We’ll be talking with Bill Miller, Assistant Metro Editor and the editor of Downtown Dilemma, a new 5-part series from the Times-Union and Jacksonville.com on Downtown Jacksonville. Five reporters spent 4 months investigating why efforts to revitalize downtown have fizzled and what it will take to get it back on track.

The series begins Sunday and I’m interested in seeing the infographics and layout design, so I’ll be picking up a copy. You should too! If you have questions for Bill, leave them here.

The 5 parts in the Downtown Dilemma Series

1. Promise Unfulfilled
2. A Day in the Life
3. Living Downtown
4. Faith in the Future
5. Six Paths to a Brighter Horizon

Urban Jacksonville Weekly @ 9:30am on Monday

Watch here or you can watch or listen to last weeks episode with Burro Bags.

Redesigning the Jacksonville.com Drop-Down Menus from Joey Marchy on Vimeo.

I’m interested to know what you think.

Judson Collier volleys back with an entire “above the fold” redesign of Jacksonville.com. Apparently my nav is brilliant. Haha, thanks Judson.

Marilyn Young, assistant managing editor at Jacksonville.com posed the question above on Twitter today. Instead of replying in 140 characters I felt it was my responsibility to tell her what I thought in as much detail as possible. Here it is!

Hi Marilyn,

I commend you and Jacksonville.com for reaching out to the Twitter community to ask what we would like to see come out of the visioning sessions this week.

In my opinion, you’re doing many things right. You’ve started and continue to develop a strong community via social networking. It’s invaluable to those of us who communicate with the paper this way. It’s given me an view into day-to-day operations at the TU and has changed my perspective on (you) the paper in the following ways:

• I consider you friends
• I think you have quite a bit of personality
• I’m excited to see you embrace new technology
• I’m excited to see the young people on staff (Jason, Amanda, Tia, Jonathan, Joe) to name a few

Now on to your answer your questions: What can we do better and what new things can we do?

1. Design, design, design.

(Yes we have to go over this again) I’ve harped on this from the day I met with Rich to review the current design. Good design will sell papers and good design will keep people on the site longer. I would love to see you get rid of those drop-down menus too. You know, the ones that fly out everytime my mouse passes over them.

2. Community

I’d like to see a community manager take charge of comments and drive the conversation. It seems like each article with comments (or at least the ones I read) devolve into name calling and unproductive conversation. I don’t know if it’s a matter of having a single person or each article author drive the conversation, but someone needs to. If no one is watching the candy store, the kida are going to act up, right? Be part of the conversation.

Maybe you could feature users who leave good feedback consistently and give them their own blog.

3. More video and more audio

I think every reporter should have a Flip camera and an audio recorder. It would add a great new dimension to stories. Shoot a quick video (1-2 mins) or record an audio snippet of an interview (these can be a bit longer). They don’t have to be produced after the fact, just upload to YouTube, embed in the story, and publish.

I think this is where many people stumble with video and audio. They feel the need to have intro music or fancy titles, no. We’re ok (the readers) with raw video, if it enhances the story and gives us a different perspective.

I’d also like to hear more podcasts. A few columnists used to have podcasts, but I can’t find them on the site. There’s so much knowledge at your organization, you need to get those smart people talking. Have a roundtable once a week where three journalists expand on their printed articles, the most popular articles of the week or the most overlooked. Something similar to Urban Jacksonville Weekly. Check out Media Shift’s 5 Across.

4. Shape election coverage

Integrate the things I’ve mentioned already into the upcoming Mayor election and cover it like there’s no tomorrow. We’re at a very important time in the history of our city. One might call it a defining moment. Our next mayor could shape Jacksonville into a city of the future by getting us back on track with the rest of the country or they could drive the city into the ground.

We need you to get the word out about the important issues and make this an election that engages the public.

5. Engage and participate with other Journalism publications

There’s a podcast called Journalism Now who has a weekly discussion covering multimedia, data and social aspects of modern news. It’s awesome and they record in Gainesville. I’m sure if you asked them to participate they would include you in the discussion from time to time.

