Friday is usually the day I sleep in to catch up on sleep missed throughout the week. But that didn’t happen this week.

At 6:36 a.m., I got a breaking news text message that woke me up. I rolled out of bed, checked the phone and realized that I needed to update the Web site.  The sad thing here is that the actual earthquake didn’t wake me up at 4:37 a.m., but rather the breaking news update two hours later.

I posted the first update on idsnews.com around 6:45 a.m. I checked the Associated Press wire and posted a small brief on what had happened. If you’re not familiar with the AP, they usually do several “writethrus,” or updated versions. So I stayed by the computer for a couple more hours refreshing the Web site occasionally. When the AP moved a new story, I read through it and posted.

Around 11 a.m., I decided that we needed a graphic on the front page of the site. The IDS doesn’t have an AP graphics subscription so I opened Illustrator and started working on a map. A few minutes into it, I felt my desk chair vibrating and I quickly realized that we were having another earthquake … and I was awake for this one.

Technically the second one was an aftershock, but it registered a 4.6 magnitude. The original earthquake was a 5.2 magnitude. I was able to confirm this on the USGS Web site before the AP could move a fresh writethru.

After I finished the map, I headed into the IDS newsroom for a couple hours. I continued to post updates periodically throughout the day. In all it was a very interesting Friday although I slept through part of it.

We should have a full story with local reactions in the IDS on Monday. Check idsnews.com this weekend for more updates.

This was my experience with the earthquake. Did the earthquake wake you up or do you have an interesting story about the earthquake to tell? Post a comment below and let us know about it!

In case you’re interested, here’s all our multimedia coverage from this weekend’s Little 500:

Slideshow: Barack Obama visits the Little 500

Slideshow: 2008 Women’s Little 500

Video: 2008 Women’s Little 500

Slideshow: 2008 Men’s Little 500

Video: 2008 Men’s Little 500

Friday was the kind of day that most college journalists can only hope to see.

Besides having the biggest college weekend in full swing, Sen. Barack Obama decided to make a surprise visit to the Women’s Little 500 race.

I was there to cover the race for the IDS photo desk, but I ended up taking some 300 photos of Obama. It was a pretty crazy and hectic scene at Bill Armstrong Stadium as Obama and his entourage – No, Jeremy Piven wasn’t there – made their way around the track before the race.

Track security at first tried to tell me I wasn’t allowed in the infield as showed them my infield press credential. I got in eventually and headed straight for the mob of photographers who were swarming Obama as he made his way around the track.

At one point, I ended up directly in front of Obama about 6 feet from the senator. I was using a 80-200 mm zoom lens so I had to keep backpedaling so I could keep him in focus at 80 mm. As I was in the process of backpedaling, Obama pointed and chuckled as I almost fell over a wooden chair that was behind me.

Obama took up a spot outside turn three to watch the opening laps of the race, and I was able to get a few good shots of him from the middle of the corner.

As soon as he left, I had a problem: I only had a couple hundred shots left on my memory cards for the race itself. Luckily I was able to make it through the race with what I had by being very conservative with my shots.

The real fun began after the race when all the IDSers met up in the IDS newsroom to start going through our stuff. I ended up staying at the IDS until around 11 p.m. captioning photos and sending Obama photos to the Associated Press. In the end, we put together a Obama slideshow for our Web site. The AP ended up picking up nine of our Obama shots from the day.

Overall, it was a crazy day, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

Last week, we launched our special Little 500 Web site.

The site is basically an online version of all our Little 500 coverage organized into one site. We’ve designed it to be a one-stop shop for all things Little 500.

We’re still tweaking a few things and adding new content, but the basic site is complete. Check it out at idsnews.com/little500 

March was a pretty good month for idsnews.com:

– In March, the Web site had 387,358 page visits. This is compared to 225,044 in March 2007, a 72-percent growth.

– The most viewed day of the month was March 17 with 310,299 page views. Of that, 32 percent came from within the state of Indiana and 15 percent from Bloomington.

– The site set a new record for unique users in a single month with 157,069 users. This is a 60-percent growth from March 2007.

These are some pretty big numbers compared to last year, and the online growth seems to be following a growing trend in the media business. This is one reason that we’ve invested personnel, money and time to our online product this semester.

The entire Sampson saga starting with the recruiting allegations and ending with his $750,000 buyout has not only kept our sports desk busy, but it has also kept the multimedia desk buzzing.

For every press conference leading up to his buyout, we had a videographer filming the event for our Web site.

So when I walked into the newsroom Tuesday afternoon and heard that IU had hired Marquette coach Tom Crean, I knew it was going to be a long night. A long night sure, but definitely an interesting one that any journalist would enjoy.

The players

To start off, our sports editor Lee Hurwitz and managing editor Peter Stevenson tracked down five members of the IU men’s basketball team playing a pick-up game at the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation building. Digital audio recorders in hand, they got exclusive interviews with a couple of the players.

Oddly enough, Jamarcus Ellis opened up about his rocky relationship with interim coach Dan Dakich, and we got the entire thing on tape.

“I never had plans to leave,” Ellis told the IDS. “It was just – Dakich being the head coach – we didn’t see eye-to-eye on things, so I thought the best thing for me was to part ways and get my academics right.”

Lee and Peter got some great information and quotes from the players, but the thing that made it great was that we had the digital audio from the interviews. That allowed us to use the audio in today’s “That’s What He Said” podcast and in the “Hoosier Headlines” podcast.

The new coach

Later in the evening, we heard about a flight from Wisconsin to the Monroe County Airport. I grabbed a video camera from the office and headed out to the airport to meet up with one of our photographers and men’s basketball beat writer Chris Engel.

