I'm a Shining Star!

It's about a month late but I have been recognized by corporate for my work! I've never gotten a trophy before... certificates, yes, but not trophy.

 

Here's why:

 

LAURA GRIFFITH, The Telegraph, Alton, Ill.

Laura Griffith, Alton's Web news editor, is our Shining Star. She has been a leader in our transformation, spearheading the video and multimedia effort.

 

Laura has trained staff on posting to the Web, blogging and shooting and posting video. She holds weekly meetings to update staff on how The Telegraph is doing on the Web. She gathers stats from corporate and explains Web traffic to fellow staffers in a way they can use to improve.

 

Here's what else she has accomplished since becoming Web news editor:

 

— Laura oversees the posting of Web content, making sure to include links, maps and other multimedia. She helped extend reach on the Web by creating and maintaining a Telegraph MySpace page, by creating a Twitter page and feeds that pull in our latest stories, by creating a Facebook page and application for The Telegraph, by Digging stories to get them out to readers.

 

— She has created a number of widgets at widgetbox.com that pull RSS feeds from our site and our blogs to our MySpace page. She has gone so far as to put those widgets on other outside sites and monitor hits on those.

 

— She has actively worked to "friend" and recruit people to "follow" us on these social networking sites. We have at least a new user or two per day. Laura posted news stories at thetelegraph.com to explain new features and invite readers to make the most of them online. She started a blog called Insider's Look that is another way to tell readers about these features. And she has started a "how-to" video series online to teach people visually how to use new features.

 

—She started a Telegraph page at YouTube.com for posting videos to our blogs until WordPress and Brightcove can get along.

 

—She started working on promotion videos or little commercial shorts we will be able to add to our news videos when we want to promote a feature on the site. She has put a promotional Telegraph commercial on our MySpace page.

 

Laura has started a weekly Web cast called First Edition where she reads upcoming headlines to tease the online and print editions. Also, she is active on Pluck and interacts with users and encourages staffers to do so. She monitors comments and removes those that violate the user agreement.

 

Laura has worked to revamp the navigation bar at thetelegraph.com and has worked to make the site easier to navigate and more user-friendly.

 

— Nominated by Dan Brannan, Editor, The Telegraph, Alton, Ill.

 

Yay for me.