1. “Title Search”

This is an undocumented but fun search feature on Topix that returns results when your town appears in a headline. All you need to do is go to the “Search All” tab in the upper-right of a news page, and enter, for example: title:”Sunnyvale”.You’ll usually find some articles that fell through the cracks of the Topix system with this search.

2. Local TV news websites

Topix crawls over 50,000 web sites, but we don’t catch every article. One area that’s especially difficult is video, because there’s usually little or no text for our system to analyze. I especially like to check the local TV stations, as they often have interesting breaking news that that is tied to video. For example, my local ABC station.

3. Government sites

These are some of my favorites because, although the headlines are sometimes bland, a little bit of digging can reveal all sorts of interesting things going on in your town that have been poorly promoted. A great way to find these sites is to do a Google site-search for, e.g. site:.gov sunnyvale. In this example, Google will return all “.gov” sites that mention Sunnyvale. From there, untold riches of news stories can be found just clicks away.

4. Neighboring towns

Used sparingly, it’s sometimes great to publish an article from a nearby town that your readers would find relevant, particularly if it is news that might affect the folks in your town soon (example: rising crime rates in the neighboring town).

5. Carry your camera

If you have a digital camera, it can be a lot of fun to take shots of familiar places in your town and share them with your readers. An event, a parade, a holiday pageant, or even some kids playing in the park on a warm summer day -- most folks love to be in the news. You have the power to put them there.

6. Take a look at Flickr and YouTube

You might be surprised to learn that there are already folks in your community that are taking great photos and videos of newsworthy events. For example, here's a stream of recent photos tagged "Sunnyvale" from Flickr. (If you choose to use a photo, be sure to give the photographer credit, and only use photos that you have permission to use.) YouTube and other video sharing sites also offer similar tagging and search features. Although Topix doesn't support video embedding yet, you can take a screenshot of video and upload it as a photo. (e.g. check out this post I put together for a visit from a presidential candidate that was visiting town.) We'll be posting more in the future on how to do this.

7. Write your own news!

Maybe you’ve been to a great (or not so great) local restaurant in the last week? Or maybe there’s that dangerous intersection downtown that’s been bothering you because the city hasn’t fixed the traffic light? Just use the “From Scratch” option in the editors tools and you’re on your way.

Oh, and one last tip: I have all of these searches bookmarked in my browser for easy, quick checks several times a day.

If you have tips for editors that you'd like to share, we'd love to hear from you.