By Paul M. Banks

“Washington, news-wise, is the center of the universe at the moment,” said New York Times Editor Bill Keller, in a piece “the paper of record” published earlier this week. With that in mind, I am now taking my writing/reporting/blogging to an international publication and starting a national sports section…virtually speaking! I am actually staying put in Chicago, and continuing to edit/write/manage The Sports Bank, “your most valuable option for Midwest sports.” In fact, the only thing you’ll really see change here is there will now be MORE content as usual. Welcome to “Overtime” at the Washington Times Communities! It’s overtime, because we work even harder than other social journalism networks. Like the Illini slogan of this year’s basketball team “Blue Collar, Orange Pride.”

We’ll simultaneously be A.) ramping up our national coverage here and B.) Providing the national picture with its much needed infusion of Midwestern news topics. In hip-hop terms, “it’s a Midwest swing” as we “make hot jams, sell bi-coastal.” Just because D.C. is hosting the platform, doesn’t mean it’ll be like the Eastern Seaboard Programming Network. We’re staying true to our roots while we expand our roots.

-I myself will be authoring two columns NFL Sunday Mass and College Gridiron Review, I’m sure you can guess what those articles will cover. And just like Blackhawks President John McDonough takes Jay Blunk with him to every organization he goes, I’m bringing The Sports Bank’s best, consistent and most reliable writers with me.

-TSB V.P. David Kay will be ballin on NBA topics at Association of Roundball and the college game at Year Round March Madness

-Peter Christian of Callouts and The Deposit fame has all your hockey needs covered at Rink Rat’s Cheese

-JaJuan Johnson’s biggest fan Paul Schmidt will talk Jimmie Johnson and much much more at our new NASCAR blog Stock Car Portfolio.

-TSB’s 2009 co-rookies of the year H. Jose Bosch and Jake McCormick will covering the Redskins (Braves on the Warpath) and MLB (The No-Swing Zone) respectively. For Bosch, writing about the Skins will be a step up from the Detroit Lions…slightly.

-My Fulbright fellowship sister (because all of us in that journalism exchange program in Berlin became a close knit family) Karla Bruning, will author the running blog Run, Karla, Run!

And we’ll no doubt be authoring numerous pieces within each other’s neighborhoods as well. You’ll see me writing a lot of hoops stuff, and plenty of guest authors on my football pages, etc. and more.

And also be sure to check out all the other neighborhoods in Overtime: Golf Today by Richard Mandell, Baseball’s Labyrinth by Arjuna Subramanian and To the Point by Ilya Lobanekov

So what exactly are the Washington Times Communities? For more detailed info, I now turn it over to Brad Rourke, a fellow “Community Mayor” one of the major players (along with Jacqui Kubin and Joseph Szadkowski) in getting this endeavor off the ground.

I am proud to announce the launch of a major new initiative that I have been working on with a few partners. The formal announcement will come later this week, but I wanted to give a preview to my readers because I am so excited about it.

Today, we are soft-launching the new Washington Times Communities. This is a new social journalist network tied into The Washington Times.

What It Is

Many newspapers have “community blog” sections. (In fact, the The Washington Times had one, which this new initiative replaces.) These can have widely varying content quality, widely varying updating schedules, and are typically hidden from view and separate from the rest of the newspaper’s online space.

The fundamental problem for many news organizations is that these things are hard to manage and it’s hard to know what kind of quality you’re getting.

We have created a structure which we think makes the Washington Times Communities “manageable” from an organizational perspective while at the same time open enough to make it a real blog network. At the same time, we’ve organized it so that, from a reader’s perspective, it should be easy to find what you are looking for.

There are really six Communities:

* Entertain Us (entertainment)
* Family Today (parenting and families)
* Life’s Online (lifestyle)
* Overtime (sports)
* Public Good (public life and community benefit)
* The Loop (politics)

Each of these communities is led by a “mayor” who essentially curates the content for each community. Within each Community, there are between five and ten (for now) “neighborhoods.” Each of these Neighborhoods is a blog, with one author responsible for the content.

So we’ve created a hierarchy, where each of the community “mayors” is acting like the editor of a newspaper section or magazine, with each author having a specific “neighborhood” beat.

What’s Different

While we don’t claim that this is a revolutionary idea (after all, it’s a blog network, nothing earth-shaking), we do think it’s an innovation in how to approach something like this. There are a few things that make this different, in my view:

1. There is direct involvement with senior management at the paper. The paper’s senior managers take a personal interest in this, all the way to the top.

2. There is a direct tie to the regular online space of the paper. Content from the Communities will be featured on the main page of the Times. This means that there is a greater chance for the community content to be seen by the many millions of unique visitors to the Times’ front page per day.

3. The writers are handpicked. People have to be invited to take part as an author. We chose participants keeping in mind both quality of their work, potential for growth, and willingness to devote the energy it takes to promote the Communities through social networks.

4. There is support at every level. Individual authors are supported, mayors are supported by management. Authors support one another.

5. There is ongoing innovation. The initiative is committed to iterating and learning at a rapid pace so we can best improve it.

6. There is a constant stream of content. Every author is committing to a certain number of posts per week, so there will always be something new coming from the Communities.

I sincerely hope you will take a look, poke around, comment on a few articles, and give your feedback. Like other blog networks, viral word of mouth will be key. You can help this initiative out immensely by sharing any articles you find interesting and by spreading the word!

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