News website FAIL

When is an award-winning website still a really bad website? When it’s reviewed by John Temple, who gives the Arizona Daily Star site a resounding “FAIL” based on 18 criteria.

The Arizona Daily Star (azstarnet.com) had been recognized by the EPpy awards as the “best news Web site with fewer than 1 million unique monthly visitors.”  But while that may make for good promotional copy, it doesn’t mean that readers — you know, the ones who are supposedly using and interacting with the site — are being offered a useful product.

Temple administers a test created by Mark Potts to determine how well azstarnet.com is serving the typical user. Again and again, from listings of the best restaurants to comprehensive coverage of local personalities, the site fails to measure up.

Its failure on the first three criteria, including “Without using search, find continuing, in-context coverage of a  long-running local story” — underscores the usefulness of what Martin Langeveld (and I, as well) has been arguing for — wikifying the newsroom:

Wouldn’t it make sense to build all of the back story into a wiki on the topic, and to make it the responsibility of the reporter to update the wiki whenever something new happens? And once the wiki is created, why not make it available online, linked in the printed and online versions of the story, so a reader can get a summary of all the background the paper possesses, not just whatever the reporter considers relevant to the current story.

At the end of a separate post about attracting an online news audience, Langeveld emphasizes that communication, not design for its own sake, should be foremost on the mind of those who run news websites:

It’s not about how sexy-looking your site is. It’s not about having the absolute latest display technology. It’s about how you engage readers with conversations and with ways of interacting with news staffers and with each other.

Bringing the news to readers, one app at a time

Writing about the popularity of mobile news and the New York Times‘ iPhone app, Nieman Journalism Lab’s Martin Langeveld suggests that ad sales don’t have to be the only source of revenue for newspapers:

One implication of the small screen, when it comes to news: we may be less inclined to work hard for news by searching, surfing and visiting aggregators, and more inclined to let the news come to us, by whatever means. The challenge, then, for publishers, may be to create apps that deliver custom-tailored news to fit preferences and interests of phone users.

Perhaps the figures Langeveld provides will be the nudge newspaper execs need to focus less on setting up pay walls and more on providing their readers with the kind of value they want, and building revenue streams upon that.

It would appear some are doing just that. Editor & Publisher reports that the new iPhone operating system will give publishers the tools they need for specialized content delivery and advertising:

The new technology has the ability to deliver user-location information at the browser level. For example, when a user accesses a newspaper Web site, the browser knows the user’s location. The newspaper can send relevant content and, more important, relevant targeted advertising within 2 blocks on a person’s location. “This makes local advertising on mobile highly potent with high CPMS,” Howe said.

Second: There is a new capability for publishers to charge for subscriptions or micropayments through one application. For example, a user could be reading about the new quarterback in town and with one click can purchase premium content like an exclusive video interview the quarterback.

Creative Loafing's Ben Eason talks to Editor & Publisher

Ben Eason, Creative Loafing’s CEO, gets some prime real estate in Editor & Publisher‘s Special Report on newspaper bankruptcy.

The most interesting part of the article is Eason’s revelation that he expects CL to emerge from bankruptcy over the summer, at which time “everyone will know the company’s real worth”:

“As time goes on, people are more realistic in what the company can produce going forward. We have an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to suggest to the creditors, to the judge, to everybody involved what we believe the company will look like going forward and then we have the opportunity to suggest what the capital structure is going to be. We are forced to value the company, not as we would like it to be, or what it was, but what it is today.”

Scan the newspaper barcode, get online updates

Editor & Publisher reports that Toronto’s National Post has become the first North American newspaper to adopt a barcode system that allows users to receive updated digital content:

Readers with data-enabled camera phones, such as a BlackBerry, can scan the or take a snapshot of the digital-looking barcode found alongside a Post story. Updated content from the newspaper’s mobile site is then uploaded to the mobile device.

Ad revenues down, readers up for news sites

Advertising revenue may be on the decline in the newspaper industry, but according to Editor & Publisher, 25 out of the top 30 online newspaper websites experienced a rise in unique visitors for the month of January.

NYTimes.com led the way with over 21 million unique visitors, far ahead of second place WashingtonPost.com, which had just over 11 million uniques.

Tampabay.com, the Web presence for the St. Petersburg Times, ranked 29th on the list, with just over 1.7 million unique visitors for January.

From micropayments to Kachingle

Alan Mutter has a plan to make readers pay for content, Michael Kinsley thinks micropayments are crazy, and Steve Outing says there is another, better way.

Mutter’s solution is a system in which users would pay for premium content by clicking a button that accesses accounts funded by their credit cards:

Alt-weeklies that had a healthy 2008

Editor & Publisher looks at 10 alt-weeklies that saw revenue growth in 2008. For most, the increases were driven by a combination of display ad sales and special issues.

Included in the story were The Athens (Ohio) News, Boulder Weekly, Illinois Times, Mountain Xpress, NUVO (Indianapolis alt-weekly), Pacific Northwest Inlander, Portland Phoenix, San Luis Obispo New Times, Santa Fe Reporter, and Seven Days (Burlington, Vt.)

Kudos to my former colleague and intrepid reporter Alex Pickett for alerting me to this story.