Discussion Roundup: Ways to Improve Newspaper Websites

Hi Todd.  This is a great list.  I too have been using my own blog (jwikert.typepad.com) to pitch some ideas for the newspaper industry.  One of the more recent ones, and worthy of your list, is the notion of creating a mini-issue in downloadable (PDF) format that’s fully customizable.  I talked about it on this post, and now I see that the Toronto Star is about to implement it next month (see this post).

Hi Todd.  This is a great list.  I too have been using my own blog (jwikert.typepad.com) to pitch some ideas for the newspaper industry.  One of the more recent ones, and worthy of your list, is the notion of creating a mini-issue in downloadable (PDF) format that’s fully customizable.  I talked about it on this post, and now I see that the Toronto Star is about to implement it next month (see this post).

The Bivings Report on Ways to Improve Newspaper Websites…

Anyone involved with the newspaper industry needs to read this great summary of suggested website improvements from Todd Zeigler. Some of these are no-brainers (e.g., using tags, providing full RSS feeds, etc.) while others are going to require editors…

Regarding #11, I doubt many newspapers will do this, especially after the comment brouhaha at The Washington Post over a posting about the Abramoff scandal, and the human resources required to moderate comments and comment spam.  Would expect to see more adoption of the Technorati plug-in showing who’s blogging about the article, as The Wahington Post currently does.

Regarding #11, I doubt many newspapers will do this, especially after the comment brouhaha at The Washington Post over a posting about the Abramoff scandal, and the human resources required to moderate comments and comment spam.  Would expect to see more adoption of the Technorati plug-in showing who’s blogging about the article, as The Wahington Post currently does.

How to improve newspaper websites…

I wrote a few weeks ago about some steps that the North West Enquirer could take to improve its website. Well a study of newspaper websites by the Bivings Report has highlighted a number of different ideas that publishers could…

Re.#12 Free archives are a lot to ask for, especially when some papers have outsourced the job of managing those archives to profit-minded companies for a piece of the action… but I’d sure like to see more "subscribe and get free archives" offers, or a more rational "micropayment" pricing schedule. The old saw was "yesterday’s news wraps today’s fish," but today many Daily Fishwrappers expect readers to pay five or ten times the price of the original newspaper for one story from its archives, often one found by a hit-or-miss search! It’s not as if the companies were sending checks  to the reporters who (work-for-hire) wrote those stories years (or decades) ago. For comparison, the New Yorker is now selling its full archive — 80+ years of the scanned magazine — for less than $75. More about digital archives at http://tinyurl.com/zlpxt

Re.#12 Free archives are a lot to ask for, especially when some papers have outsourced the job of managing those archives to profit-minded companies for a piece of the action… but I’d sure like to see more "subscribe and get free archives" offers, or a more rational "micropayment" pricing schedule. The old saw was "yesterday’s news wraps today’s fish," but today many Daily Fishwrappers expect readers to pay five or ten times the price of the original newspaper for one story from its archives, often one found by a hit-or-miss search! It’s not as if the companies were sending checks  to the reporters who (work-for-hire) wrote those stories years (or decades) ago. For comparison, the New Yorker is now selling its full archive — 80+ years of the scanned magazine — for less than $75. More about digital archives at http://tinyurl.com/zlpxt

oops, I meant Re#15

oops, I meant Re#15

Bob,

You are right – opening up the archives is probably too much to ask. My local paper, the Washington Post, charges $3.95 per article for content older than 60 days. Obviously these are prices aimed at businesses s and not normal people. You also have companies paying Factiva and Lexis a small fortune for access to this stuff.

Opening up archives would also cut into reprint business. Why pay for a reprint if you can just link to an article indefinitely. The New York TImes charges $1,000 a year to publish articles.

Thanks for the comment.

Bob,

You are right – opening up the archives is probably too much to ask. My local paper, the Washington Post, charges $3.95 per article for content older than 60 days. Obviously these are prices aimed at businesses s and not normal people. You also have companies paying Factiva and Lexis a small fortune for access to this stuff.