I would also like you guys to shout it from the rooftops if you are doing something innovative. I could see the editors sitting down each discussing trends in Journalism and talking about ways Jacksonville.com could apply them.

For example Rebooting the News, a weekly podcast on news and technology with Jay Rosen and Dave Winer is a great example. Granted, Jay is an instructor and Dave is an entrepreneur, so they are pretty free to say what they want. It’s transparency and it’s fascinating. I feel like if you can personalize the people at the paper via discussion, you can build better communities around the paper. If people feel like they know the reporters, they wi

6. Be a media leader and an important industry brand

I would like to see my local paper emerge as an industry leader and thought provoker. I would like to hear about them speaking at conferences, guest hosting podcasts, winning journalism grants for innovative projects like the Knight News Challenge.

Strategize ways to distinguish yourself and do it! The St. Pete Times does this through technology and special projects. Maybe you can you invite them up here for some type of summit to discuss issues of news, technology and journalism? I think a Florida journalism summit hosted by the Times Union would be awesome!

Be seen as an organization who cares, who organizes events, who engages peers defies expectations. Send some journalists to conferences to energize them. They will can network with their peers and bring back innovative ideas to the TU.

7. Wrapping up with investigative reporting ideas

Abel mentioned bolstering your investigative reporting. This seems to be the journalistic darling right now, along with the increased emphasis on hyperlocal.

Maybe you can take one reporter, your best investigative reporter, and turn them loose. Give them the resources the need to report on a story and give them the air cover to concentrate on the story without distraction. Make this person the investigative watchdog. Have them investigate the TU. Have them investigate the school board. Have them investigate pension funds. Give them a blog and a Twitter account so they can update the story and source leads. Give them a video camera and a recorder so they can present the story in more than a printed dimension.

Finally, here is my inspiration for new media and journalism

http://mediactive.com
http://newsinnovation.com
http://www.buzzmachine.com
http://www.niemanlab.org
http://www.pbs.org/idealab
http://ryansholin.com
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift

These are my thoughts on what you can do better and what new things you can do.

I sat up and took notice when four people emailed me about the Times-Union in a 5 minute span yesterday. The Jacksonville Business Journal reported there is ‘Substantial doubt’ about Morris Publishing

The company had a nearly $10 million in interest payments deferred by its lenders three times this year now due May 28. More than 80 percent of its noteholders also extended the grace period for the same time so the company would not cross-default on its debt to both the lenders and noteholders.

So what will our city do without it’s daily? We may find out in a little under 2 weeks. Personally I’ve given the Times-Union a hard time over the years for being slow, boring, having a bad web presence, etc. I’ve really let them have it at times, but I never wanted them to go away.

In Nothing’s Adding Up For Morris Publishing the commentary is even more dire than the Business Journal article:

Close followers of Fitz & Jen will recall that Morris is on its fifth forbearance from the group of senior lenders led by JPMorgan Chase. On Feb. 1, Morris skipped an interest payment of $9.7 million, and it hasn’t been able to come up with the jack since. Its latest extension runs out May 28, and if it can’t pay up the banks could force it to repay all that $419 million.

But even if Morris somehow can come up with the interest payment, there’s just more problems ahead.

We’ve already seen Seattle’s Post-Intelligencer fold it’s online division and the Rocky Mountain News close all-together. Even the Boston Globe is in trouble.

However…

A quick search on Twitter reveals this tweet from @editomarilyn, Assistant managing editor for local news at The Florida Times-Union, who’s been tweeting for a couple of weeks now:

Don’t believe everything you read. Tales of Morris Publishing’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

and

… And if you like what we’ve been doing you’ll love what we’re going to be doing.

It seems the full story is yet to be told. Stay tuned as we’ll surely post any updates here. Follow Urban Jacksonville on Twitter for up to the minute news on any developments.

Hang in there Times-Union, and to all my friends there, keep your head up!