he fourth class of Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Fellows will pursue innovation and entrepreneurship in start-up journalism, new online revenue opportunities, research to improve the design and delivery of news, and networking to more quickly and efficiently share innovation in journalism.

An explosion of online news sources in recent years has not produced a corresponding increase in reporting, particularly quality local reporting, a federal study of the media has found. Coverage of state governments and municipalities has receded at such an alarming pace that it has left government with more power than ever to set the agenda and have assertions unchallenged, concluded the study, which is to be released on Thursday.

A Primer on Deploying Google Analytics Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version Send to friend PDF version Posted on June 07, 2011 Google Analytics (GA) can be a powerful tool for tracking the effectiveness of journalists to produce content for the widest audience possible online. At its most basic level, GA is a tool that provides statistics in near real-time on user engagement, the amount of time a visitor spends on a site, how many pages they viewed and where the visitor headed next. There are also advanced techniques that can expand upon these basic questions to expose journalists to detailed patterns of content consumption. There are a handful of approaches to placing Google’s tracking code on a site. For basic tracking, it can be as simple as pasting the Google provided tracking code into the

of the main template on all of the site pages. Depending upon the CMS that your site is built on, there are a number of modules and plug-ins that manage the placement of a basic tracking tag site wide. Fortunately, there are effective plug-ins/modules available for Drupal and Wordpress, that provide additional functionality for detailed tracking of a visitors engagement. For a few examples of deeper integration of GA, see the case studies for The Huffington Post and WNYC. How to properly deploy the Google Analytics tracking script in your template pages If you do not have one already, you’ll need to create a new Google Analytics account. Once you’ve created a new profile for your site, you’ll be presented with a snippet of code that includes a unique Web Property ID specific to your account. The tracking code example below is similar to the one provided by Google. It uses Google’s asynchronous tracking code. An additional feature included in the example, not included in the standard snippet provided by Google, allows a site to track the time it takes for each page to load (which is a useful feature in trouble shooting site performance issues). The recommended placement for this snippet is right above the closing tag in the header of each page. Alternative methods of placement for the snippet can be found in this Asynchronous Tracking Usage Guide. Once the tag is properly placed on each page of the site, you should check the status of the account to verify that data is being received. You can check the status by clicking on “Analytics Settings” in the upper left corner of the Google Analytics page, then click the “Edit” link next to the profile for your site. On the Profile Settings page you’ll see a link to “(Check Status ?)” on the top/right side of the content block. In the event that the profile is not yet receiving data, that link should provide you with further information about how to resolve any issues. Annotations Using Google Analytics can be an effective way of recognizing when efforts to increase engagement and audience size have worked or failed. Google Analytics offers the ability to attach annotations to individual dates to keep track of any major changes you make to the site. This can be an extremely useful way to track the impact of design changes, content partnerships or the publishing of significant articles or posts. Insights The following is a short list of metrics that will be useful to keep track of on a consistent basis when evaluating the effectiveness of your web site: Traffic Sources > Referrals https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/referring_sources Tracking the changes in volume of traffic from different sources and social media efforts. (i.e. Are more or less people discovering our content from Facebook, Twitter, Google News?) Content > Content By Title https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/content_titles What were the most consumed articles during a given time? Visitors > Visitor Loyalty https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/loyalty How devoted is my audience to coming back to the web site and how often? Content > Content Drilldown > Navigation Summary https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/content_detail_navigation How did visitors find a specific page and where did they go when they left that page? Visitors > Maps Overlay https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/maps Where are my visitors geographically? Visitors > Browsers and OS https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/os_browsers What browsers and or mobile devices are my visitors using to read my content?

Even as legacy newsrooms thrash around and try to save the unsalvageable old model all the while cloaking themselves in a false “digital first” strategy, there is all kinds of innovative thinking going on out there. And some of the most innovative — dare I say inspirational — thinkers are women. If you want to be inspired, look at Debbie Galant and Liz George of Baristanet, who have created a community news site that is both important to its community and profitable. Or spend some time listening to Tracy Record talk about the role West Seattle Blog plays in its community — and just as importantly, listen to other journalism entrepreneurs talk about the inspiration they draw from Tracy’s example. If it is accountability journalism that lights you up, then go get inspired by Rita Hibbard at Investigate West, whose passion for investigative reporting led her out of a legacy newsroom and into a role as journalism entrepreneur. If you want to get very smart very fast about technology and community-building, just spend an evening at a dinner table with Lisa Williams of Placeblogger and Susan Mernit of Oakland Local and listen to them talk about how they see community news and technology tools evolving in a million different ways. And if you want an inspiring vision of mission, partnership and collaboration, go hang at out at the St. Louis Beacon and watch editor and founder Margie Freivogel and general manager Nicole Hollway at work.