After only being on Google (and Milwaukies) radar for four months now we are proud to announce a partnership with The Oregonian (who is fond of noting that The Oregonian has existed longer than the state of Oregon.) The following is the article about it taken from OregonLive.com ::
The Oregonian News Network is an online partnership and blog hub program of The Oregonian/OregonLive. The program seeks to create partnerships with hyperlocal, community and topic bloggers around the state.
The ONN seeks people who have their own blogs, or independent news sites, and who would like to partner and see their brand and content promoted through OregonLive.com. The program works like an aggregation model where short excerpts of the partner stories are posted to OregonLive with backlinks to the full story on the partner website. Partner excerpts and links are curated by The Oregonian and posted throughout the pages of OregonLive. Partner site RRS feeds also show up on the project landing page HERE.
The partnership allows The Oregonian/OregonLive to help provide a greater range, depth and diversity of headlines to its audience, while at the same time sending significant referral traffic to partner sites.
The Oregonian is the Pacific Northwest’s largest newsroom. The OregonLive site is highly optimized for search engine traffic, attracting more than 4 million unique visitors a month.
Initially funded by a grant from the J-Lab Institute for Interactive Journalism at American University in Washington, D.C., the ONN debuted in April 2011 with nine pilot partners, all focused on covering local news.
During the year just ended, the ONN posted 668 story excerpts, sent 25,000 referrals to our partners and generated more than 108,000 page views on OregonLive.
Now we are expanding the network to include a bigger and broader group of 60 community blog partners, who will share their passion and expertise on topics ranging from food, gardening and knitting to nature, literature and music. You’ll find them grouped together in the categories of Lifestyle and Food, Arts and Entertainment, Outdoors and Recreation, Public Affairs and Business.
The network aspires to do more than generate referral traffic to partner sites. The program seeks to build meaningful peer-to-peer relationships between the blogging community and the newsroom. Pilot partners have regular meetings at The Oregonian for training and networking opportunities, with newsroom staffers and one another.
Cornelius Swart, a Portland-based independent journalist, coordinates the news blog partners. Last year, he facilitated connections between partners in Portland, Eugene, Salem and the Oregon Coast.
George Rede, a veteran editor at The Oregonian, coordinates the community blog partners. He spent much of last year researching potential partners and inviting selected bloggers to become part of the expanded network.
With the connection between blogs/niche news sites and The Oregonian/OregonLive firmly established, we hope to build on the first year’s success by providing a palette of engaging local bloggers on subjects that we think will appeal to our online audience.
Partner stories and headlines will show up in two ways on OregonLive. First, small excerpts from partner blog posts and linkbacks will be curated and posted every day to the relevant pages of OregonLive. (For example, Portland & Oregon Dining
“But there has always been way more going on around town and the state every day than we can cover. The Web has created infinite opportunity for a broader and more personal journalism, delivered in real time and in a variety of formats.” Peter Bhatia, editor and vice president of The Oregonian.
The editor’s column: Building partnerships in hyperlocal journalism
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