Getting started with databases

The lively and entertaining presenter for this was David Miliron of Caspio, who was with AJC for 10 years. Started with 10 yrs at Gannett. Was a reporter who morphed into a database guy. He conceded up from that this wasn't the hands-on training session it was billed as, but was rather an overview of how papers can create databases to reach customers we might not otherwise reach.
He didn't say but Caspio sells prebuilt tool for web databases. They host them, they create the interface, you put them on your site.
"Making searchable databases available online connects nicely to the public service mission of the news media, we are news and ,information companies. Increased traffic means more page views, which means more revenue opportunities."
what's hot online:

• School report cards
• Crime data
• Home sales data
• Public employee salaries
• Restaurant reviews /inspections

"You need to make sense of the data, not just throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks."

Questions to ponder:
Will putting the data online make money? (It will only if ad people know what you're doing and how to sell the ads around it.)
What resources does it take to acquire, scrub, normalize, post and update? (it must be kept current or it's worthless)
How does it fit into our watchdog journalism responsibility

Roughly, $8 for every 1,000 impressions for ad value, that is each ad is worth $8 for each thousand.

Make them findable, have one page for databases, because people will come in to a database site who wouldn't care to read a newspaper. So use a ticker or something else on the database site to make it sticky, put your hot news items on there to pull them in.

Have a standardized template for every database page you create.
On every search page need to have search tips, a key to search results and a widget to add search results to your site.

Examples to check out: Databank at Florida Times Union and Cincinnati Enquirer's Cincinavigator