Results matching “website relaunch more ne”

Last week the Financial Times relaunched its website with a new homepage, along with five other resdesigned pages and a new Middle East section. This is the first stage of its redesign and more changes will be rolled out over 2009. Reviews about the new design have been mixed; some call it a success, some say it's a failure. The FT has been applauded for finally redesigning and "clearing up the clutter" but the criticisms go further than the redesign, some critics have called their entire business model into question.

The new design aims to make the site look more like the print version through colour and layout. The homepage is now pink, just like the newspaper, and the design of the masthead reflects the print version as well. The website has also been renamed Financial Times, no longer FT.com.

The Financial Times will relaunch its website on November 11.  The new site will have five news pages including a Middle East page.

According to The Guardian, other new features include a top ten list of "must-read" stories, a list of most read, horizontal navigation for the main sections and drop down menus for sub-sections.

Source: The Guardian

According to the paper's website, the Constitution-Tribune will relaunch next week with a new look.  

The newspaper will shift to a narrower format, from 12 inches to 11 inches.  The paper will also "be undergoing an overall redesign to freshen its appearance," according to their website. 

The goal of the redesign is to "offer a more attractive newspaper and one that is easier to handle," stated the publisher of C-T, Rod Dixon.

Most of the content will remain the same, however, some new features will be added.  

Source: Constitution-Tribune

The Bradenton Herald announced plans to relaunch its website this week.  The new design is set to aid in the integration of news, advertising and information-sharing between print and online editions.

The Herald will expand multimedia capabilities and include original video content throughout the site.

The new site will be simplified, more interactive and personalized.  Users will be able to build their own blogs, forms and even a personal profile like those of MySpace or Facebook.  In addition they will be able to comment on stories posted on the site. 

The Liverpool Echo announced plans to relaunch with a new design and added content.  The launch is planned for October 27, 2008.

According to the paper's website the "full makeover" of the Echo is designed to keep "with the pace, energy, positivity and drive of the regeneration of our city." 

News Digital Media has announced plans to relaunch its News.com.au website.  The new site has a new logo and home page that allows users to personalize it by drag-and-drop, similar to the BBC's website.

According to chief executive, Michael Robinson, NDM aims to become Australia's biggest publisher of news, sports and information on the Internet.  

The new site also intends to create new advertising possibilities, including more video and more takeover-style advertisements.  Robinson expects NDM online display advertising to increase by 20 percent in 2009.

Sources: The Australian

Swiss daily, 24 heures recently announced plans to relaunch their Saturday edition.  The paper will focus more on culture and entertainment.

The Saturday edition will also increase in size and will have more in-depth coverage.  According to the 24 heures website, by increasing the size of their newspaper and coverage for their Saturday edition, the paper is going back to the fundamental formula of a newspaper because its when people have more time to read a paper.

The redesigned Wall Street Journal website attracted 10 million users on Tuesday, its opening day, according to Sapient, the interactive consulting agency behind the launch.

More developments are planned for the website, including extending its content triptych, which provides users with free premium information that they can use to customize the site.

Source: Brand Republic

In the latest stage of reinvigorating the Wall Street Journal brand, its online edition - WSJ.com - has undergone a huge makeover, relaunching on Tuesday.

The parent company, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., appears determined to put its mark on its latest acquisition; the President of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network, Gordon McLeod, reportedly said that the investment into the website revamp is a "big financial commitment."

The Editors Weblog spoke with the Deputy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, Alan Murray, about the shake up occurring at the newspaper. Murray was bullish about the changes, saying, "The new owners have made it clear that they no longer want people to look at the Wall Street Journal as a second read. It should be their primary read, it should suit all their information needs. We want it to be the ultimate news source for our engaged, affluent and educated readers."

Murray went on to speak about the redesign of WSJ.com, the recent changes in newsroom layout and management, and the ambitious plans for the future of the Wall Street Journal brand. He made it clear that, "(The website relaunch) is not a finishing point. This is the launching pad." 

