheme, you’ll find out about that too.

My goal is to cover high school sports like professional sports are covered. And that means reporting about scheme changes. That means talking about scouting reports and game previews. It means posting playoff rankings every week.

None of that content takes much time to produce. If you have good relationships with area coaches, they’ll tell you when their players are being offered college scholarships. Playoff rankings are posted each week by OSHAA.Org. All I have to do is find the schools in my coverage area and post how they are doing, and that takes very little time.

Maybe you don’t win awards for this kind of coverage, but I think you can win users with this kind of coverage. This experiment is primarily about driving traffic, and the only way for me to drive serious amounts of traffic is to make my site into THE destination for local sports coverage.

Part of being a destination is about producing more than journalism. This means schedules. This means stats. It means linking to other people’s content. It means owning the conversation. It might even mean maps to area schools.

Ultimately, my goal has to be to make my site into the first place people think of when they think of sports in the Chagrin Valley area. If I can do that, I’ll also become the No. 1 place for local advertisers.

The Chagrin Valley area is a geographic fault line. It’s not in one county, but rather my coverage touches three different counties. I’m not going to cover an arbitrary geographic area, and I think that’s a mistake past hyperlocal projects have made.

I hope to eventually cover news too, but I started with sports because it is easier and less time consuming. It’s also a lot easier to build good will with solid sports coverage. Good will is very important for forging the kind of relationships necessary to have community-driven content succeed.

For instance, I am not taking photos, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want photos for my site. That means I have to forge relationships with people to provide me with what I don’t have. Almost every high school sporting event has at least one dedicated parent or school member who is taking photos.

I need to forge relationships with those people, because I don’t want to duplicate content. In fact, I can’t afford to. I have already forged a relationship with one high school in the area. I’m allowed to use whatever photos they have on their Web site for free, and they take hundreds, if not thousands, a week.

Now, how much has this experiment cost me? Nothing so far. It’s hosted on the same server as the JI, and it is running off a WordPress install with a theme I found.

I customized the theme to make it feel more local for users by randomly generating photos at the top of the page of each school. What says Chagrin Valley sports better than photos of Chagrin Valley teams playing sports?

I also focused on SEO from day one. The No. 1 search result for “Chagrin Valley sports” is my Web site. It turns out the query “Chagrin Valley sports” is a popular one, and it has proven fortuitous already that I named my site after a popular search query.

Maybe I could have thought of a sexier name or a more traditional name like The Chagrin Valley Advocate. But my name, as obvious and blunt as it may be, is an SEO gold mine. I’m already the No. 2 search result for the query “Chagrin Falls football,” behind only Wikipedia. My entrenched local competitors have ignored SEO to their own peril.

And how I am driving traffic to my site? I’m finding the online communities where people talk about local sports and becoming active in those communities. These people are interested in good content, and I need to forge relationships with them.

This site may fail miserably, but it has already been a great learning experience. Making money on the Web is ridiculously hard, and that’s why I have to find a new business model for local journalism.

This is ultimately a proof of concept for a Knight News Challenge Grant I am applying for later this year (this is a tiny fraction of what I am proposing to Knight). Whether or not Knight likes my pragmatic approach to producing Web content remains to be seen. But I’m not going to try to out-cool and out-sexy people.

I’m just going to produce lots of useful content. And I’m going to drive a ton of traffic my way.

Do copy editors have a future in journalism?

Will that role be drastically changing? Traditionally, copy editors at most newspapers had to do more than just edit copy. They also had to do page layout, fit stories to fixed spaces, write headlines, write captions, etc. Obviously, page layout is not needed on the Web, and every beat blogger should understand SEO for headline writing. And it might make sense to replace most captions with tags.

Don’t get me started on fitting stories to space either. That skill is dead. Stories on the Web should be as long or as short as they need to be. Copy editors no longer need to spend hours trying to fit a 15-inch story in an 8-inch space.

Every journalism company should have some copy editors, but the era of copy editors heavily rewriting content is over. News organizations can no longer afford to have employees whose main job is to fix the mistakes of other employees. It’s one thing to polish work, but another thing entirely to redo it.

Every beat blogger and online reporter will have to know how to write clean copy. It’s still a wise idea to have copy editors, however, but what will their other duties be?

Maximizing headline SEO? Audio and video post production? Making sure content is properly tagged?

Maybe it shouldn’t even be called customer support at Microsoft.

More like spend 2 hours of your life getting no help. No help whatsoever.

I recently purchased an XBOX 360 Elite (you know, the expensive model), and I went to redeem an XBOX Live subscription card I had lying around. I got an error when doing so.

