Tomorrow's News, Tomorrow's Journalists

TNTJ – Dominion Post review and ideas

September’s TNTJ topic is a huge one, it seems designed to encourage innovative ideas for newsrooms from young journalists. This from Dave Lee:

So I propose this: Let’s all look at our local newspaper. Both in print and online. What are they doing wrong? What are they doing right? What should they be doing tomorrow?

If you were the editor of your local paper, what would you do?

What changes would you make? Where would you invest? What tools would you encourage (force?) your team to use?

I read the Dominion Post daily, and our class spends about half an hour per day dissecting it, and although I generally use RSS feeds for news now I’m pretty familiar with the site, so I’m rolling with it.

The Dominion Post (print):

Where to start… The photographers do a great job, but I have seen a few jack ups. I guess cute dogs and well behaved children really are news. Sometimes they resort to using cheesy stock or vaguely related photos for the business section, but rarely. Overall the photography and graphics are nice, although I haven’t seen any original graphics for a while.

Inside page one there is a tiny box in the top left corner with the DomPo website address, barely visible to me. I would definitely emphasise the connection with the site a lot more, perhaps even put the address under the masthead. You could easily pick up this paper and not even realise they had a website.

I think it’s important for a paper to show off their site if they have one. A newspaper is not interactive, and I would find them much more interesting if they had links to relevant articles online amongst the stories, an indication of which story is the topic of a poll on the website or yesterdays top stories list in there somewhere.

I am no expert on the print medium so I can’t justify going into layout, design, sections etc. Onwards…

www.dompost.co.nz (web):

Ok, for starters, I have a feeling that although this site is the actual site for the Dom Po, most people consider www.stuff.co.nz the place to go.

The sites are almost identical – I’m unsure of why they are not simply amalgamated – I would think that dompost.co.nz should redirect the user to stuff.co.nz.

Top fold (oh yes, this term can be applied to news sites):

Links to other service sites owned by Fairfax, Stuff, Trademe, Travelbug, Find Someone, OldFriends, Smaps and Rugby Heaven. The same links are on Stuff too. This is good, and certainly encourages more of an online community feeling – like a one stop shop – instead of it being just a place for news.

In the site navigation links they have News, Wellington, Sport, Features, Culture, Blogs/Opinion (are these two the same?), Photos/Videos, Reader Services and Newspapers. Features nice mouseover dropdown menus which give easy access to most of the site.

But where’s the world news? Is that just part of the News part? They really have forsaken the world news on this site. Are we now so localised that we don’t care about the outside world? On the front page, you have to scroll down through about 4 “folds” to find the tiny box in which the world lives.

World news Fail.

A medium size static image with a short caption. I find it strange that Stuff has an image in the same area, but the Stuff version cycles through stories every 15 seconds or so – that feature should be on both.

I really like a bit of animation on a news website, otherwise the only thing which is moving on a site is usually the ads. It gives the site the appearance of being awake and dynamic, as opposed to a completely static site which looks kind of like a scanned newspaper.

There are also three of the latest local (read: Wellington) stories, including related post links underneath each one. I like the related posts, I think it’s a step towards giving more context instead of just content.

A big fat link image to one of their bloggers is entirely visible in the top fold – sweet. I think that bloggers contribute a lot to news sites, humanising, de-sterilising and involving readers in discussions they can relate to.

Minor links to email alerts, rss feeds and text alerts. Great placement and to be commended. These services will become more and more popular as people wake up to the new media trends.

Second fold:

Featured multimedia. Usually video. The resulting pop-up player is well designed, opens in a separate window, and the quality of both sound and image is good.

More news stories down the left hand column. National, then sport, then the top part of politics. Standard stuff.

An image of today’s front page of the print version of the Dom Po, which is actually a link to subscribe to the print version. I personally think the digital replica should be given more attention, because if a reader is at the website already – chances are they are more interested in web news, not print.

An opinion poll shows up here, these are interesting and involve the readers and from the result numbers they seem to be quite popular. Although sometimes they don’t give all the popular answers a chance – see below.

Interesting – today’s poll topic says the oxford dictionary has defined a Bogan as a “an uncouth, stupid or square person”. I personally disagree with this definition – I wear black pretty often and listen to some music which some people might consider to be “heavy”, but does this make me uncouth, stupid and square?

Unfortunately, the only two available answers are “yes that’s what bogan means” and “no, bogans wear black and listen to heavy metal” – so stereotypical. Where are the mid ground answers?

“No, bogan can have a wider meaning and people considered “bogans” are not always stupid”, anyway..

More features further down include the ‘most viewed’ section, interesting but possibly skewed sometimes by the leading or unclear headlines – sometimes readers need to click into the article to find out what the hell it’s about. I think they should take that suspense right out of it. I want to know what the articles about from the headline, not left in the dark and forced to waste time clicking through.

Also, the site seems to be a bit heavy to the right. I’m not talking left-wing right-wing here, The left columns of the page end about half way down the scroll bar, and the right columns are twice as long. Some layout adjustment would make the page more compact, with less scrolling involved, and less white space.