Murray was particularly excited about the relaunch occuring at the same time as the Lehman Brothers story breaking, saying "We are delighted that the biggest financial news story since 1929 happens to coincide with the launch of our revamped site!"

"Newsreel" revolutionizes site navigation
For the new, sleek look of WSJ.com, News Corp's primary design motivation was to take advantage of users who "come in through the side door". Individual article pages mostly found through search engines, have been equipped with multiple navigation tools, to keep readers on the WSJ site.

Arguably the most interesting navigation feature is "Newsreel", essentially a news ticker placed at the top of the article. As the reader browses an article page, Newsreel scrolls through the days most important stories from the section the user is in. For example, if a user is in the business section, the Newsreel displays the top business stories of the day.    

In addition to the new layout and navigation functions, the Journal's newsroom is upping its content production to help keep readers on the site. The redesign also aims to be more colourful with more photos and includes an enhanced video player, an increasingly prevalent aspect of all news websites. Further features are set to roll out over the coming months. 

Social network for the business community
Perhaps most important for the WSJ's new owners is maintaining WSJ.com's impressive online subscription base, which has reached over 1 million paying members. Apart from increasing content, News Corp hopes to hold on to these subscribers with exclusive features such as WSJ Community, a social network for WSJ subscribers.

The key feature of this new social networking tool is that members must use their real names, which is aimed at cutting out any random, anonymous comments or useless noise found on other Internet news sites. Murray believes the quality of the site's subscriber base will create "a higher quality conversation". He acknowledges WSJ.com will not achieve the numbers of a chat on Yahoo Finance but, "we think the usefulness and quality is going to be key". The Journal is considering opening up the Community to non-subscribers in the future, who, just like subscribers, would only be able to join and interact with their real name.

WSJ.com has been the world's most successful subscription newssite for years and its membership keeps growing. According to Murray, online subscriptions have increased 26% in the past two years. And the number of unique user is skyrocketing too: "By our numbers, we now have 17 million visitors to WSJ.com" - 8 million more than two years ago - "and in September it is going to be even bigger than that. Therefore, Murray doesn't see any conflict in bringing more people in and letting them sample WSJ content.


Integrated Newsroom

Murray revealed that the Wall Street Journal is not only undergoing a radical change on its website, but is also changing in its newsroom, "The relaunch coincides with a complete integration and reorganisation of the reporting and editing staff."

Managing Editor, Robert Thomson, has spearheaded the integration programme, which has brought together the online and print staff. Last week, Thomson debuted a news hub in the newsroom where the senior editors from print, online, Dow Jones Newswires and MarketWatch all sit together and co-ordinate the coverage throughout the day.

The morning news meeting has been "totally turned upside down," according to Murray. It now begins with a report from the online team, then from Dow Jones Newswires, then MarketWatch and, only after discussing the coverage for real-time news, do they look at coverage for the day's paper.

The substantial Dow Jones Newswire team is also being moved to make the integration process physical, with the whole team being brought across the river to sit alongside their New York print colleagues. This move will happen, "sometime next Spring" Murray said.

The Wall Street Journal team has been undergoing training to prepare for the integration process. Murray reported, "A simple example is headlines. You have to write a different kind of headline in the online world and in the print world. We will continue to do that kind of training."

The future of the Wall Street Journal

The Editors Weblog asked if this process was the beginning of a long term-reinvigoration process for the Wall Street Journal brand, Murray said: "You bet! We have very ambitious plans for international, we have very ambitious plans for premium products on top of this online platform and we have a whole schedule of online innovations that we are planning over the course of the next 18 months. This is just the beginning"

"Look for us forming closer links with all the social networks because we are not trying to compete with social networks, we want to make it as easy as possible for our users to share our content over social networks and to bring their friends and connection into our community"

Murray also added that News Corp is confident about the future of print, stating, "The Wall Street Journal under its new management is investing in both print and online, so I would say we are very optimistic about the future of newspapers. We may be the only people who are optimistic! We are dedicated to delivering our news on all platforms"

Source: Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch, paidcontent.org

See also:

US: Murdoch on the future of newspapers
US: Wall Street Journal to launch new website on Tuesday
Wall Street Journal unveils magazine supplement, WSJ
US: Wall Street Journal launches new mobile application
Murdoch: Newspapers willing to invest in new forms of delivery will prosper

The Guardian has recently spent millions to relaunch their website, guardian.co.uk, however, some features didn't cost a pound.

