Getting it right in Kansas

Poynter's E-Media Tidbits has an interesting entry today on the latest effort by the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, a small but converged news operation that's leading this business in innovative thinking. The latest is "Game," an online section devoted to the town's Little League and other recreational baseball leagues.

Lawrence is doing it with two interns hired for the summer to cover the games. It sounds a lot like what I posted here on April 15:

But let's think a minute. What about a moblog at your local rec center on those game nights? At my local center, where until this year I coached, there were eight or 10 games going on a night. If you're an editor and you want to bolster traffic to your site, why not arrange with a few people to moblog all those tykes' games. You don't think mom and dad and grandpa and grandma will be e-mailing those links far and wide -- and that puts more eyeballs on your advertisers.
Sure there will be management issues. So you work with a select few people and put in some parameters. You'll have to decide if it's worth the work back in your shop to increase your traffic.

Check out the Lawrence site. It's good to see someone really thinking this through. In fact, I'll bet a pint of S.C. barbecue (the mustard-based stuff), that this is one of Lawrence's most highly trafficked sites.