One in an occasional series of reports from inside McClatchy’s newsrooms.
By Jeff Kleinman, Miami Herald Day Editor
A terrifying tornado dances between skyscrapers in downtown Miami as office workers fear the worst. A smoke-filled passenger jet crashes deep in the Everglades muck. Snow falls in Miami. A beloved ice cream parlor in business since the ’50s celebrates another milestone.
We’re publishing these big stories right now. Yet our newsroom is strangely quiet. Reporters aren’t scrambling to cover them. Photographers aren’t grabbing equipment and running out the door.
How can that be?
These stories, and many more like them, are from the past. We’re taking our readers on a trip back in time to the Miami Herald’s original coverage of major local news events, pulled straight from our archives.
Like many newsrooms, the Herald owns an invaluable resource that has gathered dust for years: the morgue, in newsroom parlance. Our trove of stories and photographs stretches back decades. Until recently, the only people who got to peek into that vault were reporters and editors needing background for new articles.
Now, readers get to relive Miami history through our original coverage, prepped anew for a digital world.
So, when a restaurant opens or closes in Miami, we’re able to pull together a package of old and beloved restaurants. When others are writing “anniversary stories” about Apollo 11 or the crazy Miami twister or the unbelievable snowfall in Florida, we’re publishing the original stories, photos and video.
And people are responding. They’re reading and commenting like mad as we stir their memories of years gone by.
Why are we doing it?
To attract and, we hope, retain readers fascinated by South Florida’s rich, entertaining and chaotic past.
How are we doing it?
— We keep a spreadsheet of important events, such as the day Eastern Airlines filed for bankruptcy. (Institutional memory is very helpful for this.)
— We keep the format simple: a catchy “remember this” type of headline, a short intro, three or four original pieces from the archives and photos and video.
— It takes some time to find the pieces and the pics, put them into the content management system and write the intro.
— In addition to anniversaries of major news events, we’re putting together evergreen archive stories on topics and places: roadways, tragedies, beloved stores and long-gone restaurants, as well as historic events that people might not know about or might have forgotten.
Here’s what we have learned so far:
— Assigning “anniversary stories” in the newsroom can be a waste of time. Reporters tend to rehash a lot of background and add just a dash of fresh memories. We discovered this when a newly done look back at the shuttle explosion on the 30th anniversary wasn’t viewed nearly as much as our original coverage from Cape Canaveral. We also have published original stories on memorable crimes on key anniversary dates rather than rehashing the details in new stories.
— The right distribution is as important as the archive story. That means going beyond just posting to our website and socialing on the newsroom streams. It means finding Facebook groups that will click and engage. For instance, when we put together an archive package about one of Miami’s earliest and longest running children’s TV programs, we posted it on several “Miami Back When” Facebook groups. Those posts got hundreds and hundreds of likes and comments.
— Posting an anniversary story a few weeks in advance gives us more time to promote it rather than releasing it on the day of the milestone and seeing it quickly evaporate.
What do we hope we get from this work? We want to connect with readers, attract viewers and subscribers, and build community.
Our archive-diving started a few years ago with a companion website, Flashback Miami, which digitized and posted old pictures grouped around subjects and geography. The goal was to get readers interested in looking at and purchasing the images.
Since then, we have brought the archive idea to our main site with this new effort.
So what does our future look like? In this case, it looks just like our past.
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