ABC News (www.abcnews.com)
The Web site of ABC News was redesigned in late 2004.
A new site is expected later this year, perhaps as soon as spring.
But until it arrives, the Web identity of ABC News reflects the strategic thinking of the network for the last two years.
ABC?s Web team paid particular attention to the most popular television Web sites, CNN.com and MSNBC.com, and sought to ?broaden its online initiatives past the familiar narrowband Web,? according to one of the key designers, Mike Davidson.
The designers built in more video, developed more wireless initiatives, and began offering RSS feeds. The site also launched ABCNewsNow, which it claimed was the globe?s first 24-hour online video feed.1
An analysis of ABCNews.com also suggests that the site places the greatest emphasis on using multiple forms of digital content, and at the same time, promoting the ABC brand. Indeed it stands out as the only site among the 38 studied to earn the highest scores on multimedia and branding but on nothing else.
The site puts less emphasis on the depth of its content, it was in the bottom tier in that category.
One of the most noticeable things about ABCNews.com is its layout. Its three-column format is set against a white background with one dominant photo ? a slide-show image that cycles through five top stories ? as well as a list of headlines. All of that lets the viewer know there is a lot available without seeming overwhelming.
The key to the site?s information-rich-but-clean-to-the-eye look may be the simple color scheme. The site is basically black and white and blue all over, with small red callouts for ?video? or ?webcast.? That?s important on a site where the first screen offers 16 clickable news links and headlines.
As with ABCNews.com, only half the content is narrative. A mix of six other media forms make up the rest of the content, putting it in the highest tier for its use of multimedia forms. Nearly a quarter of the content is in video form, including a 15-minute ?World News Webcast,? designed with a younger audience in mind. The webcast offers a lineup and format different from those on the traditional evening newscast and is first available to users live at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. The site also makes use of audio, podcasts, poll data, photos and more slide shows than any other site studied.
Executive producer Jon Banner said of the site: ?What it has become is much more of a broadcast aimed at people who use the Web and who are much more Web-savvy than people who watch the broadcast. You still get a lot of things that are on the broadcast every evening, but they?re done in a much more Web-friendly style.?2
To cater to the user, the site has also taken steps to make its news content more portable. All the network news sites now offer podcasts or ?vodcasts,? but ABC News vodcasts are consistently among those most frequently downloaded on Apple?s iTunes. In September, for example, there were 5.2 million downloads of the ?World News Webcast,? Reuters reported.3
On the homepage itself, though, there is less customization. There are no options for the user to adjust the layout, and the search is based only on simple key words. Over all, then, the site fell in the mid-to-high-tier ranking for customization.
What exactly is behind all those headlines on this site? As with the other networks, ABC placed heavy weight on the originality of and control over its content. Beyond the World News Tonight vodcast, the content relies more heavily on outside sources. The featured stories that appear in the center of the homepage slide show are always from ABCNews.com itself, in their print and video forms. But the print stories that appear under ?Top Headlines? and ?Hot Topics? are FROM AP or Reuters. In fact, that?s true of the vast majority of the print copy that appears on the site besides the pieces in the featured-stories box.
There are a few exceptions. Correspondent Brian Ross and his investigative team have space on the homepage ? ?Brian Ross Investigates? ? with original content. And there is a section on the page about half-way down that features ?Blogs and Opinion? with original content.
ABCNews.com has yet to make much use of the ability to link several news reports together and offer coverage of one event in multiple media forms. The lead story tended to have just one additional report listed as a link. And most stories themselves contain no embedded links offering additional information such as biographies of sources or original documents.
The user-generated content, in the form of narrative, photos or videos, has presented the site with some advantages and challenges.
In 2006, after first breaking the story on the so-called page scandal involving the Florida Congressman Mark Foley, a blog on the site received even more messages from pages providing ?even more salacious messages,? according to Mark Glaser of PBS.4 ABC, however, didn?t just post the material; it called Foley?s office and asked people there to verify the instant-message postings.
The site scored in the middle-to-low tier on user participation. Individuals can usually e-mail the author of a news report, but cannot post comments for others to see, or rate the story. But what stands out here is the site?s use of user-generated content. There is a clear place for users to submit stories, such as their own reports from breaking-news locales, some of which appear as a part of the homepage layout.