Oh wait, I should start with my first problem signing up for XBOX Live. I got an error each time I tried to sign up with the name JIconoclast, despite it not being in use. This happened at the very end of the sign-up process, which takes some time to do.

So, after realizing that xbox.com/support was no help at all, I finally decided to call Microsoft. My first call ended after 40 minute with the rep telling me to try again later. Try again later?

How is that support? So, you know what, I tried again today. I’m a generous man.

And the same error happened.

Eventually after 35 minutes, I just decided to make a new gamertag. The rep tried to tell me that sometimes gamertags get “corrupted.” How fucking stupid do you think I am?

Just tell you me you are in way over your head. Just tell me that Microsoft doesn’t provide good training. Just tell me that Microsoft doesn’t care about its customers.

After that, I was unable to redeem my 12 month XBOX Live subscription card. It is worth $50, and it doesn’t work. Thanks Microsoft.

My problem was escalated to the highest level. Lunka (who has no superior, she claims) told me that the Live subscription card had not been redeemed. So, it should work.

But I tried at xbox.com and on my 360 to get it to work. I received an error both times.

What was Microsoft’s solution to the problem? Was it to send me a new XBOX Live card? Was it to credit my account with 12 months of a Live gold membership (the simple thing to do)?

No, it was to tell me to send in proof of purchase and my Live subscription card. Then Microsoft would mail me another card (that may not work either). Here is the problem. I received the card as a gift awhile ago.

Where am I going to get this magic receipt from? It’s not like I’m asking for a cash reimbursement (which is a justifiable reason to ask for a receipt). I just want 12 months of XBOX Live Gold.

Microsoft is unable to deliver that to me. Despite the fact that Microsoft’s highest-level rep tells me that the card had not been redeemed and should work. Why is this my fault?

Why am I being ask to find a proof of purchase for this? Why isn’t Microsoft providing me with good, honest customer support?

Microsoft has continually been the worst customer support that I have ever experienced. They are unhelpful, slow moving and very bureaucratic.

Maybe I should just return my XBOX 360 and get a PS3 (I already have the block-rocking Wii). I should mention that I’m on my 3rd original XBOX, because XBOXes are made of paper, duct tape and dreams.

Unbelievable.

Debra J. Sanders of the dieing San Francisco Chronicle recently wrote an inane column about why the death of newspapers will be the death of us all.

And I quote:

Blah, blah, blah. You need us (newspaper people, who only write for print) to keep democracy going. Blah, blah, blah we made the mistake of giving away news on the Web. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, people have to pay for news. Blah, blah, blah, you all should be ashamed of the fact that you no longer subscribe to newspapers. Blah, blah, blah.

You want to know why the Chronicle is losing boatloads of money? Because they waste money on columns like this!

Now to debunk the utter crap like Sanders wrote. First, newspapers make money off of ads, not subscriptions and newsstand sales. Get that straight.

I pay less than $0.50 per Sunday issue of The Washington Post. It is delivered to my apartment. Do you really think that huge newspapers, complete with Sunday magazines, delivered to me with record gas prices really cost less than $0.50? Are you out of your mind?

It’s the ads within that make money. And the real problem is that most newspaper ad and business staffs don’t know how to sell ads online. They completely and utterly suck at that part of their jobs.

And why should they be good at selling ads online? Most ad reps are paid heavily by commission. And what ads bring the biggest commission? Huge, national print ads!

What kinds of ads don’t work so well on Web sites? Huge, national banner ads! What kinds of ads have been the back bone of newspapers for years? Classifieds!

And what have newspapers really, really sucked at on the Web? Making quality classified ad systems for the Web. This isn’t rocket science.

Craigslist came about because newspapers willfully neglected classified advertising on the Web. Remember that.

You know why most newspapers are getting crushed on the Web? You really want to know why? Because most employees at newspapers — especially business employees — just don’t get it. They don’t get it.

And you know what? They aren’t going to get it. It’s not going to happen.

The newspaper business needs fresh ideas. It needs people who are willing to take risks and think outside of the box. Writing columns like Sanders does that blame readers for the fall of newspapers is the worst possible use of our time and resources.

If I was the publisher of the Chronicle, my first money-saving order of business would be to fire one Debra J. Sanders.

I’m working on some content today for beatblogging.org about the moderation of user comments on stories and blogs.

I need your help.

How does you news organization handle these moderating duties? Are your comments moderated or unmoderated? If they are moderated, who does it? Do your writers and bloggers interact with posters?

What has worked well for you? What hasn’t worked well?

