Tag Archives: forum

Weather photos always welcomed

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The hail that fell around Detroit Lakes and the intense flooding in Duluth, Minn., the past few days reminds us to remind you to send us your weather photos.

The Duluth News Tribune highlighted several photos Wednesday shot by residents. Those photos were also posted on Twitter, Facebook and various other web and social media sites.

We also extend the invitation for videos, too.

While inforum.com and areavoices.com can handle smaller file sizes, the larger the photo you send, the better the quality. That also increases the chance we’ll consider it for the print edition of The Forum.

As usual, we’ll give credit where credit is due. So please include your name and phone number if you send in images, as well as a description of the photo. You know, the time, date, place sort of thing. Once in a while, we’ll need to contact the photographer for additional information.

And remember, if you’re out during severe weather, please stay safe.

Unless otherwise directed on our website, you can send images to web@forumcomm.com.

Video views through the roof during cornfield manhunt

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The Forum strives to be very transparent when it comes to sharing our page views. Each Friday, our multimedia producer Ryan Babb collects and distributes a blog for public consumption showing our most- and least-read stories, as well as inforum.com’s and areavoices.com’s weekly numbers.

On Wednesday, more than 53,000 pageviews resulted from the developing story on the manhunt for Joseph Megna in a rural Tower City, N.D., cornfield. That number that was bolstered by our story-sharing ability with the Jamestown Sun and the Grand Forks Herald websites later in the day.

Our reporters and photographers are becoming increasingly better equipped to file photographs and video on location. It was on display Wednesday when photo chief Michael Vosburg and reporter Mike Nowatzki returned several video files and still photos that we began to post immediately.

Our raw video of the search, and later when Megna spoke from the back of a law enforcement SUV after his capture, collected more than 23,500 views, totaling more than 25,300 minutes. That’s 18 days worth of viewing.

 

 

A note to inforum readers about the email verification process

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Inforum readers will see a one-time email verification message this week when clicking on an article.

Users will be prompted to verify their account information on the screen before receiving an email confirmation message.

The account verification screen will look like this:

The process, happening across all Forum Communications Co. news websites, is necessary to keep our user database up to date.

For more information, click here for the FAQ.

Inforum support page: http://forumcomm.assistly.com/

Alerts: Too much or too little?

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I was chatting with one of our news interns this past week about how the internet, specifically our website inforum.com, has changed the way we gather and distribute news.

I summed it up with the word: interaction.

It’s that interaction that makes it a win-win situation for readers of inforum and ourselves. We instantly discover hot topics within our stories through pageviews, changing the way we cover and move stories on the site. We also solicit responses from our readers for future stories and we’re able to alert you to major news stories to you wherever you are with email and text alerts on your mobile device.

We also frequently use Twitter and Facebook to help distribute stories and other messages to our readers.

There’s some news organizations who do more with those social networking sites. I’d like to think we’re in the middle. I, perhaps like you, like to keep my Twitter, Facebook and email accounts rolling with the majority of those posts dealing with my personal friends messages and not be dominated by news headlines. Perhaps I don’t always need to know in an email blast, that there’s a cookie fundraiser two months from now.

However, I applaud my colleagues here for firing out text alerts when severe weather is approaching. No matter where I am (in the car, on a golf course or perhaps just sitting in my living room), I appreciate an alert so I absolutely need to know its time to find better shelter.

I subscribe to many news sites. (Gasp! Not all of them in the Forum Communications Co. family.) I also believe, with as many news organizations and reporters that I follow across the United States, that I’m receiving a good balance. I’m just as quick to subscribe to someone’s alerts and feeds as I am to flush them from my lists. Too much and I get turned off; too little and I wonder if they’re holding up their end of the bargain.

So, that leads me to this question:

If you are a text/email alert or social media subscriber to inforum.com, would you like us to increase or decrease our pace?

Let me know what you think.

 

Give us your feedback on larger featured content, new mobile site

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On a Droid2

FARGO – Today we introduced larger photos to highlight our key stories on the top of inforum.com as well as across our other Forum Communications Co. websites.

What do you think about the new look?

We have also rolled out a new inforum mobile site this week and users of an iPhone, iTouch, iPad or Android device should benefit from the new experience. The site can be accessed now at mobile.inforum.com.

The site’s layout conforms to the width of the device in either landscape or portrait orientation. Categories, leading off with recent updates, are sectioned off and allow visitors to see the top headlines in each category.

There will also be a bookmark bubble on Apple-based devices that show the user how to add the newspaper shortcut favicon to the desktop. This will show up a few times until the user decides to add it or go away if simply ignored.

The HTML5-based site site also allows for a quick leap over to our Areavoices blogs.

The marketplace maps also utilize geolocation, if the user decides to use that function to show different advertising offers near their location.

FCC Interactive product development manager Chris Welle, project manager Zac Echola, programmer Tim Hanson and graphic artist Kim Le helped develop the new site.