[I’m going to try out a new weekly feature – The Week in Review.
Last week we published 33 stories on the Front Page and there were 495 total comments.
With this weekly post I’ll point you back to the great conversations going on and other stories you might have missed in the past week. If you think this is helpful, let me know in the comments and I’ll decide whether or not to make this a regular thing. Thanks — Jonathan]
The Week in Review (April 19 – 23)
33 Front Page stories – 495 comments
“It’s this kind of amateurish, Powerpoint-happy statistical make-believe that make folks wanting a focus on more critical priorities upset.”
– From a comment by “another bicyclists” on a story about bike traffic on the Hawthorne Bridge.
– Our story about the Community Cycling Center’s work to understand and break down the biking color barrier in Portland sparked an interesting dialogue – especially once a commenter named “Black Dude on a Bicycle” chimed in to say, “If you build it, it won’t be long before more “trendy white folks” want to move in, forcing more minorities out.”
– 60 comments piled in our our story asking for feedback on the E Burnside/Couch Couplet project. Noted Portland State Urban Planning Professor Ethan Seltzer got in one of the last words: “My overall impression is that this is now less safe than it used to be… What problem did this solve again?”
– What I thought would be an innocent story titled, How bike traffic has saved our city time and money, is still being Tweeted and discussed. Of particular note is a back-and-forth between commenters and the man behind the stats I used, City of Portland bike coordinator Roger Geller.
– And finally, if you tuned out early on Friday, you might have missed two important stories. The first was about Metro Councilor Robert Liberty, who wants to start fresh on the “monster” that is the CRC project. The second is an exciting partnership of bike advocates who have come together to submit a proposal to occupy the Interstate Firehouse.
That’s it for last week. Now, on with the week ahead.
(Remember, I’m looking for feedback on The Week in Review. Is it useful to you? Share your thoughts in the comments to help me decide whether to make it a weekly feature. Thanks!)
Jonathan,
Currently I check your site every day to take a break from work so, while this ‘Week in Review’ is nice, I probably won’t revisit the stories.
What ever happened to the weekly cartoon you were putting in here? I’m trying to market myself as an illustrator/cartoonist. Just saying…..
Thanks for the feedback Nick.
As for our weekly cartoon. I had to make the tough decision to put that on hiatus… due to not being able to continue to fund it each week. I would absolutely love get it going again and perhaps i should open it up and put a call out for other artists.
At this time, I don’t have the budget to pay for it, but I hope to soon. If you or anyone else out there want to create some ‘toons without cash compensation for now, feel free to drop me a line. jonathan@bikeportland.org
This doesn’t do anything for me really, but I read the site every day as well.
I say skip it and put the extra time/effort into new content… or playing with your kids or whatever.
If there is an interesting discussion in an article I had previously skipped I can usually tell because there will be 20+ comments.
Keep up the good work!
Jonathan,
If you ever watched “This Week in Baseball” back in the day, they had the top 5 Plays of the Week.
You could list the top 5 Posts of the Week?????
I like this feature, especially for stories with additional developments.
Could the weekly cartoon be economically feasible if you paid a small flat fee plus a percent of advertising revenue generated from people clicking on advertisments adjacent to the cartoon? Or is that so small as to be a waste of time, or impossible to track? In theory the best or most controversial cartoons would general more revenue…
I really like the “Week in Review” because it allows me to stay up to date on what’s going on on BikePortland without reading each story.
I’d really like to see monthly reviews. These reviews could be titled “Bicycle Advocacy in May,” or “BikePortland in June,” I feel that these would give really good barometers for how bicycle advocacy/culture/movement is moving. You could even top it off “Sam Adams-Style” with a “Year in Review.”
I also am a daily reader of BP, so a review of the previous weeks stories is not a big draw for me.
However, if there is interesting discussion in the comments of a previous story, I would want to know about that. Often, I read a post soon enough that not many have had time to make comments. I almost never to back to read comments from a story after I’ve already read what is there.
Posting a summary of comments from a story probably wouldn’t accurately convey their content. But perhaps you can list 3-4 back-and-forth quotes from a notable comment stream. Your goal would be to make me interested enough to want to go back to that story and review the comments.
News on which articles drew the most comments would be interesting to me as well. But then I like to read the analytics on my FB page to trend the content to the demographic that seems to be most interested.
I like it. I don’t always get to check the page daily… nor check back to see what stories developed into heated debates in the comments.
I found the above post much more useful than I was expecting.
I try to check BP daily, but sometimes I miss a story– and I love that you’ve pointed out some stories from last week that have a good discussion going in the comments! I find that sometimes the comments can be as informative as the story they’re attached to, or as entertaining.
I like what you’ve done with this story because I don’t always see the way that conversations develop in the comments for the stories you do. Highlighting interesting/relevant comments helps to make the story fresh.
I much prefer this “Week in Review” story to your weekly “Monday Roundup” stories.
prof seltzer may have had nearly the last word on the burnside/couch couplet, but i do not agree with his point (to the effect that where sandy detours onto couch you need to merge across two lanes within one block to make a left at 12th). you are already in the right lane, so you need only to merge across one lane, and you have an entire block to do it in. not really a problem — or if it is, maybe you should take the left lane on sandy before the light.
what is needed on couch (and not really on these bike boulevards) are sharrows. does PBoT have plans to put these in or not? inquiring minds want to know.
I vote yes, I like it!: I might represent a large-ish group of people who appreciate this week-in-review idea. (Who probably don’t comment here btw). Since I don’t check the site every day, but want to keep up on bike news generally, this lets me know if something major and/or particularly interesting to me has or is happening.
Thanks for asking!