Well, that’s as far as I’m going to go on the review part of this.

What I would encourage:

They have a link saying: “Follow Dom Post on Twitter”. Good work guys, embrace the new trends, but if the twitter feed is just an RSS feed of the top stories (i’ve checked and it is), I wouldn’t be very interested. At present they have 159 followers on Twitter.

Twitter spam is crap – when you sign up to follow a news site on twitter and it’s just endless tweets to clog things up. It needs to be humanised. I don’t want to use twitter as an RSS reader, thats what Google reader is for. I want to hear opinions, real life situations and a person on the other end.

Think about twitter features – such as live tweets from large events etc.

Make sure all reporters know the new trends of story presentation – what they are capable of producing – then they will plan their coverage accordingly.

They already encourage comments on each story – good stuff. Involve the reader and they will come back time and time again.

Making reporters more accessible. Let’s say I’m a reader in a rural area and im looking for someone who understands my area – perhaps a local – for a possible story. I don’t want some “latte sipper” from the city coming out, I would love a bit of background on the reporters. Personalise. Localise. Allow readers to get to know their journos.

I think the site needs to be a bit more human. Instead of simple links and email addresses for contacts – use images of their friendly, smiling faces! I hate the faceless corporation look. By-lines could incorporate a small avatar to make the articles appear more personal, and accountable.

They seem to be running with a fair number of blogs which is great, and provides context for a lot of the major stories. Traditional media style writing is restrictive and sterile, which is uniteresting to many people who want a bit of ‘flavour’ to their news.

The use of dynamic images.

‘Nuff said. Thoughts? As always, most interested

Young Journalist Blogging Carnival – Why I’d Fire Everyone

Evaluating one of the best sites out there

Well this post poses a bit of a dilemma for me. I work as a copy editor for The Daily Collegian, an independently-run student newspaper at Penn State. Therefore, I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to critically evaluate the paper, although I will say that we are doing more to update our blogs and bring more multimedia content online.

The other newspaper in town, the Centre Daily Times is our competitor so it’s probably not fair for me to comment on them either.

Which leaves my “hometown” newspaper — The Washington Post. I prefer the paper’s design to that of the New York Times which I think sometimes has too many one column stories on the front.

Online, the Post does an equally, if not even greater, job of presenting the news and providing plenty of multimedia content. The front site is amazingly easy to navigate with a photo in the left hand corner to draw the reader in and then a one column view of the top news with small text and links to stories near the bottom of the page.

It also appears that the Post is now twittering live sports but has somehow added the feed directly to their Web site thereby eliminating the need for readers to navigate away from washingtonpost.com to view the feed. This is great because it eliminates the view of some editors that using Twitter during live events could direct traffic away from the main site. As an editor, I would continue to push the use of Twitter, expanding it to other events, such as White House press conferences, Supreme Court hearings among other news events.

The Post has been great about adding video and audio content online and its easy to find stories with such content from the front of the site because of the icons that lead the way. A video and photo gallery bar is located near the end of the page — perhaps that could be moved up for made vertical so that it could fit in the large amount of white space the Post has to the right of the page.

Another great thing about the Post is that it frequently sets up Q & A’s between the reporters and readers, especially with more interesting or investigative stories.

One thing that has to go is the multiple pages for articles. With the Internet, this is no longer necessary as text can virtually go on forever. It’s annoying to have to click to go to the next page and sometimes I don’t read the story past the first part because of that.

For some stories, the Post will prompt you to login or sign up but the site is so good that taking a few minutes to sign up is well worth the time. I’ve been using the site this way for years and only occasionally have to sign in when I’m on a different computer.

Overall, the Post should be what local papers strive to imitate, albeit with a much smaller staff.

Katharine Lackey is a Penn State student, Daily Collegian copy editor and Northern Virginia native who blogs at “Beyond Print: Into the Prism“

Journal and Courier hits the basics, but needs to push forward

(I’m slightly bending the rules on this month’s topic. Meranda Watling and I shared a reservation about critiquing our own Web sites, so she suggested we swap. This is a review of www.jconline.com, the home of her Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Ind.

As for me, I blog at bydanielvictor.com when I’m not working as a reporter at The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News.)

Though I’ve only been to the Journal and Courier site when linked there by Watling, the design is already known to me. Since it’s a Gannett paper, it looks just like other Gannett news sites I’ve recently visited such as The Des Moines Register, Cherry Hill Courier-Post or the Wilmington News-Journal.

– First things first: I really like the front page design. A lot. It crams an impressive amount of headlines on the front page, even “above the fold,” without feeling overwhelming. It simultaneously promotes the staff’s breaking news online and their work for the print edition. It doesn’t take a lot of hunting to get all the headlines I would need.

My favorite feature is the scrollable “Breaking News” box. A bit misnamed, yes, but effective in that you can scroll down at 11 p.m. and see headlines all the way back to early that morning. That works around the problem many other news sites have of listing only five or so headlines on the front page, which means the reporter who hustled to get an important story online at 10 a.m. might have her work buried by noon. No such problem here.

