Innovation in College Media

Congrats to the staff of the Northern Kentucky Northerner, who wrote a story about an ordained minister who was going to conduct a same-sex marriage ceremony on the NKU campus, then backed out at the last minute. Here's the story.

More importantly, the staff of the Northerner PDF'd all of the minister's e-mail records (which they got via FOIA request) and placed them online in this weblog. (permalinks aren't working, so scroll down to the entry titled "You've found the online exclusives!") They also linked to a Kentucky Senate Bill that's causing controversy, the minister's website, and the church where he was ordained.

It's a good example of linking and making source documents available online. Not only that, but the staffer who wrote the story is following up in subsequent weblog posts, including an e-mail response from the minister in question.

My only quibble: the online story doesn't contain any of the links to the source documents, web sites, or the senate bill. Either link to those documents, or put a link at the top of the story that says something to the effect of "to see documents and links related to this story, click here (hyperlink to weblog post)."