I had never been to the airport so I had a little trouble finding it, but eventually I got there just in time to see a plane land and pull up to a building on the other side of the airport.

This of course sent the television crews, photographers, reporters and even a few fans who had gathered at the main parking lot scrambling to their cars.

When we got to the plane, it appeared that we had the wrong plane or Crean had already made a fast escape so I caught a ride back to my car, and I headed to a hotel in town where we thought Crean could be staying the night.

I arrived just in time to catch Crean walking towards the main entrance. I ran up and immediately starting taping what turned out to be an impromptu press conference with Crean with three media organizations.

The whole thing lasted for about 20 minutes, and I was surprised that Crean answered so many questions.

The editing

After the presser was over, I headed back to the IDS newsroom to get back to work on multimedia projects. It’s not very often that I get the chance to actually go out and shoot video since I’m a member of management so I had a few things to get done at the newsroom when I got back before I could call it a night.

We lifted the audio from the Crean video and used it in a soundslide with photos of Crean outside the hotel. Also, we used it in this week’s edition of the “That’s What He Said” podcast.

Managing editor Peter Stevenson, multimedia editor Ashley Braun and I were at the IDS until well after 2 a.m. this morning working on the various projects for the Crean story.

In the end, I didn’t leave the IDS until around 4:30 a.m. Right now it’s nearly 6:30 a.m. and I still haven’t went to bed. But I am fine with it because this is one day that I won’t soon forget.

Sorry we haven’t been keeping this blog updated this semester, but I’m hoping that this will be the first of several posts.

Although there isn’t much time left this semester, I’m hoping to start posting on a regular basis to keep you guys informed on some of the exciting multimedia projects that we’ve been working on.

About a month ago, while most students were worrying about final exams, plane tickets and rides home, the staff at the Indiana Daily Student was planning ways to turn the corner with the paper’s online content.

Our first step was to rename our New Media desk the Multimedia desk. Honestly, there isn’t anything “new” about the things that we were labeling “new media.” The desk had been going by that name for several semesters, even after it had become quite old.

As some of you might have noticed, we also completely re-vamped the Multimedia page on our Web site. Our new design looks better and allows our readers to find specific projects more easily because productions are sorted into columns.

Carrie Ritchie, IDS editor-in-chief, came into this semester with the goal of focusing more on cultivating a greater online presence to better serve our readers. In order to do this, she created the visual/multimedia director position to oversee multimedia productions.

As the first person to hold this position, I’ve spent the first two weeks of the semester holding meetings and developing new programs and ideas.

On the second day of the semester, we launched the first podcast in IDS history. We would have launched it a day earlier, but a power outage at our offices in Ernie Pyle Hall prevented it.

The podcast, “Hoosier Headlines,” is a daily production that informs our readers of the top stories in less than three minutes. As college students, we realize that many of our readers don’t have time to skim every story. The podcast is designed to conveniently package the day’s headlines in a paper-free, portable format.

Tuesday, “Hoosier Headlines” became available on iTunes. To find it, just search “Indiana Daily Student” or “Hoosier Headlines.”Or click here.

We also launched “Conversations,” our second podcast, on Wednesday. “Conversations” is a once-a-week interview program that features notable personalities at IU and in Bloomington.

The first two weeks have been a time of massive change and reorganization for our Web site and the Multimedia desk, but we are only getting started. In the next few weeks, we will be rolling out additional podcast programs for the IDS. We currently have a weekly news wrap-up video and several sports podcasts in the works.

In addition, WEEKEND magazine is preparing to launch an all-new Web site, followed by podcasts and multimedia productions.

We have started off the semester with big changes, and we hope that our readers are taking advantage of our new programs and content. I would love to hear comments, questions or suggestions from our readers. Please feel free to email me.

It’s the begining of the month, so that means we have the latest statistics on our Web hits for the previous month, so here is the low down:

- Compared to November last year, this Novemeber we experienced a 36.8 percent growth in pages visited with a total of 377,838. Even with an expected drop as a result of not putting out papers the week of Thanksgiving, we still saw just under 150,000 unique users for the month.

- Our most viewed day was Nov. 2, which experienced 308,898 views, and average time per visit of 2 mins., 35 seconds.

- Our No. 1 blog, the Basketblog, again saw improvement scoring 43,106 views and 26,659 visits. Deadline stayed in second in terms of visits (10,798), but was closely followed by Under the Rock (9,333). All blogs, except the basketblog, saw a slight drop from the previous month, but this was to be expected with the downtime over break. �

So I just got done publishing the last post here on Deadline and about to head home for the night, when I received a call from a former IDS staffer that there were about 10 police cars, two ambulances and a firetruck at Brownstone Terrace. Only myself and fellow reporter Alberto D. Morales were in the newsroom, so we decided to head out there and check out the incident.

We got to the scene before  2 a.m. when a photographer that we called over just in, case met us. It is unusual to see such a high police presence responding to an incident, so we talked to neighbors and some officers, but couldn’t get any real info. Finally we observed a subject taken from a house that was transported via ambulance from the scene, but police would not give out any information. All police told us was that the subject was being taken away from the scene and that it was not a result of gunshots “or anything like that.”

So we decided we don’t have enough information for an online-only story, and it still is unclear of what the incident was or if we will be reporting on it. A lot of reporting is chasing down information that will never see the light of a newspaper. But you have to remember to keeping chasing those leads, because sometimes it will be neccessary to print.

 Anyways, hopefully everything is fine and this is the last we have to report on the incident.