Opening up archives would also cut into reprint business. Why pay for a reprint if you can just link to an article indefinitely. The New York TImes charges $1,000 a year to publish articles.

Thanks for the comment.

[...] Links: The research, Article 1, Article 2 [...]

Great ideas, if you can get them to do it. Problem is this: anything they do online for free takes away resources, revenues, and eyeballs away from what makes them money—print newspapers. Funny how Gannett bought all the local newspapers when the price was right and canned all the independent editors that had that local voice. Now, they are trying to stretch their staffs to cover that local voice again. I think most people can see past that. We are witnessing that here in Indianapolis with the Indianapolis Star now trying to be the Carmel Star, Fishers Star, and Geist Star. If you want to read more about my local newsletter (not newspaper) experiment, check out http://tombritt.com. Great blog, I’m subscribing to your RSS now.

Great ideas, if you can get them to do it. Problem is this: anything they do online for free takes away resources, revenues, and eyeballs away from what makes them money—print newspapers. Funny how Gannett bought all the local newspapers when the price was right and canned all the independent editors that had that local voice. Now, they are trying to stretch their staffs to cover that local voice again. I think most people can see past that. We are witnessing that here in Indianapolis with the Indianapolis Star now trying to be the Carmel Star, Fishers Star, and Geist Star. If you want to read more about my local newsletter (not newspaper) experiment, check out http://tombritt.com. Great blog, I’m subscribing to your RSS now.

Oh for goodness sake!

1) Use valid HTML

2) Serve it correctly

3) Meet WAI WCAG to at least level 2 (“AA”)

4) Use stylesheets, poperly, to separate content from presentation.

Everything else is just smalltalk, in comparison.

Oh for goodness sake!

1) Use valid HTML

2) Serve it correctly

3) Meet WAI WCAG to at least level 2 (“AA”)

4) Use stylesheets, poperly, to separate content from presentation.

Everything else is just smalltalk, in comparison.

Tom Britt has this about right – though they are also making money from websites, the industry is driven by a body count mentality. A paper I write for is massively profitable and laying people off, again. And when you see social networking appear you tend to think, as a journalist I see them getting free content, as a blogger I want to be a part of it, as a reader… I’m not too sure I care for all this.

Tom Britt has this about right – though they are also making money from websites, the industry is driven by a body count mentality. A paper I write for is massively profitable and laying people off, again. And when you see social networking appear you tend to think, as a journalist I see them getting free content, as a blogger I want to be a part of it, as a reader… I’m not too sure I care for all this.

Haydn – if done correctly my theory is that taking these steps will turn some folks from passive readers into members of a community built around the newspaper website.  And even folks who don’t blog or comment on stories will spend more time on the sites because the content will be more compelling.

Haydn – if done correctly my theory is that taking these steps will turn some folks from passive readers into members of a community built around the newspaper website.  And even folks who don’t blog or comment on stories will spend more time on the sites because the content will be more compelling.

I just detected another important thing – the layout.
I have the problem with IE that the box "about this blog" is hiding parts of the article on this side

I just detected another important thing – the layout.
I have the problem with IE that the box "about this blog" is hiding parts of the article on this side

I would like to know how many people are actually paying to read the old content on newspaper websites. Besides a few competing newspapers trying to spy and copy old stores, I doubt it is a big source of revenue. Opening up the old articles to all, especially people who don’t subscribe, will allow for more discussion and interest in the website / newspaper. The key is to allow comments on all articles and post the most recent comments at a focal point of the website. Comments posted about old articles that lurkers find is great for any website and continues discussion – new content for free.
I was surprised how many of the tips were the same – talk to bloggers. Bloggers are chatty and can provide free content, but more than likely they are going to stick to their own blog unless you are giving them prominent links and promotion. Typically, bloggers are talking about a niche – technology, journalism, being a house wife, and it’s not great content for the masses. The better idea, as Todd alluded, is to get the community involved. The local folk, not the weirdo computer geek bloggers who are typically on their computer and not in the community. Neighbors, community leaders, business owners . . . if you can get them engaged you have a real online local community, which could almost stand by itself without a newspaper . . . but you need the "paper" to make paper (dollars that is).

