As one of 17 members of the Journal Register Company's ideaLab, I am tasked with trying to teach digital skills across our newspaper staff, the Connecticut cluster of newspapers and our company as a whole.

The most recent challenge for the ideaLab is to complete a project in the next 30 days that teaches a skill to our co-workers. I have chosen to set up all my staff members with a company Twitter account and to teach them how to use it.

First, I will start with my 9 newsroom employees. Then, we will move on to the advertising department. I will teach them how to shrink URLs using programs like Bitly or Tinyurl, and I will share how they can each learn to grow an audience of followers, thus increasing traffic to our website on a regular basis.

I am also hoping to get some of our in-house Twitter experts to come to Middletown to teach a brief class in how to best utilize Twitter for business purposes. This class will be free and open to the public - a date to be announced soon.

The next goal is to assist staff at our sister publication in Torrington with the same steps, hopefully by utilizing my newly trained staff members as teachers. Ideally, a Twitter account will be assigned each new employee who starts in our company, just as an e-mail account or computer access would be set up.

You can follow our staff members here:

www.twitter.com/vsundqvist
www.twitter.com/KellyOleksiwMP
www.twitter.com/WaltGogolyaMP
www.twitter.com/CrystalDeyWHN
www.twitter.com/CMichalewiczMP
www.twitter.com/JeffMillMP
www.twitter.com/erikaheyer

(Twitter accounts for Photo Editor Catherine Avalone and Barbara Douglas coming soon!)

And you can also follow our regular Middletown Press accounts:
www.twitter.com/Middletownpress (@Middletownpress)
www.twitter.com/MPsportseditor (@MPsportseditor)

Sometimes I've very surprised when I see what videos make our Top 5 most popular list each week. This week, a video about a bridge and a creek had the most views (between March 7 and March 14).

Meanwhile, the video about a bullied Middletown teen meeting a famous boxer didn't even make the Top 5. Perhaps it was just because it was posted later on in the week and it will do better in next week's tally. Whatever the case, I think you should all see it, so I am posting the video below.

A month ago, The Middletown Press was asked to send a staff member to help teach a group of nonprofit community leaders how to write and submit material for the news media. We were also asked to provide a write-up that people could take home with them.

Since we value all submissions we get from our audience, but because we have limited space, limited staff and limited amount of time to spend on editing and selecting submissions, I want to share these guidelines with all of you. My goal is that all of you will eventually feel confident sending us press releases, calendar listings, photos and small write-up from various places across Middlesex County - especially from places our staff rarely has time to visit.

How to write/submit press releases

• Assign one media person in charge of sending out releases – don’t have multiple people sending them out as it can get very confusing.
• Send all releases by e-mail – don’t use fax machines or regular mail as someone would then have to retype what you already typed.
• Include a specific town – preferably in the subject line of the e-mail or the first sentence. If you say “Middletown resident” it will immediately get picked up by a responsible Middletown reporter/editor. If you say “area group” or “local student” and we can’t figure out what the local angle is in the first sentence or two, your press release will most likely get deleted.
• Don’t send text attachments unless necessary – it just creates an extra step for the person on the receiving end vs. including the text in the body of your e-mail.
• Photos should be sent as attachments – All photos should be sent in .jpg format. Make sure to include – in the body of the e-mail – the names of all people in the photo. Do not embed photos in a Word document or in the body of the e-mail.
• Include all the basic information – Who, what, when, where and a phone number in case people have questions.
• Don’t offer too much extraneous information – If it was a snowy day, was that really relevant to your event? One option is to provide a shorter version, like a calendar item, and a longer version for optional use in the same e-mail, clearly indicated as two separate items.
• Write the release in third person – avoid using words like “we” and “us” and “our meeting.” Instead say “The group will meet at…” or “It has four new members this year.”
• Avoid subjectivity at all cost – i.e. “This is a wonderful event” or “a good time was had by all.” Adjectives in general are unnecessary (“great,” “wonderful,” “beautiful,” “powerful”) and will most likely get cut.
• Cut out the extra zeros – Times should be written like this: 4 p.m. or 4:30 p.m. Ticket prices were $8 or $10.50. There is no need for zeros – zeros mean nothing.
• Sending corrections – If you need to send a corrected press release, re-send the entire notice but indicate at the top what has been corrected in case the submission has already been used.
• Following up – If your release is timely, follow up with a phone call to the local newsroom, but don’t expect a return phone call if everything is OK.
• Learn to take “No” for an answer – if your event is not in our local coverage area, it will most likely not be included. It’s nothing personal; it’s just what makes the most sense to our audience.
• Spread the word – If someone posts a story about your group or event on the web, Facebook or Twitter, share it with your friends and other people in your organization by reposting, retweeting or just e-mailing a link to someone.
• REMEMBER: The easier you make it for the local media, the likelier it is that they will include what you have submitted.

