TimesofOman.com recently received the gold award in the Oman Web Awards 2006 and will be competing in the Pan Arab awards. So how is the website successful despite limited resources?

Time Management

Two staffers work on the morning shift, and one works on the night shift. This means that despite a limited staff, Times of Oman understands the ‘avant-guarde’ concept of a continuous news desk – which is based on appropriate task distribution.

“The morning shift people look after the breaking news updates, photo gallery, forum, backend tasks, a little bit of business development and advertising tasks too,” says Cariappa, and “the night shift guy uploads content for services and other news sections from the newspaper, once it goes to print.”

A typical newsroom process at TimesofOman.com roughly follows these steps:

- constant updates during the workday starting with the homepage and most important breaking news
- then time-friendly edits to other shortlisted stories, eventually posted
- including a picture wherever possible
- the homepage photographs are changed about thrice a day
- the featured sections (those directly picked from the printed paper: local news, business news and sports news) are updated
- when time allows, photo galleries are updated
- finally, staffers come up with a new poll question and post it, as well as check and respond to readers’ mail

Cariappa’s task management is by no means sensational or extraordinary. In fact, it follows a very logical and straightforward process of prioritized tasking. As simple as this may seem though, this is how TimesofOman.com accomplishes essential tasks first, such as regularly updated news and pictures. Only after do ‘secondary’ – these aren’t Cariappa’s words – tasks come such as updating photo galleries and answering readers’ mail.

Another helpful characteristic of the website is that, despite its continuous news attribute, it doesn’t chase updates or stories. “Unlike other websites, we don’t believe in breaking news just for the sake of breaking news. Especially, since there is a tendency to bracket all kinds of news as breaking news.” So Times of Oman avoids the pitfall of many newspapers, which waste reporters’ resources and time simply to appear as being regularly updated – posting questionably relevant content.

So in this case, there’s no need for fancy integrated newsrooms or specially trained multimedia journalists: well-defined priorities and a collaborative relationship with the print staff are enough.

“Since online operations is a small set-up, we work physically along with the print edition staff. We have access to the network and we’re able to access daily pages and news feeds. But, print and online work as two separate identities,” says Cariappa.

Although Cariappa admits integration will likely be the next evolution: “Like it is in most parts of Europe and US, the real integration between web and print has not happened. I am sure in a short period of time, this will be a reality,” says Cariappa.

Reader-oriented content

Whereas time management and staff organization are primordial, Times of Oman also focuses on offering valuable content. In this case, it meant being a news portal instead of an online reproduction of the print paper. The website is equally divided between the ‘News’ sections of the traditional newspaper (international, local, politics…) and a nearly as extensive ‘Services’ section exclusively online.

“News is just one part,” says Cariappa, “A portal cannot survive with just editorial news.”

Before opting for a news portal and community perspective, the paper studied its market and readers. A news-only service simply didn’t seem like it could draw nearly as much web traffic as a community news portal.

“To keep them hooked and make them come back to us, we need to have value additions in the form of multiple content. We provide value additions in the form of services. We want to be the one-stop-destination to provide information for anything on Oman.”

While community services need to be specifically adapted to the targeted community, many of Times of Oman’s features are quite common and easy to implement.

“For example, our services like cinema timings and flight timings are extensively used by readers in Oman, and are quite popular.” The website also provides ‘Prayer Timings,’ a horoscope, a full city guide and the weather. Registered users can also customize their preferred content and services.

Although openness to experimentation is important, newspapers mustn’t make the – wrong – assumption that editors know exactly what their readers want when they redesign or offer new features. The type of content and services offered, such as ‘Prayer Timings’, needed to be adapted to the needs of the particular market in Oman. There’s an easy solution.

“Our services on the website are based on readers’ choice or request. When we were developing the new website, we came up with a questionnaire for readers, and based on their suggestions, we have tailor-made the website,” says Cariappa.

“We can’t come up with tailor-made solutions and expect readers to appreciate it. Instead, we prefer to ask the readers their choice, and go accordingly,” he says.

As for blogs and interaction with readers, Cariappa has refrained from including them, after having had a “bad experience earlier wherein people get carried away, and use our website as a platform to vent their personal anger over institutions and people.” A problem encountered by all news sites having implemented user-generated content functionalities. Still, “we are working in this direction too,” says Cariappa.

For the time being, Times of Oman found a compromise between uncontrolled blogs and total lack of reader interaction. The website offers an open discussion forum for members, and also displays “web exclusive columns written by ordinary but enthusiastic people from Oman who have a passion for writing. The subjects of these columns range from life, family, road safety, driving, etc,” says Cariappa. Readers are also encouraged to submit pictures to be included into the website’s photo gallery.

The results of this overall strategy? It works. Three full-time staffers draw 80,000 people every day and help them throughout their daily life not only with news but also with practical services.

So here’s Cariappa’s last piece of advice to small newspapers and online news outlets:

“Interact with your readers, and provide what they want. Don’t impose your ideas on them and expect the website to do well. News is just one part, but readership can be cultivated by way of interaction in terms of daily polls, discussion forums, exclusive columns, and more.”

Source: Cariappa A A, web editor of Times of Oman