Journalism.co.uk caught up with Shiny co-founder and editorial director Katie Lee for a progress report:
'Pies demise', as the end of Shiny Media's football blogs last month was dubbed, was not the beginning of the end for the blog publisher, but rather a 'responsible' business decision, says Lee
"It's kind of inevitable that it's going to look quite bad to the outside world [when sites are closed], but for us it feels like a very positive and responsible move, because we have staff in house, who we're committed to.
"We spent a lot of time expanding and launching new sites and seeing what worked. The initial theory that a lot of web publishers used was almost land-grab exercise and then see what sticks. But then when you start shutting things down it looks bad, and I don't think people took that into account.
"They [Pies blogs] were successful editorially and in terms of traffic, and we still hope that something may work out for them, but at this moment we just want to work on what we've got in house and making those even better."
To achieve this the publisher is planning a complete overhaul of its 30 live blogs, and has set up a redesign committee of designers, editorial and sales staff.
It is in its early stages, but some key goals for the redesign are already in place, says Lee.
"It's about trying to find the best way to keep the blog feel but also trying to make sure that we maximise page impressions, which is something blogs really struggle [to do], without upsetting readers [while] making advertising fit in better."
The redesign team will begin by mocking up two new basic blog template: one with 'a more webpage feel' and the other working from a standard blog page design.
"The reason we're looking at two different designs is that we feel we might end up having two different basic templates for the network depending on what sort of site it is. Some of the sites are more newsy [such as TechDigest] and others much more 'featurey' and it might make sense to have the two running separately," explains Lee.
"It's important that it's easy for our designers to implement and to upgrade and change things, but that doesn't mean that every single site needs to look the same. I think we've realised that in the same way that you don't necessarily know who publishes the magazine you read, some of our sites have a really strong brand identity on their own, without people necessarily realising they're on a Shiny Media site."
How space is used on the new sites has been a fairly consensual decision, she adds, with the committee opting for a 'more white space and less boxy' look.
Lee describes the change as moving from a 'loo-roll design' to more of a 'kitchen-roll design'.
"It is the problem that blogging was not designed for 20 stories a day, it was designed for almost one 'diary entry' a day. So although we all really like that immediacy of blogging, we wouldn't want to lose the Shiny ethos and spirit," she says.
The publisher hasn't ruled out involving an external design agency for the project, but decisions like this will need to be decided by everyone, including the readers; Lee says she hopes they will become more involved with the plans.
This will be an important factor for Shiny after the criticisms levelled against the publisher by commenters on a recent article by co-founder Ashley Norris.
While many readers have since voiced support for Shiny, there are small changes proposed for the redesign that could 'cause outrage', says Lee.
"Shiny Shiny might not always be pink, but we're going to probably have that as a bit more of an open discussion with readers."
"We're never going to get it right for every single person out there, but we'll try our best."
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