I would like to know how many people are actually paying to read the old content on newspaper websites. Besides a few competing newspapers trying to spy and copy old stores, I doubt it is a big source of revenue. Opening up the old articles to all, especially people who don’t subscribe, will allow for more discussion and interest in the website / newspaper. The key is to allow comments on all articles and post the most recent comments at a focal point of the website. Comments posted about old articles that lurkers find is great for any website and continues discussion – new content for free.
I was surprised how many of the tips were the same – talk to bloggers. Bloggers are chatty and can provide free content, but more than likely they are going to stick to their own blog unless you are giving them prominent links and promotion. Typically, bloggers are talking about a niche – technology, journalism, being a house wife, and it’s not great content for the masses. The better idea, as Todd alluded, is to get the community involved. The local folk, not the weirdo computer geek bloggers who are typically on their computer and not in the community. Neighbors, community leaders, business owners . . . if you can get them engaged you have a real online local community, which could almost stand by itself without a newspaper . . . but you need the "paper" to make paper (dollars that is).

All of the above in your list is true for press releases, too! Sometimes I believe press officers have never heard of the internet or any digital revolution yet … Everybody who releases a message to the press today in a PDF format should be divided in to four parts after being tarred and feathered! 

All of the above in your list is true for press releases, too! Sometimes I believe press officers have never heard of the internet or any digital revolution yet … Everybody who releases a message to the press today in a PDF format should be divided in to four parts after being tarred and feathered! 

[...] Discussion Roundup: Ways to Improve Newspaper Websites – (The Bivings Report) All of the above in your list is true for press releases, too! (tags: Journalism Pressreleases) Posted by Cem Basman Filed in Daily Links [...]

[...] Recently Todd Zeigler made a discussion roundup of ways to improve newspaper websites. Mostly all of what he recap in his list is true for press releases, too! Sometimes I believe press officers have never heard of the internet or any digital revolution yet … Everybody who releases a message to the press today in a PDF format should be divided in to four parts after being tarred and feathered! [...]

[...] After considerable feedback on the original 9/10 suggestions, Bivings has now published an updated list with a few more suggestions: See them here [...]

19 – Give links to the original sources.

19 – Give links to the original sources.

[...] While Erin and I most definitely are not experts on the newspaper industry overall and do not presume to know how to fix the LA Times, we do know a little bit about newspaper websites from putting together our report.  We advocated for many of the concepts we outlined in our post, 9 Ways for Newspapers to Improve Their Websites, as well as some of the ideas readers submitted in response.  [...]

Use Flash for video.

If video is a hassle for users to play–i.e., it requires Windows Media, RealPlayer or another specific player–it doesn’t add any value to your site because no one will click on it.

This isn’t my original idea. Amy Gahran posted about this on the Poynter Institute’s excellent E-Media Tidbits blog, but it’s worth repeating here.

You can find Amy’s original posting at http://www.poynter.org/column......aid=112028

Use Flash for video.

If video is a hassle for users to play–i.e., it requires Windows Media, RealPlayer or another specific player–it doesn’t add any value to your site because no one will click on it.

This isn’t my original idea. Amy Gahran posted about this on the Poynter Institute’s excellent E-Media Tidbits blog, but it’s worth repeating here.

You can find Amy’s original posting at http://www.poynter.org/column......aid=112028

[...] The Bivings Report: Ways to Improve Newspaper Websites [...]

[...] On the letters to the editor, absolutely. This is something that came up in a follow up to our 9 Ways to Improve Newspaper Websites post. I would love to see this process opened up. [...]

[...] Stuffy Economist Magazine Experiments With Social MediaThe Economist a blog where they are publishing most letters-to-the-editor uneded as they come in.  A great idea.  Of course I’m biased, as we’d mentioned this a few months back.  [...]