– Now, to an annoyance. After I clicked on a few stories, I got this dreaded screen that I mistakenly thought was left in the yesteryear of news sites:

Had I not been on a quest, I likely would have A) indignantly closed out the window, or B) Made up a bunch of stuff. But I work for a newspaper company, so I would never do such a thing. Everyone else, though, would just be highly annoyed by this extra gateway. I’m very skeptical that it would provide any significant, reliable information, anyway. That’s what analytics are for.

Also, an interesting wording in that description you probably skipped over: “To help us keep jconline.com available to all users free of charge, please answer the following questions.” Really? Gannett is openly suggesting charging for content is an option? And “free of charge” is redundant. It’s just “free.”

– Now, as part of the media elite, I have a lot of dispensable income that I’d like to spend somewhere in Lafayette. If only I could find a business somewhere trying to grab my attention. I should be able to check the front page of the biggest online news source in town and find someone who wants my ridiculous amount of extra money, right?

Nope. No ads. “Hey, maybe we should have ads on the front page of the site” strikes me as the 2008 version of the “Hey, maybe we should have a blog or two on the site” insight of yesteryear.

– One feature of the site that I’m very impressed by: The user profile. Take Jack Lahrman, apparently an active user of the site. Through that one link, you can learn a bit about who he is, see all of his blog posts and comments or leave him messages.

Doesn’t look like the community has really caught on to its usefulness, but as I’ve written before, it’s important to develop these profile pages. They’re going to be a key part of the future.

– Unfortunately, a big demerit: The site doesn’t promote its blogging very well. At first, I didn’t see any blogs linked on the front page, but I eventually found them by hovering over a far-down, small icon that I guess looks like a pen over a sheet of paper. If I didn’t happen to be specifically searching for blogs, I would have never found them. I don’t even get a link to the Purdue football blog on the Sports front — I have to actually go to the Purdue page for that.

Once I find the Purdue football blog, I’m disappointed to see the design has made it very difficult to enjoy. I need to scroll past the author’s biography to get to his content, meaning I’ll notice one of his favorite movies before I notice his insight on the football program. That content is awkwardly teased by just two sentences, which often isn’t enough to draw readers into an entry. And once I click on his entry, I again have to scroll past his who-cares bio to get to the meat.

That’s a lot of work this Web site is expecting of me, especially when some of the blogs are updated just once per week. Or if it’s the publisher and editor’s blog, once a month. That’s a shame, because I love reading blogs from editors and I think the readers would enjoy reading it more often.

– Other quick-hits:

Once logged in, it’s nice and easy to leave comments at the bottom of articles, and even easier to read other comments.

I don’t really understand why the second and third graf of each story is slightly indented. Kinda distracting and confusing.

The mobile site, as accessed from my Blackberry Pearl is simple and quick.

I’m encouraged by a few podcasts that are evidently produced by the staff.

Like the blogs, videos are hard to find if you’re not looking for them. However, a video about a motorcycle was nicely attached to the story about it.

I can easily find a form to submit a story tip, or contact a specific person in the newsroom.

VERDICT: I give it a B-. If your priority is to quickly scan and access the news of the day, this site does it better than most out there.

What it lacks, though, is the kind of innovation that will push the newspaper’s brand forward. It has to better package its Web-only content and show why the site can become more than a place to stop for news.

September Debate: The media on your doorstep

Well done everyone – the inaugural debate for TNTJ was a resounding success. Over 50 young journalists have signed up to post here. A terrific turnout for such a new project.

If you are still yet to sign up, what are you waiting for? Click here to get started.

To read a summary of posts from the August debate, please click here. Or, better still, take a look at the posts for yourself by simply scrolling down. From now on, all the posts for the August debate are stored nicely in their own category.

Before I go on to announce the topic for September’s debate, I just want to do a little housekeeping.

First, it would be great if you could all follow our Twitter feed: twitter.com/TNTJ

And, even more importantly, sign up to our Google Group: groups.google.com/group/tntjgroup

This will allow me to email you all at once when new topics are announced. Also, the discussion groups over there will give us our own lil forum to discuss ideas. Cool, huh? I think so.

Right then, back to business.

After a more general topic last month, where theory, rhetoric and whimsical dreams of future careers blossomed, I think it’s time to really talk shop.

In other words, we talked a good talk, but if we were plonked, today, in a newsroom, what would we bring to the table? The great web-orientated ideal is one thing, but what steps are needed to get there?

So I propose this: Let’s all look at our local newspaper. Both in print and online. What are they doing wrong? What are they doing right? What should they be doing tomorrow?

The TNTJ topic for September 2008 is: If you were the editor of your local paper, what would you do?

What changes would you make? Where would you invest? What tools would you encourage (force?) your team to use?

I’ll be taking a critical look at the Cambridge News, a site that is blend of a brilliant print product with a not-so-brilliant online product.

Please note: If you WORK for your local paper, you don’t need me to tell you to be careful. TNTJ contributor Meranda Watling has suggested we set up a swap scheme. If you work for your local, swap with another TNTJ user who works for their local too. If you’d like to swap, please comment on this post.

Take it away guys!