ITV News has launched a new website with a focus on real time breaking news and analysis, the TV network announced. It has been rolled out in beta just in time for the UK Budget 2012 announcement on Wednesday, a press release said, and is part of an effort to put digital “at the heart of ITV’s news operation.”

A stream of rolling stories, updated to the minute, dominates the homepage. This offers ‘the very latest developments,’ said a video about the new design, and features short updates, text stories, photos, videos, and blogs. It echoes the traditional reverse-chronological order of a blog in its appearance.

Although ITV has consequently turned a way from a homepage structure dictated by what the editors feel is most important, there is a list of major stories along the left side of the page. Clicking on one of these filters the stream to offer just news about that story.

At the very top of the page you can switch to news filtered by region or topic and a top news section just below this shows you the ‘best’ on the site right now. Users can share everything on Facebook or Twitter, and the new site is optimized for use on mobiles and tablets as well as websites.

El Pais is putting its digital first foot forward…

Over the past few months, the Spanish daily has been introducing major changes to its digital products, gradually shifting sections of the paper over to a new platform and CMS. On the February 22 it unveiled a fully redesigned web page, with improved navigation, easier sharing and more sophisticated search functions.

The innovations are part of a radical change in newsroom culture at El Pais. “We’ve shifted our center of gravity at the newsroom – in the past it used to be print, but now it is digital,” wrote the paper in a blog post last month.

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The future of the newspaper is in magazines, believes Jacek Utko, design director for Bonnier Business Press, which publishes newspapers in eight Central European countries. This is a trend that news organisations should embrace rather than fight, he added, speaking at the 5th Arab Free Press Forum in Tunis.

Print is still a highly relevant medium, Utko said, and publishers are increasingly realizing this as they have been disappointed by tablets as audience- and revenue-generators.

However, the print model at many news organisations - publishing website content the following day and charging for it - does not make sense, Utko claims. It is necessary to offer more than that if you want people to willingly pay for the product.
Newspapers have a lot to learn from magazines, Utko said, starting with how to structure the information they provide. Magazines are small, with abundant spreads: when they deal with a long text, they make it as easy as possible to understand the content.

He called for news organisations to take a more creative approach to presenting news, rather than to be reactive, like "barking dogs."

Inclusion in ePresse, the new digital kiosk for French publishers, is not the only change on the horizon for Le Parisien. In light of recent figures of circulation decline, the French regional publication is restructuring its approach to print and diversifying alongside it.

Last Friday, the Amaury Group (owner of Le Parisien) announced it would be investing 30 million euros into the paper. The paper will unveil its redesigned format in 2012, which will be more colorful and with enhanced sections. In addition to the new format, Le Monde

reported that the newspaper would launch a weekly lifestyle magazine next year. In test editions, it included articles on events, do-it-yourself projects, gardening, and education.