[...] 9 Ways for Newspapers to Improve Their Websites Posted on August 29th, 2006 By Todd Zeigler in Newspaper Study, Blogs, Media, Technology, Design We took a long look at the features U.S. newspapers include on their websites a few weeks back. In doing the research, we spent more time than is healthy looking at these things. So we figured we’d use this new found expertise for good and offer the newspaper industry some unsolicited advice on how to improve their websites. (1) Start Using Tags. The structure of just about every site we looked at more or less followed that of the paper’s print edition. This is great if you are looking to read the print version of the paper but not great if you are looking to see everything the paper has written on, say, Joe Lieberman. Newspapers aren’t taking advantage of the opportunity the Internet offers to remix/categorize content. The social news site Newsvine uses tags, and all I have to do is put in newsvine.com/lieberman and voila, I see all the Lieberman stories. Using tags to complement traditional navigation is a great way to offer alternative views of content and better relate stories to each other. The taxonomy of newspaper sites is broken and using tags is a pretty good way to start fixing the problem. (2) Provide Full Text RSS Feeds. Not a single newspaper we looked at offered full text RSS feeds. All of them only offered partial feeds, essentially using RSS like email notification – letting users know about new stuff in order to attract more page views. Newspaper should experiment with providing ad-supported full text RSS feeds. This is already common practice among blogs like Gawker (see right) and would satisfy the growing number of folks who want to read all their news in a single RSS reader. (3) Work with External “Social” Websites. Only four of the hundred websites we looked at allowed bookmarking through social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us. And to my knowledge none allowed for easy submission of content to Digg from their website. Newspapers should work with sites like these as a way to promote and spread their content. (4) Link to Relevant Blog Entries. Sites like the Washington Post are already partnering with Technorati to show “Who’s Blogging” about the story you are viewing (see left). Why bother? If I’m a blogger writing about a news event, I’m going to link to the Post story as a way of promoting my entry. It is a great way to facilitate discussion about (and links to) your content. In addition, the “Who’s Blogging” feature serves as a real time letters to the editor page. (5) Get Rid of All Registration. I’m at the point where I’m not going to register to read content unless it’s the New York Times. I’ll either work around the registration using BugMeNot or just go elsewhere. Registration prevents your content from being discussed and spreading online. It hurts page views too. (6) Partner with Local Bloggers. Lots of newspapers have their own blogs with content provided by overworked reporters. The quality of these blogs varies wildly from site to site. Why not partner with popular local bloggers and create a “best of” blog feed for your city/region? This seems like a good way to liven up your content and establish deep ties with bloggers in your region. (7) Offer Alternative Views of Your Content. Editors are great gatekeepers and play an important function. But on the web why not give us a look at your homepage showing the most read stories? Or most blogged? Or even allow Digg style voting and show the stories with the most votes? I’m not advocating abandoning the concept of editors and going fully to a social model, but why not give people some choices as to how they look at your content? Alternatively, partner with a social news site like Reddit and let them create an alternative view of your homepage for you. Slate did. (8) Modernize Your Site’s Graphic Design. Most of the newspaper sites we looked at had designs straight out of 2001. They used half of the screen real estate available on today’s wide screen monitors and looked sort of like online swap meets. The New York Times and Austin American Statesman are examples of sites with good, modern designs. (9) Learn from Craigslist. In our study we didn’t look much at the Classified sections of the websites. But from what I’ve seen, newspapers could learn lots of lessons by looking at the efficient way Craigslist presents its content. Like Google, it’s brilliant because it is simple. Classified sections on newspapers sites are neither. What do you think? How do you think newspapers can improve their sites? Update 1: Forgot one. (10) Make your content work on cell phones and PDAs. Sixteeen of the twenty one largest Japanese newspaper offer versions of their paper that work on a cell phone. I don’t think a single US paper includes this option, although Dave Winer has helped some sites out and put together mobile-friendly versions of a few papers as a public service. Update 2: I did another post building on the list based on comments by readers. [...]