It's hard not to sound like you're sucking up when noting your own news organization's award wins, so I tend not to mention contest stuff perhaps as much as I should.

But my fellow features department buddy Lane DeGregory helped feed her reputation as one of the nation's best features writers by winning  the American Society of Newspaper Editors' award for non-deadline writing. Lane was honored for a collection of work which included her amazing profile of Evel Knievel. I have often felt that national contests haven't recognized the caliber of our work as often as they could, so seeing Lane do well in this contest is a great recognition for the paper as well (and having former times employee Anne Hull also in the winners circle just spreads the love further).

Perhaps as a disappointing sign of where newspaper's attentions are, I was dismayed to see that ASNE's main Web site doesn't have an easy link to the list of its own awards winners. Arg.

WFLA Crunches Research to Find Viewers in New Places

The industry Web site TVNewsday has a interesting story about how a researcher at WFLA/Media General is tying together different types of data to get a sense of who is viewing their video streams, who may be watching their cellphone newsblasts and how many people in the market may only be watching video online.

It's the kind of stuff more media companies should be doing: excavating exactly how consumers are using all these new media platforms we're creating for them -- and more importantly, instructing advertising sales people on how they can employ that usage information to often more advertising revenue.

Unfortunately, there weren't a lot of practical examples provided on how this information has changed WFLA's buying strategies or the product they're creating -- other than to note that the NewsChannel 8 brand name is so strong, they're even using it on platforms where the idea of a channel number is non-existent.