On Guardian blogs Lost in Showbiz, PDA, and Deadline USA, you'll now find an "Our Faves" feature, which displays items from a Guardian account on the social bookmarking service Delicious. The Showbiz blog can even be personalized by a readers who are also Delicioius users, with a "Your Faves" tab, where relevant web pages tagged by the user with "Showbizspotted" will display on the Guardian blog, as well.

Also on the Lost in Showbiz blog, you'll see another box, "Latest Fashion and Showbiz blog posts," which aggregates headlines from five non-Guardian blogs, generated by Yahoo Pipes and delivered to the Guardian via a Google Gadget.

As Poynter points out, "Culturally, this is a hard thing for many news organizations."

None of these services - Delicious, Google Gadgets, nor Yahoo Pipes - are owned by The Guardian. It's an issue which leaves many news sites fearing a lack of control.

"Increasingly, though, they're learning that integrating other online services into their site tends to work better than unwieldy custom software," continues the Poynter column. "It's not just cheaper -- it's also much, much quicker."

Source: Poynter

The News of the World, one of the UK's most popular newspapers, is relaunching its website next week. The newspaper are currently running a beta version test.



The new site will add a series of football blogs written by fans of Premier League clubs, give greater prominence to video content, adopt new templates, and offer an improved search facility.

The newspaper has pre-selected fanzine editors and supporters from unofficial club websites to write the blogs about their teams. Considering the grey legal area of bloggers, especially unpaid volunteers, Gary Thompson, associate editor of NoW.co.uk said, "The same rules will apply to them [bloggers] as to our chief sports writers. The rules of libel apply to them as much as anyone else."

The site has a redesigned homepage, adopting The Sun Online's page template, to make more content accessible above the fold. It has also added a tab feature to make navigation easier.

The new site will run on a technology system called Scenic, which also runs the websites of other News International titles, Times Online and Sun Online. The new-look site is replacing the pop-up feature by embedding a new video player supplied by Kit Digital - formerly Roo Media - into the top right of the homepage and across story pages.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Trinity Mirror continues its company-wide relaunch of regional newspaper websites as it revamps the Hounslow Chronicle in west London.

The redesigned site includes the hyperlocal community blog feature pioneered by the Evening Gazette in Teesside - the feature undeniably boosted the Evening Gazette's traffic and helped it engage its local community.

Users can contribute content to the hyperlocal sites, and the newspaper intends to use to reverse publish this content in print products (see today's example with The Hartford Courant in the US).

More and more newspapers around the world are implementing these types of hyperlocal community portals and then publishing users' content in specific print editions, a model which seems to be successful both as a business venture and an editorial product.   

Source: Press Gazette

The relaunch of the redesigned MyTelegraph site this summer will see user generated content integrated across other areas of Telegraph.co.uk, said Telegraph communities editor Shane Richmond at the PPA conference.

Accoring to Richmond, plans are in place "to take user content into other areas of Telegraph.co.uk to advertise and integrate the service." The updated MyTelegraph service will also include new tools enabling users to upload multimedia conference, reports Journalism.co.uk.

The Telegraph opted to redesign the site following the closure of Intersource, the company that built the site's original platform.

In the interim, MyTelegraph (see image), which currently has 18,000 registered users, has been housed at Telegraph HQ, Richmond said.

"That left us in a very precarious position. We had a lack of experience in running the site," he said.

The revamped site will be run on a platform created by American company ONESite.

Source: Journalism.co.uk