Finally, the ads on the site are largely self-promotional, which in part led to its sitting in the mid-to-low tier for revenue stream. The top banner ad is always related to ABC and/or Disney products, and ads for ABC news programs appear up and down the page. There are only two true outside ad spaces on the page, a small box under the topic navigation box and a long one over the page header. There is no registration process, though there is some premium content that users can pay for if they choose. All archived material remains free.
AOL News (www.aol.com)
With its modular design that places everything in boxes and its range of sources AOL.com?s news site seems focused on telling users what everyone else thinks is news. This is a not an aggregator site that is focused on combing through sites to put together a kind of uber news page. It is rather a site that seems content to mine the wires, the big broadcasters and prominent print outlets for a snapshot of the days news viewed through different prisms. Most of the pages ?top news? comes from the news wires but further down the page are boxes for AOL partners ? the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, Wall Street Journal and CBS News ? each with three headlines that take users to those pages. Video links work the same way on the page, listed by outlet.
This approach had pluses and minuses in our site inventory.
AOL News scored high in our participation category ? in the first tier ? for giving viewers several ways to interact with the site. There was a user blog, a page with stories generated by users and chances for users to comment on stories. Authors could also be emailed in some cases.
The site was also fairly customizable ? ranking in the second tier in that category. Users could modify the front page and the site offered multiple RSS feeds and an advanced search option.
AOL News scored in the third tier on multimedia. While there are video links here, the site on its face is mostly text driven with more than 70% of the home page content consisting of narrative and narrative links. It also finished in the third tier on depth. While the site often linked stories together for packages that give readers a the broader context of issues, the site was hurt by not updating as much as others. And as one might expect from a site that simply gathers content from elsewhere on the Web, the site scored in the bottom tier on branding.
It doesn?t have a strong revenue stream either, sitting in the third tier in that area with only about a half-dozen ads in the site.
In terms of content, the news on AOL may not be organized into a comprehensive page, but there is clearly a lot here. Between the wires, news outlets, blogs and ?citizen media? links here, users can see the day?s events through a lot of different lenses. And the combination of human editing (which the site clearly uses on its ?Top Story? and the running headlines from the wires and other outlets on the rest of the site makes for a real mix of news. The site?s design may be a drawback as well. The site can feel like looking at a wall of front pages. All those top headlines from various outlets feels in some ways like the site is missing a page two.
BBC News (www.bbc.co.uk)
The Web site for the British Broadcasting Channel is one of the more advanced that we came across. Its look is that of a traditional site, designed around the news of the hour-- with lead headlines on a range of topics, followed by video and audio reports. Its offerings, though, are significantly more complex. It scored in the highest tier for at least three out of six categories (one of just four sites to do so). And, the area where it scored in the lowest tier?revenue streams?may be one that users would welcome since it means fewer ads to navigate.
The site placed the most emphasis on customization, use of multi media forms and editorial branding. Users of the site can tailor the home page layout each time they visit (though the selections are not saved for repeat visits) and can access the specific news items through advanced search techniques. They can also have the news come to them. The site features multiple RSS feeds, podcast options and even mobile delivery.
The BBC News also makes more use than most of the multimedia forms the web allows. On the days we visited the site, news items listed on the home page came in seven different media formats, including video, audio, live streams, podcasts, interactive graphics and more.
When it comes to the editorial branding, the BBC name takes high priority. All content comes directly from the BBC itself?without even wire service supplements. And all news stories are bylined.
The ability for users to participate?to somehow add their voice to the mix?is more evident here than on most of the 38 sites we examined. While most sites fell on the lower end of the spectrum, BBC News scored in the second tier. Through a section called ?Have Your Say,? linked to from the left-hand column of the home page, users can submit their own photos and video and view selected submissions from others. Also on this page, visitors can email in their thoughts on a number of daily topics?some of which continuously ?crawl? across the top of the landing page. Specific news stories also have links at the bottom where users can send in comments. Group voice is displayed through lists of the most viewed and most emailed stories of the hour.
The BBC news site did less, scoring in the third tier, for making use of the potential depth of the web. Editors here have chosen to forgo the ability to place links inside stories to additional information about the newsmakers or to original documents. What they do offer instead are links to other related news stories they wrote as well. The individual story is still king here.
