Part 2: Guardian Unlimited – blogs, video, and Web design strategies

 
Site redesign

Guardian Unlimited (GU) is currently undergoing a two-year-long incremental redesign. A team of as many as 50 staffers works part-time on the redesign. The new Travel section has led to a 100% increase in traffic, simply because most of the content is now packaged in sticky way (see below).

Content management systems

As part of the site redesign, the Guardian is also updating its content management system, which was developed in-house years ago, in a ‘now-forgotten’ programming language.

One of the priorities of the new CMS was to extensively tag all editorial – and non-editorial – items, so that “every piece of content has a relationship inside the system,” said Neil McIntosh, head of editorial development at GU. This saves a lot of time for Guardian staffers and plays a major role in GU’s popularity (also discussed at the end of this piece with the Associated Press).

For example, given a story about football club Manchester United tagged with “football,” “Manchester United,” and “Premiership League,” the CMS automatically links the story to the last three stories about Man. U., a picture gallery about football, latest blog postings, and perhaps ads directed to sports fans.

Blogs and comments

GU has sustained and emphasized its blog strategy, which really began in 2004. The blog section currently grows quicker than other parts of the site, thanks to the popularity of its blogs about video games, sports, and its Comment is Free section. Blogs receive about half a million per month, only 6% of which (or a small percentage) are problematic. Due to UK’s libel laws, which could potentially make the site liable for user comments, the Guardian’s strategy so far has been to be extremely reactive to any complains.

Said Ian Katz, who was GU’s first editor, now executive editor for the Guardian, and is much in favor of blogs as an effective journalistic tool to improve news coverage:

“If you strip out the formality of a news story it really makes more interactive and dynamic news.” The Washington Post used live blogs when covering the Virginia Tech massacre. Blogs can also be essential given harsh newsgathering circumstances, as was the case when violent outbursts broke out in Burma at the end of last year. On the other hand, Katz admitted that the reactivity imposed by online news “definitely changes news judgments” and has led him to make some mistakes as an online editor in the past.

Despite this success, only 1% of total users respond to blog posts, and the Guardian will need to introduce new channels for interaction in the future. “In future we’ll give more power to the user,” said McIntosh.

Video and multimedia journalists

As for all papers, “we had to enter this (video) with a degree of modesty,” said McIntosh. “We’re trying to find a new form of videojournalism that can work on the Web,” said Tom Happold, network editor at Guardian Unlimited.

Unlike many newspaper sites, Guardian Unlimited decided not to syndicate video content from broadcast specialists. “We weren’t convinced the content we could get from third parties would match our brand values,” said McIntosh. “We think that when newspaper companies work with broadcasters for video, you get more of the style of the broadcaster.” A possibility deemed unsuitable by the Guardian, in a day and age in which an opinionated voice and distinct brand names constitute are essential for news outlets.

The Guardian struck a special deal with Reuters, in order to get its scratch video footage (instead of pre-packaged news), which the paper suitably edits to its convenience. The paper has invested more than £1 million in video already and has launched an ad-sponsored video homepage.

Four video producers and one editor work fulltime – one of whom is devoted to filtering content from Reuters, and can produce up to 4-5 clips daily. Atypically enough, the Guardian has thus chosen to leave the cameras out of journalists’ hands – although a few select reporters do get video training. “You couldn’t ask a person who’s writing both for the Web and print to also shoot video,” said McIntosh. On the other hand, filing in audio clips is quite common procedure, especially for foreign correspondents.
 
In the last six months, the paper has conducted basic multimedia training for its print staffers, but it remains very general: journalists learn online basics, how to blog, take and upload pictures (which doesn’t mean they do this well). In other words, the Guardian is looking to increase its reporters’ Web-literacy, not to make multimedia journalists out of them.

In the end, although GU has put lots of effort in its redesign, packaged content, blogs, and more, the “only thing that matters is journalism,” said McIntosh. Bells and whistles may draw users, but quality content makes them come back.

Newspapers that sacrifice quality for glitter will quickly lose their audience.

Source: Neil McIntosh, editorial head of development Guardian Unlimited – Tom Happold, network editor Guardian Unlimited – Ian Katz, executive editor The Guardian