From March 1 to March 7, our most viewed video was from the fire in Portland on Fairview Street filmed by reporter Jeff Mill. The fire went on for hours and displaced multiple families. Smoke could be seen (and smelled) from blocks away, and multiple area departments assisted in finally getting the blaze under control.



You can check out our other top videos from this week by CLICKING HERE.

If you are a frequent visitor to www.middletownpress.com, you may have noticed that we changed the way we monitor online comments today around noon. This change was made after multiple requests by readers and community members, in addition to in-depth discussions among the staff on this topic over the past few months.

The Middletown Press no longer allows online comments to appear its site immediately. All comments must now be approved by a moderator before they are posted.

The Middletown Press and its sister publications, The Register Citizen in Torrington and the New Haven Register, are continuously discussing comment systems and their benefit for the community.

We get hundreds of comments every day, and it happens 24-7. Led by some of the more controversial topics of the day, our story comment system has become a place for the community to engage in a continuous, back-and-forth debate with each other.

It has helped “enemies” better understand each other’s viewpoint. It has brought new information to light. It has given frustrated constituents an outlet and a gathering place. All of those positive things were in danger — some would say, long past the point — of being lost in the nasty, offensive, abusive, personal comments that a small minority of readers were making.

The old system allowed story comments to go up immediately, and relied on fellow readers to “report abuse.” When those reports were made, offensive comments were taken down, usually within an hour. Readers still have a chance to “report abuse” on any comment they see on our site that they deem offensive in any way, and we encourage this participation.

With the new system where staff is screening comments before they go up, however, we hope to eliminate the nastiest comments on the site. The tradeoff is a momentary-to-slightly-longer delay before everyone’s comments go up.

Our thinking is that it’s less onerous than requiring readers to register an e-mail address and remember a login and password every time they visit the site. When requiring registration, it is also possible for users to circumvent the system by creating a false e-mail address and a false name, defeating the purpose.

But we are not ruling out a system like that down the road, or any system. We’d like your thoughts on this. Please leave a comment below, send us a letter to the editor at letters@middletownpress.com, or e-mail me directly at editor@middletownpress.com.

Our sister publication, The Register Citizen, has announced its March lineup of classes. While the classes will officially be held in Torrington, anyone can sign up to take the class online for free.

The following classes will be offered:

Tuesday, March 8, 7-8 p.m. – Genealogy Research with Richard Pope

Thursday, March 10, 6-8 p.m. – How to Use Twitter with Cindy Donaldson

Tuesday, March 15, 6-7:30 p.m. – Blogging 101 with Kaitlyn Yeager

Wednesday, March 16, 1-2 p.m. – What Can Google Do? with Time Ingle

Tuesday, March 22, 6-8 p.m. – How to Use Facebook with Cindy Donaldson

Wednesday, March 23, 2-3:30 p.m. – Blogging 101 with Kaitlyn Yeager

Friday, March 25, 3-4 p.m. – What Can Google Do? with Chris Stanley

Monday, March 28, 6-7 p.m. – What Can Google Do? with Andy Stettler

Tuesday, March 29, 6-8 p.m. – How to Use Linkedin with Cindy Donaldson

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR CLASSES