We moved the needle on ATHENSi.com

The last week of January was a big week for our journalism class. We are focusing on increasing Web traffic on ATHENSi.com. We are thinking of journalists as facilitators of a diverse conversation within a community.

We had three days with over 400 unique visitors to ATHENSi.com! On the big snow day, when Ohio University was closed due to weather (for the first time in 10 years), ATHENSi.com had almost 600 visitors.

Let's keep the conversation going.

This is what we've been doing and what we think about it. Check it out.

What we like about ATHENSi.com

This video features the students enrolled in the advanced journalism on the Web course, which is helping to upgrade ATHENSi.com during the winter quarter.

Group photo of "coaches"

Here are the students in the J415/515 class, ready and willing to provide coaching on getting YOUR content onto ATHENSi.com.

Class podcast for day 1

ATHENSi.com is a course in the JSchool one quarter out of the year. This is the quarter (Winter 08-09). We meet only on Fridays, 9-noon. Our first meeting was last Friday. Here's the podcast of the class session.

The podcast begins with Bob Stewart, the course instructor, introducing the class to the approach that will be taken during the quarter. Email Stewart at stewartr@ohio.edu if you have any feedback or questions.

Get read on ATHENSi.com!

2009 will be an important year for ATHENSi.com... We starting the year with a journalism class full of students interested in online journalism. The main goal: make ATHENSi.com an even more robust and useful Web site for the community of Athens, Ohio.

The goal: help Athenians to reach other members in our community by means of ATHENSi.com. I spoke yesterday at the Rotary Club to explain the process and the goals. Listen to podcast of my talk at Rotary Club.

I've already added two blogs as a result of yesterday's talk:

1. rotaractathens.blogspot.com, from the Rotaract of Athens group, will show up in ATHENSi.com's community section.

2. themesathens.blogspot.com, a blog for the Athens Themes store, is included in ATHENSi.com's marketplace section.

McDargh CD hits thankful note

Peg McDargh is no stranger to Athenians. Nor is her fight against cancer. And it probably won't come as a surprise to those who know her that she's taking a thankful approach to her remaining days among us.

She's just released a CD, "A Christmas Thank You from Peg," recorded in November on her Steinway baby grand. I recently interviewed Peg for this blog post, and recorded some of her playing as well.

Listening to the CD has been a pleasure, and it accomplishes exactly what she wants it to do in that it calms our spirit. During these hectic, difficult times, we need more spirit-calming. So it is we who should be grateful. And of course, when it comes to knowing Peg, we are beyond all measure grateful.

New navigation aid added to athensi.com

We've made a minor (but hopefully very helpful) change to the athensi.com web page today. In the right hand column is a new navigation aid, with all of the non-news categories listed in alphabetical order. They include:

» BLOGS
» COMMUNITY
» EAT ATHENS
» ENTERTAINMENT
» GOOGLE: ATHENS
» GOOGLE: OU
» LIBRARY NEWS
» MARKETPLACE (formerly "business")
» OU NEWS
» OPINION
» PHOTO GALLERY
» PODCASTS
» SPORTS
» WORLDLINK

Unless users scrolled down the page on athensi.com they may not have even known that these categories exist. And a couple of them are relatively new additions to site. GOOGLE: ATHENS and GOOGLE: OU bring in content that Google News automatically finds about Athens, Ohio and Ohio University, respectively.

Users may also have noticed that the weather information has been changed. We've scaled it back considerably to allow the navigation section to be seen "above the fold."