How to improve newspaper sites

August 30, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis
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The Bivings Report — the folks who studied what web 2.0 features newspaper sites are and aren’t using — suggests nine ways to improve those sites functionally and it’s a good list. Among the suggestions: use tags, provide RSS, kill registration, link out to and partner with local bloggers.

  • http://www.bivingsreport.com Todd Zeigler

    One thing I forgot to mention was the creation of cell phone and PDA versions of the sites, as Dave Winer has been pushing for lately. Sixteen of the twenty largest Japanese papers we looked at had this capability. I don’t know of a single US paper that does. One million people subscribe to the mobile version of Japan’s largest paper, Yomiuri Shinbun.

    Thanks for the link.
    Todd

  • Angelos

    Every paper has 3-6 cookies I have to fend off…

    One is enough.

  • http://www.mikespoints.com/archives/001622.html Mike Driehorst

    My initial $0.02 on the Bivings Report (still need to ponder it a bit more) is that, none of the suggestions have anything to do with generating more revenue for the newspapers. (Actually, one talks about taking away revenue.)

    Does everything need to be based on generating advertisement revenue? That approach is getting pretty popular — can it really work for all?

    I don’t have a problem with some aspects of a newspaper being subscription based. Even all of it — maybe a combined rate for print and online that is actually cheaper than just print. Not sure it would work, but worth exploring.

    I had some similar suggestions last week (http://www.mikespoints.com/archives/001622.html) about how newspapers “just need to step up.”

    There is a lot of good in the Bivings Report, don’t get me wrong. What we need to do is combine suggestions of newspapers “stepping up” to the growing digital world with how to make a profit in doing so — locally and nationally.
    Mike

  • http://amomentwith.typepad.com/ Easycure

    Kill registration is the big one for me. I’m a holdout…..I do not register for newspapers except for my local one.

    I can read excerpts from other places……the newsies can kiss my non-registering behind.

  • http://www.bivingsreport.com Todd Zeigler

    Mike,

    I build websites for a living, so my ideas are focused on how to make newspaper websites more compelling. I’m no expert on the business end of newspapers, but it is my naive belief that if you make the sites more compelling you’ll get more eyeballs and thus more ad revenue.

    Regarding subscriptions, I can understand the rationale at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal where folks are charging for content. But these are exceptions. Most of the registration are there to collect demographic data about users and get your email. In this day and age, I think these kinds of barriers are counterproductive. People just won’t fill it out or they’ll figure out ways to cheat.

    I liked your post.

    Todd

  • http://www.mikespoints.com/archives/001622.html Mike Driehorst

    Per Easycure: “I do not register for newspapers except for my local one.”

    That is the strength of newspapers: the local communities they cover (not talking about the nationals). No other entity knows nor can cover the local community better.

    Since newspapers do focus on advertising for their main source of revenue, it does make sense to improve their online presence. But, having worked for some newspapers, I know that subscriptions are still a significant part of the $$.

    It’s funny how, with some things, if it’s free there is often little perceived value to it (like many printed newspapers). But, in other things — information on the ‘net — it’s expected and even demanded.

    Sorry, don’t mean to take the post off topic. With my local paper (Toledo Blade) having huge labor and $$ troubles, combined with my own passion for journalism, I very much want to see the newspaper industry right-itself.

    Todd: Still very good stuff on your site (I’ve subscribed to your feed), and thanks for the compliment.
    Mike

  • http://greenteth.blog.co.uk/main Ian Thorpe

    Use tags ? Why? I registered with a few tagging outfits months ago, they did not improve my hit rate at all. And following a tag in someone’s blog always leads me to something entirely unconnected with the aryicle or anything else I might be interested in. My colleagues at blog.co.uk have all shared my experience.

    So if this report is simply about promoting pointlessness I’ll give it a miss.

  • penny

    Todd, I can understand the WSJ charging a fee for their content as they are basically a financial paper. I don’t understand the NYT’s fee when most of the other major papers aren’t charging for their online content.
    Their approach is even sillier when you consider they charge a fee to read their editorial writers. How many people are really willing to pay to read Dowd and Krugman?

  • Angelos

    Dowd is funny sometime, but certainly not worth paying for.

    Krugman, yes.

    Funny thing is, my local paper, http://www.timesunion.com, carries them most days, along with The Moustache of Understanding, so I can just read them online there.

    Oops!

    I also don’t register for papers, or use BugMeNot to get in.

    If someone forwards me a link to the LA Times or Chicago Times, or whatever, and I can’t just read it, I go bye-bye.

  • Old Grouch

    Ian, tags (sometimes called “categories”) on many sites link to a chronological collection of all posts with that tag. (Your site “greenteeth.blog.co.uk” doesn’t do this: Maybe you need to activate something in your software?) To see how it works, compare this page with this one. At a newspaper site (for example), proper tagging would let you call up all “hurricane” coverage, or just the “Katrina” stories, without struggling with the search engine.

  • Old Grouch

    Duh, hit “post” and then notice Ian’s tag list in the right column, which are links. (It’s the ones below the articles that don’t do anything.) Anyway, IMO tags are more important for making your site useful to people already there, rather than for generating additional traffic.

  • http://www.tyndallreport.com Andrew Tyndall

    The discussion about the value of tags is a telling one. Jarvis and I have touched on it in person. I believe it reveals an interesting divide over assumptions about how journalism will work in the online world.

    Partisans of tags, I think, use the notion of “search” as their starting place. In this worldview, looking for journalism on any given subject is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It is a greater risk to miss out on any rare passing reference to a phenomenon than it is to stumble occasionally into an off-topic mention.

    Critics of tags, among whom I include myself, tend to be partisans of so-called “commodity journalism,” the type of coverage that Jeff disdains because it adds little added value, merely reiterating a set of commonly-known facts. Those of us that esteem “commodity journalism” see civic value in mass (as opposed to niche) news media, believing that for a republican democracy functions better when all citizens are exposed to and understand the same public policy agenda.

    For us, the issue is not finding a needle in a haystack but, as it were, understanding the shape of the haystack: the passing off-topic reference is not a minor irritant but a major obstacle. We are looking for journalism that is not only on-topic but authoritative, trustworthy and definitive. When looking for such hard-to-find coverage tags are distracting. Instead, we need stories categorized by primary subject matter, not passing mentions, and we need other users of the network to help us eliminate content as not deserving our time and attention rather than point us to obscure content we might otherwise have missed.

  • http://www.bivingsreport.com Todd Zeigler

    In looking at these newspaper sites what you’ll find is that they aren’t organized by primary subject matter even, unless you consider Sports, Politics, News, Business, etc. primary subjects. I think there has to be a deeper cut beyond the section of the print paper it is in. In the online context, the ramifications of organizing content solely by broad categories is that older content becomes essentially invisible.

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  • http://vita.mn/ Howard Weaver

    The Minneapolis Star Tribune has soft-launched a new entertainment site that incorporates a number of Web 2.0 features, including tagging, peer recommendations and wikized guides. I’d appreciate any feedback: it’s available at http://vita.mn/

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