Newspapers 2.0 - Concepts for making news work online

The modern internet does not work like a newspaper so it makes little sense to edit it like one.

We don't just read stories on Web sites. We arrive to steer, query, hack, mash up, personalize and customize the feed to suit our needs. Web site design is changing fundamentally — moving from a static "print-style' page design approach to sites that function more like software. Today's web pages are built on-demand and deliver a customized page with preferences and settings controlled by the end user.
Much of what a Web designer holds in their hands these days is code. And magic.

Long tail business models make real money

Companies like Myspace, Google, Craigslist and OhMyNews are making millions and capturing billions of addicted users using long-tail business models that are redefining the landscape by redefining who and how distributes news and information.

A perceptive Web Monkey article on the future of the internet observes "a significant slice of humanity now has the ability to publish/broadcast on the Net for free and reach the same gigantic audience (that big media companies used to serve exclusively)."

The Long Tail is the idea, originally fleshed out in a Wired magazine article by Chris Anderson, that niche markets can be more powerful than mainstream markets on the modern internet. The long tail is 10,000 bands on MySpace.com selling a million albums between them versus a record company selling a million albums by a single artist.

A key responsibility for producers, designers and editors is to provide the clarity and purpose to making stories work magically and intuitively for their users. Notice I said users - not readers. Reading is not the only engagement for people who use and consume digital news and information.

News Mashups

NYT.com has proven adept as using the new software 'mashups' to report the news and communicate in new ways. The Transit strike example comes to mind.

This is the perfect example of where more newspaper Web sites need to be thinking and executing. This was the best people story to be found online during the strike. It should have led the Web site but instead the link to it was buried. Why? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that no news artist drew this map, and none of the paper's reporters filed the stories written from the front lines of the news. Allowing your community to tell a great breaking news story with you and then using your expertise as editors and storytellers to intelligently package their submissions into a dynamically-generated map like this should be applauded. I spent an hour with this non-traditional and interactive 'story.' The experience was extremely satisfting.

Web sites can put you in the middle of the news

Web sites are becoming personalized computer applications - so it is the right time to abandon the rigid billboard approach many news sites still use. A thousand headlines on your home page does nobody any good.
Newspaper Web sites have the ability to deliver users to the epicenter of the communities they serve. Imagine how popular they would be with their users if they did . . .
Let's say you are reading this and there is a baseball game being in Chicago right now - I should be able to go the Web site of a Chicago newspaper and it should update to include a small scoreboard that updates frequently. Just the inning and the score that's all it would take to keep me on top. Let me click for more. Yet when a World Series game was being played in Chicago last fall not one Chicago newspaper Web site was willing to provide a simple lifeline to the big news like this.

Or let's say you're reading this at 6 p.m. and the City council is meeting. How difficult is it really to for a newspaper Web site to refresh to include a video stream from council chambers in a small window? If I'm not interested give me a button to collapse the video down. Put me in the town square of your community when the news is happening and I will practically live on your Web site.

The internet does not work like a newspaper - so stop trying to make it look like one.

» Robb Montgomery is the founder and CEO of Visual Editors.com
He is a consultant and instructor on multimedia integration, newspaper design and new media. 
His redesign for The Examiner just debuted in San Francisco, Baltimore and Washington D.C.

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