The biggest weakness of news sites and advice for improvement

Posted by Evan Fell on December 4, 2007 at 4:27 PM

While discussing the problems of the magazine industry, Jon Friedman of MarketWatch said, “The biggest weakness of most magazines' Web sites (and those of newspapers, too) has been their insistence on hiring longtime colleagues or other mainstream-publishing folks to edit them.”

Friedman offered five ways that magazines can improve their Web sites. The advice couldn’t hurt for newspapers. Here it is:

Take a page out of the playbook of what differentiated MSNBC.com from the pack. Have almost as many graphics and design experts as writers on staff.

Provide a feature that you simply don't have space for in your newsstand product: namely, the back story. Readers love to know the Inside Story on a big event. Let your reporters explain HOW they covered big news, and give them an opportunity to tell their stories. Yes, some blogs do this, too, but not often or well enough.

Make the sites as interactive as possible. Time took a good step in this direction by having its readers pick the questions it asks celebrities in its regular feature.

Use the Web to explain the news as comprehensively as possible. Don't simply report the story on the Internet -- give such information as a chronology. The Wall Street Journal's Web site routinely does this, and it pays off.

Keep the staff nonbelievers as far away from the Web as possible. If editors or reporters are ambivalent about or hostile to the Web (like many have been at Time Inc., and you can't fire them all), don't let them corrupt your site with their lethargy or disapproval. Listen, the Web is the most exciting part of a modern journalism enterprise for ambitious writers and editors. If they haven't figured it out by now, to hell with them.

Source: MarketWatch through I Want Media

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