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EVANSTON, Ill. -- Finalists for the Online Journalism Awards advised colleagues on how to separate the online desk from its print counterpart and make it an equally strong source of news.

The panelists, who addressed a crowd of about 25 people, was a preview of the work that will be showcased at the awards banquet Saturday evening.

"I thought print was the best place for print to be," said panelist Anthony Moor, formerly of the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat and Chronicle. "I didn't want to try and duplicate print; I wanted us to do our own reporting."

Moore also wanted to make the experience of adding Web extras to the paper's award-nominated report on local schools an opportunity to train reporters in the multimedia aspect of reporting. After building site extras, including a feature that allows users to access student lockers and a photo essay following a typical school day, reporters warmed up to the Web -- often assigning themselves stories and thinking of extras to include on the site.

Other panelists discussed what materials they had discovered made their site stronger.

"Get regional source material whenever you can," said Teresa Hanafin of Boston.com. As an example, Hanafin and her staff used letters from victim's mothers, responses from priests and hundreds of court transcripts to enhance their coverage of the scandal involving Roman Catholic priests in the Boston area.

"Some of the transcripts were hundreds of pages [long]. Do we expect everyone to read them?" Hanafin said. "Not really. But you'd be surprised by the number of people who want to read them for themselves."

Hanafin also suggested using video from sister television stations because users can watch a segment that is significantly longer than the television story. She said it is even better to collect your own video.

"We got video of victims, parents of victims, priests who were horrified [by the scandal]," Hanafin said. "One mother cried on our video. She had three sons and four nephews abused by John Geoghan, who was recently killed in prison. She began to question herself -- whether she was a good mother, a good wife and a good person."

Panelist Andrea Panciera's team at projo.com also used the Web's interactivity to help readers deal with a tragedy. Her team put together multimedia coverage of the February 2003 Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island, which killed 100 people, including employees, patrons and members of the band Great White, whose pyrotechnics were responsible for the destruction.

Panciera, who was asleep during the fire, said the most important thing that she learned was "not to go to bed without checking the 11 p.m. news. There's never a moment when you cannot be on alert."

She said that it was also necessary to have a remote Internet connection, preferably at home. "It takes me 45 minutes to get to work. I can edit and write headlines from home," she said.

The site features documents, bills, progress reports, memos, first-person survivor stories, and a guestbook for condolences.

Creating the site was as emotional for staffers as it was for readers. Panciera found it difficult for journalists to separate themselves from the stories emotionally, while still having the stories retain emotion.

"I just would like to learn how to cope better 24-hour medium," she said.

After hearing about a local organization's involvement helping the small African country of Malawi, the Albany Times-Union decided to send a reporter and photographer to Africa, which presented a perfect opportunity to make a great site and integrate the print and online desks.

"Online insisted on being present at every news meeting since Day One," said Paul Block, the Times-Union.com news producer.

The result, despite limited funds, was "an awful lot of great writing and great images."

"We didn't get all the bells and whistles done," Block said. "But the site is better for it. They would have gotten in the way of the writing."