The end of the 2008 election season wrapped up a piece of my online obsession - SmartDecision08.com. Along with helping keep that site running with content from KOMU.com, KBIA.org and the ColumbiaMissourian.com I also decided to turn the partnership up a notch and produce a multi-newsroom webcast. We ended up also including a new internationally-focused newsroom called Newsy.com into the webcast as well. So for four hours we worked with content from four newsrooms and conducted interviews with participants in a big non-partisan watch party we created to coincide with the webcast. It was pretty fantastic to be able to combine multiple newsrooms AND the community all into one event. I’m proud of the dozens and dozens of people who helped make the event happen. I’m exhausted from it all still.

I actually had to run out of town the very next day for family reasons so I haven’t been able to truly digest the many things we were able to do since SmartDecision08.com launched a year ago. I don’t want to see the site die - so I have to come up with ways to let it continue to grow even without any funding. The great thing about RSS feeds is the content continues to flow, so I’m trying to conceptualize a way to help the website follow political news and issues even if I’m not overseeing it often.

In the meantime I’m about to go halfway around the world to train some journalists in China. I’ve never had this kind of opportunity before and I am excited and nervous to go. I’m planning to spend some quite, focused time preparing for the trip. When I get back, I hope to spend more time digesting and sharing the lessons learned from the SmartDecisoin08.com project.

With all of the advances in technology, it’s sometimes hard to remember the “old days.”  Today an article in the New York Times says a lot about why media can’t forget the traditional delivery methods outright.  The NYT reminds us all about the Iowa caucus.  Reporter Julie Bosman reports how most people who are going to participate in the caucus don’t visit candidate websites.  I’m working on a massive election project with the goal of providing my market a “one stop shop” of election material.  It’s hard to imagine anyone who would pass up the opportunity to visit the site.  But there are a lot of people.  Since I’m in the middle of Missouri, there are a lot of people who are still on dial up or don’t even have access to the web!  The numbers are changing rapidly, but I know there will be many people in a year who will need the stories we report on the air and the election material in the newspaper and on the radio.  The old way of learning about the election season will remain important for many, many people.