On iguanas and two-faced cats
Oct 24th, 2007 by Dave Olson
I spent most of today at the New England New Media Association fall conference at the Quincy Marriott. The daylong discussion centered around how to bring the same sense of community to the Web that we traditionally have done in the print edition.
As it often happens at these events, things got a little odd when the roomful of journalists sat down for lunch. A colleague from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and I were chatting when he made a confession. Of all the fine work the T&G has done on its site — a full-length pension series as well as pieces on the United Way Day of Caring and a memorial to a fallen firefighter to name a few — the most popular video by far was of a two-faced cat in one of their suburban towns. The video is still the most popular on the T&G site a year after it was posted.
We had a less bizarre but almost as popular story here last week, where a group from the Animal Rescue League of Boston coaxed a two-foot iguana from a tree in Salem while dozens of neighbors looked on.
A small story? Maybe. But it got a bigger response than anything else we did last week.
Here’s what reader John Bannick said:
Bruno Matarazzo’s story on the iguana rescue is worth a subscription to the
Salem News by itself.
He managed to combine a local story, that didn’t involve bad news, with
humor that would never get past the stodgy downtown editors.
Stories that are entertaining. What a concept.
Keep up the good work!”
There’s a lesson here: We stodgy editors need to listen to our readers more if we want to build community on the Web or in print. Newspapers are made up of more than crime stories and four-part series. They also need small slices of life, the things that make it easier to get through the day.
Here’s a special bonus — Bruno thought to shoot video of the rescue. Make sure to read the Thursday Salem News for an update on the iguana’s condition (don’t tell us we haven’t learned our lesson).