OJR’s five tips from 2007 for websites
- Get a breaking news blog. The use of a breaking news blog by the Los Angeles Times to cover the wildfires in May proved successful. “Blogs are the ideal format for breaking news, as they allow newsrooms to swiftly publish little bits of information, as they are confirmed, and without having to weave them into a traditional story format. They also make it easy for readers to see "the latest" on a developing story,” wrote Niles.
- Widgets. In some ways, 2007 was the year of the widget, as many newspapers (including USA Today and Washington Post) developed more user-friendly widgets. Whether it's Google Maps, online polling tools or simple hyperlinks, editors and publishers have a panoply of online features they can use to engage the reader.
- Sports win readers. “At most newspapers websites I've encountered, the same section of the site consistently leads in traffic, comments posted to the site and inbound links from other sites,” wrote Niles. So despite the particularities, of the Sports section, it can serve as a “training ground for managing reader comments,” a platform to try out blogging, as well as a good place for reporters to develop their use of databases.
- Ask readers for information, not articles. Although this point is more controversial, some of last year’s citizen journalism and crowdsourcing failures show that citizen journalism doesn’t necessarily pay off. “News publishers can better employ the power of "UGC" for journalism if they resist the temptation to see content-generating users as replacements for reporters and start looking at them as great potential sources,” wrote Niles.
- Niles’ last tip concerns accuracy. As the number of online sources grows, and pressure builds to produce breaking news, it will become increasingly hard (and important) for news sites to keep the appropriate balance between accuracy and reactivity. “The news sites that prosper in 2008 and beyond will be the ones that do not leave their readers hanging with "he said, she said" coverage, but that report aggressively to reveal to readers who's lying and who is telling the truth.”
Source: Online Journalism Review
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Widgets are deffinitely a big one to look out for in 2008. I mean the main problem that has been brought up was the concern that widgets were not versatile, but if you look at a company like Clearspring http://www.clearspring.com/launchpad/ you can see that fixing that problem has been one of their number one concerns. The future looks cool!