Steve Outing inevitably has become the acknowledged leader in transitioning newspapers to online.
Just about everyone — finally — is on board and working to address the big problem: How to transition a significant part of the newspaper business to online and new media while keeping enough money flowing in during the transition period to fund quality journalism, and prevent newspapers from entering a downward spiral. So how’s this going? I decided to take a fresh look at a sampling of newspaper websites to see if all the talk is just talk, or if it’s being translated into action. Here are a few of the more important things I observed in my end-of-2006 review:
- Video: Some newspapers have made excellent progress here, of course. WashingtonPost.com routinely wins awards for its video journalism, even beating out television news operations. Online operations like SignOnSanDiego.com (San Diego Union-Tribune) take video seriously and fairly routinely offer up video news coverage.
- Audio: And how about on-the-hour radio headline updates? If BBC Radio can do that, why can’t newspaper companies (especially those in major markets)? Again, this is something you see occasionally from newspaper companies, but not often. While I can point out some audio innovators in the newspaper industry, it’s not yet the norm.
- Blogging: Many newspapers have embraced blogging by now, with staff members now including blogging in their workdays. Hey, I couldn’t be happier about that… But a technique that too often is missing is the breaking-news blog.
- ClassifiedsEven larger newspapers that I normally think of as progressive still have weak classifieds presentation in some categories. Consider these WashingtonPost.com merchandise ads, which at least give the advertisers more words to work with and include photos of the products, but don’t offer up any contextual information. Here’s a DenverPost.com ad for a vintage car in the auto classifieds, which offers excellent breadth of features because it’s “powered by” AdPay’s Click-N-Buy service. Weakest of the classifieds categories at most newspapers is merchandise — an area, of course, that in many communities has been decimated by Craigslist.
- Interactive: I left this one for last, because it’s something I’ve pounded on in my writing often. In looking over newspaper websites in late 2006, I still see only incremental progress on two-way communication between journalists and readers. Too many sites remain stuck in one-way, we-tell-you mode. Again, I can point to industry leaders that are not afraid to open the gates to public discussion. Yeah, sure, public discussion is scary and it can get messy. So institute some tight controls, or even moderate (pre-screen) public posts to keep out the crap.
To sum up, we’ve got some industry leaders doing outstanding work — but often instituting change more slowly than is required for an industry that is being challenged to remain relevant to today’s information consumers.
Today’s state of the newspaper website doesn’t leave me terribly optimistic about the industry.
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