Building a list of ideal news sites

If I were the executive of the online press, most news sites would be different from today. This is not to say that there is no good news site today, just do not have a (as far as I know) all the items should be concentrated together to build an ideal news site model.

The following is a news site can be structured to a different list of items, some of my own years of reporting, study the experience of the industry, others are from the Senior advisor and scholar's mouth, if the following did not mention the name, is my own opinion.

Problems with Design

Scroll a little less home

Remember the early online service? All things are on a page, the screen is not often scrolling, and today's news home page, designed to multiple scrolling, so that everything is filled in. I really want to see the home page can be placed in a screen without scrolling, at least close to a screen. Consider the way to hide content, the mouse moved to display the content, is a good way.

The online newspaper flat-screen advocate Roger Fidler, who teaches at Kent State University to develop tablet digital reading, is close to my idea. On the display of a tablet computer, a newspaper's homepage looks like the magazine catalogue, the eye-catching marking many important headings, foil art design and the picture background, each column has the button, may turn to the finance, the sports edition, by the news content sorts, and the printing newspaper is not different. I would rather see the homepage of the news as such, than to see the index design of the withered 橾 of most news pages today. Brass tracks design of the Observer Rporter Online, is an example.

Put the picture a little better

Let's fix the photo policy. Each section of the picture is large enough to let the reader at a glance the content of the news; but on the home page, the photo is a lot smaller, as if we have developed a habit, as long as the selection of photos, in another window to enlarge the display of photos. But I think even the enlarged picture is still too small to be enough for the reader to get a picture of the story. Why not make your photographer and readers happy, zoom in and make a voice-over slideshow? This is an absolute bonus to the site, and the reader hears the reporter's original tone, more feel cordial.

Put the ad a little smarter

We all know that 486 x 60 block ads very few people will choose, small ads are more so, especially on the right side of the ads, but also no one, but many newspaper sites are still published. Of course, many websites have serious problems with advertising.

Let's be smart, put a few bigger ads on each page and use behavioural and demographic models to show ads that readers may be interested in. Eye-catching ads can be inserted in the document, text ads can be more targeted.

To use more multimedia

I still expect more news sites that can be routinely reported in multimedia format, like MSNBC, Sun Sentinel, and elmundo.es have good multimedia presentation, but most news sites still don't. Why spend money to do these things? The reason is simple, because only this type of news reporting can show the characteristics and advantages of the Internet.

The question of the content

Where is the breaking news page?

This is originally every news site should have, but too many too many sites do not, that is, including local news of the breaking news page. Consider the last few events in your community: a serious car accident, a high-rise fire, the only way to know about it is to watch the Five O'Clock TV news, or tomorrow's newspaper, or lucky to wait until the local newspaper website to release the message.

But there's a better way: The local newspaper website opens up the Breaking News special page, when the car accident occurs, immediately publishes in the special page, does not need to be the complete report, lets the local populace know how the matter is enough, and this service uses the website to do the media best, because the website has this to attract the reader the potential. The idea came from Steve Kung, an expert on web site use, who said the news site had been disappointing him by failing to release the news immediately.

Collective Web Log

Consider the same field of professional journalists collectively write a blog, political journalists, science and technology journalists, all the football columnist, Detroit newspaper all the car reporters, each field of coverage, we collectively write a blog. A person who writes a professional report every day must have some interesting things to do, possibly recording his personal blog. Reporters, editors have a personal blog and nothing wrong, but the collective web site more interesting to attract readers, such as who interviewed the news, and can not be published in the gossip News, can be in each column of the collective blog appears.

Readers Blog

This is not a new idea, but only a handful of news sites do it by inviting community members to write blogs and promote their work. The best example is the Collection of Community member Blog, lawrence.com of the university City of Kansas newspaper website, which writes for free, but can last more than two months of " Long-term "author, available free broadband treatment, this summer, this blog opened to all the people to contribute to break the previous selection by the editor of a few authors practice." This is the best practice for incorporating a number of different voices into a news website.

Experiment Wiki

A wiki is a Web site made by a reader, edited by a newspaper editor or community member, and a local news wiki may be biased toward local history, neighbors, schools, and other projects. Local news sites can organize such projects, working with local schools, or retirement groups, to obtain local historical information. This site can be a permanent and growing local museum of history, where everyone can contribute information. The idea was provided by Paul Gragowicz, media director of the University of California, Berkeley Institute of Journalism.

Start interacting from the community

Ten years of online news, many newspapers still do not develop the value of interaction with the community. Photo galleries, taken from local residents, are most likely the source of the visitors ' group, offering photographs of sporting events, concerts and public meetings. The idea was provided by Peter M. Zollman, a new media and classified advertising consultant.

Operational issues

A Little softer register

Of course, you can install a mechanism that allows readers to register, obvious access to the reader's information and his interest, The Advertiser also provides an object of information, but, do a little softer: let the reader automatically register, so that the occasional visitors do not have to register the smooth entry, while providing incentives to attract those who fill in the registration form. Don't just think about your site, but for the sake of your readers, you may be able to keep reminding readers to sign up while readers are browsing the web, but using good incentives, you can get more readers and register with more authentic data. By simplifying registration procedures, there is no need to worry about how much of the reader data is false.

Develop regional search function

Let readers use the site as a local business and procurement channels, do not put the old idea: the media only published advertising, no further business. Let us face the reality, Google, Yahoo! and other sites are investing a lot of resources to develop regional search capabilities, in other words, your community residents may use their services to find restaurants, garages, and hairdressers where they will get maps, links, and coupons for various locations. Local news sites need to have the same functionality.

The evaluation of products and services is the proper content of news websites. A customer is looking for a repair shop that specializes in Toyota cars, and the site lists the name of the repair shop, telephone, map, customer comments, etc. to assist.