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8/7/2019 ben franklin contest entry

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Nomination of The Mercury newsroom for The BenjaminFranklin Award

The transition from a legacy newspaper to a digital-first multimedia company has been

played out at The Mercury with energy, gusto, and most of all, an unwavering emphasis

on quality journalism. The best example of this was our yearlong efforts to change teendriving laws in Pennsylvania as a result of several crash deaths that devastated local

school communities. We took a traditional print three-part indepth series approach to the

issue and expanded it with video, online links to other sources, and a Facebook group

engaging teens and parents with a pledge for safe driving practices. We also expanded theseries in print, republishing as a Newspapers in Education special section paid for by

sponsors of safe-driving initiatives. Those sponsors, including the county district

attorney’s office and AAA, then used our section in their own educational outreachefforts, presenting the message to more than 10,000 students in about 100 high schools.

Our crusading journalism is not limited to special topics. Day in and day out, our reporting on issues as diverse as rental rules in the borough of Pottstown, the effects of

drug dealing and crime on revitalization, exploding manhole covers caused by the salty

assault on winter weather, the conversion of a landmark state institution for the mentally

retarded into a haunted house capitalizing on fear of the mentally challenged, loopholesin commercial driver licensing regulations that caused a bus driver to be involved in a

second fatal crash, and the foibles of local government are presented to our audience

every day. In 2010, our storytelling expanded and changed greatly. Our staff has involvedreaders by asking questions on Facebook and utilizing those comments to change the

direction of stories. The reaction to proposed rental rules, for example, resulted in a

changed emphasis in the reporting and ultimately changed the results.

Traditionally, The Mercury has been known for outstanding coverage of breaking news

and local sports, and this year has not changed that focus – just expanded it onto digital platforms. Those local high school players now star in Athlete of the Week videos; a car

crash or fire is reported as it unfolds, updating as much as 6 to 10 times on the website

and rolling out on Twitter and Facebook with minute-by-minute reporting. Our video

clips of fires have been among the most viewed in the company during this past year. Thevideo of a shirtless father talking to us on a street corner at 3 a.m. about his fears as he

shot at an intruder earlier that evening in his home is still being talked about in our town.

We informed at local election time, livestreaming 30-minute interviews with 21

candidates for office and promoting the videos up till Election Day. Our page views wereat a high the day before Election Day, as viewers came back to check out candidates.

We inspired through feature stories, including Sports Editor Don Seeley’s profile of a

local Vietnam veteran and Congressional Medal of Honor winner who died last summer.

Seeley received emails from around the world after that column ran, as it was linked andshared among veterans and others.



We chastised and encouraged, helping Pottstown successfully pull off a community Open

Doors event on Sept. 11 and shaming the local school board into allowing a girl to

participate in her high school commencement after they banned her for missing arehearsal. (She was absent because she was working that day at a camp for mentally

challenged students.)

In every one of these examples, 2011 brought new avenues into our reporting – from the

scene, with video, digital first and print last. Print may be what we do last, but we take no

less pride in the results.

Our front page was chosen six times last year as one of the Top 10 for that day by

Newseum.

Our editorials have been copied among state legislators supporting teen driving, quoted in

the First Suburbs coalition effort to gain traction for the problems of older towns, and

pointed to by state groups for our understanding and analysis of education funding and

the need for property tax reform in Pennsylvania.

In Entertainment, we developed a social network identity for our weekender, Time Out,and doubled page views and increased Twitter and Facebook following by 400 percent.

In Sports, we engaged readers to tweet scores from games for Friday night football and

were among the most involved areas in @phillyscores.

Our Start Here promotion was a mini-billboard on a business card of all things digital.

Our coordination with advertising and promotions resulted in a successful Adam Lambert

ticket giveaway that brought hundreds of thousands of online entrants from around the

world, as well as a Bartender of the Year contest, enhanced Dining Guide with videosand expanded Readers Choice with videos.

Our Community Media Lab is a branded group of bloggers, Town Square, which bringstogether voices ranging from a borough official who writes poetry to a bike shop owner

to a trout fisherman. One of the bloggers who started under our tutelage has become an

influential voice in our town. “Positively Pottstown” has been instrumental in community

initiatives from events fund-raising to borough planning to parks development.

We are a small newsroom – only four reporters on news side – and we exist in a graying,

former industrial town on a fast-track corridor to Philadelphia. Our goals, and our successes, have married those two factors. We use a rail in print every day to direct

readers to the features of our website and social network sites, mixing it up for holiday

features and for “snow days.” We capitalize on #traffic to engage our readers on the road,and we push information out to them in every way available to us.

A reader sent us a message last week that he saw our daily “hot jobs” tweet, followed the

link, applied for the job and got it, ending a stretch of unemployment.



He just wanted to say thanks. We savor those victories.