This wonderful post from Nieman Labs last month chronicles the hectic lives of AnnArborChronicle.com’s editor and publisher, and offers a 10-point overview of their working lives.
It doesn’t seem as if they have a non-working life. Which is why I hope these local niche news sites form networks someday to share news, information and advertising resources.
Here are points 5, 6, and 7. Check out the post for the rest of the story.
5. Google News Alerts every morning. Has any other service been adopted by every newsroom in the country with so
little fanfare? The Chronicle is no exception; each morning, Morgan selects a handful of items from her 12 news alerts for phrases like “university of michigan” and “washtenaw county” for two news-from-out-of-town aggregators.
6. More than 20 public meetings a month. No, Mr. Simon, most local-news blogs don’t staff zoning hearings. But many do, and the Chronicle is one. When they launched, Morgan and Askins built their monthly schedule around a list of meetings the Ann Arbor News wasn’t covering. Today, exhaustive summaries of Ann Arbor’s Public Market Advisory Commission, Public Art Commission and Downtown Development Authority meetings are the Chronicle’s bread and butter, filling almost half its editorial time.
7. Two sets of eyes on every full story. A 5,000-word meeting story might take six hours to write and two to edit, Morgan said.
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