For point of referrence, this blog has a policy were everyone’s first comment is automatically held for moderation. If it is deemed appropriate, subsequent comments are not held for moderation. There are some other guidelines that garner why a post might get held for moderation as well.

It has worked well for me so far, especially since I actively moderate this blog myself and interact with readers.

Because TwentySomethingJournalist.com just launched.

You know what the worst kind of journalist is? A twenty-something journalist.

You know what kind of journalist doesn’t respect the newspaperman myth? A twenty-something journalist.

You know what kind of journalist doesn’t respect the Paper God? A twenty-something journalist.

You know what kind of journalist is ruining journalism? A twenty-something journalist.

What will the kids these days think of next? A site dedicated to finding innovative ways of modernizing journalism? God Lord.

Or as my cat would say, “Monies, I can has it?”

Yes, it is true, I’m going to start experimenting with Google Ad Sense on this blog.

The main reason is that I want to better understand how much money blogs can make. Journalism needs to be able to make money on the Web.

Let me be clear: I don’t think this blog will generate a lot of revenue. If it can off-set my hosting and domain costs, I’d be very pleased. I think it can do that, but can it make a meaningful amount of money?

I’m more concerned, however, with seeing how monetizable RSS feeds are. Many news organizations have resisted doing full feeds because they fear they can’t make money that way. But those sites also don’t stick any ads in their feeds.

Personally, I get thousands of views a month from RSS. I imagine a popular Web site could get millions. Why not try to monetize that? Instead, traditional media outlets have chosen to offer partial feeds, which are worthless.

Can an RSS feed make money? I’d personally much rather have a full RSS feed with ads in it than a partial feed

But can full RSS feeds generate decent revenue? That’s the question.

As a side note: If this site makes $500 during the remainder of 2008, I’ll donate $100 to the local humane society.

Also, if you see some weird things happening today and the next few days, it’s because I’m tinkering with the site.

The lack of competitive online and mobile products from newspapers has left a huge opening for startups.

And that’s good news for a lot of us.

If you’re an entrepreneurial journalist, maybe you should be happy there is very little competition in the online landscape. Yes, I know that there are some companies like the Las Vegas Sun, Lawrence Journal-World, Washington Post, New York Times and some others doing innovative things online, but the vast majority of newspapers have craptastic Web sites.

Small community papers should be most afraid. These are often the papers with the worst Web sites (some don’t have any and many have barely functional ones). They rarely have good archives, almost never allow comments and discussion and many don’t update in-between print editions.

Plus, the barriers to entry for doing small-town journalism (be it offline or online) are much lower. A basic WordPress installation would be much better than most small-town newspapers’ Web sites.

Someone is going to benefit from the poor effort that most newspapers are putting online. This is a perfect opportunity for entrepreneurs to move in and defeat a weak enemy and give people a better product at the same time.

On May 8th, I made a post about how a previous post from a year earlier had a resurgence in traffic.

I thought that traffic would eventually subside, but I was wrong. In less than 3 months, that post has almost doubled the amount of page views it has:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, blogging has taught so much about how the Web works. When I made that post, I never envisioned that more than a year later it would still be receiving consistent traffic.

The Web works so much different than print. With a daily newspaper, for instance, all the views for a story basically come in one shot on the day an article is published. The day I launched that post (and the day after) are nowhere near the biggest days of traffic for that post.

That post also never had a huge day of traffic, and posts don’t need to generate giant days of traffic to be able to bring in a lot of traffic to a blog in the aggregate. About 90 was the most page views that post ever received in one day, but it has consistently drawn traffic. It has about 1,400 page views now, and in a year, it will probably have between 2,000-3,000.

A couple months ago I made a big SEO push on this blog. I changed the URL structure, put the post titles before my blog name, made sure I wrote headlines with lots of keywords for SEO, developed a site map and made some other changes to the site. I knew that my summer might be busy (I did BeatBlogging.org and Stripes at the same time during June), but I didn’t want my traffic to drop off that much.

And it hasn’t. While, I haven’t been setting records, July will probably be my second-highest month in terms of traffic for the JI. Not bad, considering I don’t post that much anymore, and I haven’t had a big, really popular post in awhile (BeatBlogging.Org is where my best work is these days).

But what I do have is a lot of long tail traffic. 165 posts received traffic yesterday, in large part due to strong SEO. With each post I make (this is No. 301), that long tail traffic gets more robust. Most of my traffic comes in via search engines and referrals right now.

Every journalist should at least experiment with blogging. I have been doing Web work since the the 90s, but blogging has taught me so much about the link economy of the Web. More journalists need to understand that economy.

It’s how the Web works.