Gannett, Footnote.com launch HistoryBeat.com

By: E&P Staff Gannett Digital Media Network, a division of Gannett Company, Inc. announced Thursday that it was partnering with history site Footnote.com to launch HistoryBeat.com a Web site that combines social networking with archival photos -- and newspaper coverage of historical events.

Already two sites have been launched under the HistoryBeat domain: moonlanding.historybeat.com, and woodstock.historybeat.com, which commemorate this summer's 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing and the legendary Woodstock music festival, respectively.

Visitors to the HistoryBeat Web sites can view original news coverage of the events from Gannett papers. The site uses Florida Today, of Melbourne, Fla. for coverage of the moon landing, and the Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal for coverage of Woodstock. While Gannett provides the content, the platform for the site is provided by Footnote.com, a site featuring millions of searchable original documents from throughout American history.

Users can also create profiles to interact with each other through the site's chat feature, as well as annotate, comment on, and share their own photos of these events. Users can also share their experience through Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

"By providing unique opportunities for audiences to interact and form deeper relationships with the content online, we're encouraging viewers to go beyond the documented news and add their unique perspectives on these two nationally defining events,"Jennifer Carroll, vice president and senior editor at Gannett's Content One, said in a statement.

The site also includes previously unpublished photos and materials relating to the two events. Among the archives is over 1,800 unpublished images of the moon landing taken by Florida Today.