As a government funded entity, the area where BBC News scored the lowest?revenue streams?comes as little surprise. Users can dive into the content right away. There is no registration process at all, just one small self-promotional ad on the home page, and all the content is free?including all archive content.
Benicia News (www.benicianews.com)
It is unlikely that Benicianews.com will win any awards for Web design, at least with its current layout, but slick looks and clean lines are not what the site is about. It is rather something of a rarity on the Web. It is a completely online local ?newspaper? for Benicia California, a small community in the Northern part of the state, not far from Oakland, that is made up of stories aggregated from around the Web and from citizen journalists.
Visually the site is laid out in three columns, a narrow navigation column on the left, a wide one that contains content in the middle and another narrow column on the right that holds ads. There are few photos on the page. And its overall look ? from the small logo in the top left with a dog holding a newspaper jumping through a computer screen to the text that appears in many different sizes ? gives the site something of a homemade feel.
That look, however, is not in contrast with the site?s larger mission. The top 10 stories on the page all come under the ?Citizen Journalism? header, with the top three containing teaser text. These pieces were all submitted by users. Under that comes a broader ?News From The Web? header with 10 more stories ? all of them culled from online news sites based in the area (like the Contra Costa Times and San Jose Mercury News sites). Under that are a bunch of category headers ? News, Education, Cartoons ? that may or may not have any headlines with them.
The site did not score well in many of our inventory categories. It was in last tier in customization. It offered users no way to modify the home page no RSS feeds and no podcasts. It was also in the bottom tier on multimedia. On the day we examined the site it not only lacked video and audio links ? which is generally the case ? there were also no photos.
Its depth score was also in the bottom tier, hurt a great deal by the few updates on the site (some stories were on the front page for days) and the lack of an archive. And it sat in the lowest tier on branding. The site?s staff editing helped its score, but the amount of material from outside hurt it. It did slightly better on revenue streams, the third tier. The 11 ads on the page were more than some sites offered, but there was no fee content or fee archive.
As one might imagine with a site so dependent of citizen journalism, Benicia News did better on user participation, where it sat in the second tier. There is obviously a lot of user content here and users can email story authors. It didn?t score higher because it lacked thing like interactive polls and online discussions.
This site speaks to the strengths and weaknesses of citizen journalism. Topics are extremely varied ? from personal experiences to the opening of new parks ? and users are ?empowered.? But they don?t seem to be empowered that often. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the content on Benicia News is how static it is. Stories can sit in the top two or three for weeks at a time.
Boston Phoenix (www.thephoenix.com)
The website of the respected 40 year-old alternative news weekly, Boston Phoenix, is still in the early stages of Web development. It is a lively site, with bright photos and language clearly aimed at younger, culturally active Bostonians. Even the top news item is constantly on the move as a handful of headlines and photos rotate through the lead space on the page.
Despite all that, however, the site does little to take advantage of all the Web offers. It scored in the lowest tier in three categories, the second lowest in two and the highest in just one.
Its high spot lay in promoting its own brand name. All content is original, bylined material by Phoenix staff. The news stories themselves are in the free-spirited tone of the print version, with headlines like ?The who behind What? and ?Of pols and pop culture.? Beyond the headlines are sections on dining, movies, arts, a highlighted Reader Poll on the Best of 2007 and other cultural areas.
This reliance on staff reports impacts another area?depth. The site is largely built around individual stories. What?s more, the print product is weekly, not set-up for hourly or even daily news reports. This carries through to the Web site as well, which scored in the low-mid tier here. The site is not about news of the minute. On the days we visited, much of the content was nearly a week old. Only the top headlines were newer and even several of those were three-days old. There are no links embedded into articles and only on rare occasion a related, secondary story attached to a headline. The site is officially updated every six hours or so, but again, only for a few choice headlines.
The media forms have moved slightly beyond those of the print version, but not by much. More than 70% of the home page content (all links other than those to landing pages) is narrative with accompanying still photos accounting for another 15%. Beyond that, users can find a section of video stories?many of which are several days old?and some use of interactive graphics.
Boston Phoenix also does little to let its audience customize the news to their tastes. The home page comes only as is, the search is simple key word, and the only alternative delivery mode available is RSS. User participation is just as scarce. The only options we found here were the ancient mode of emailing the author as well as a way to post comments to a story.
Even this low-tech product though has appeal. Visitors can access all this personality driven content without any kind of registration or fees. And, the number of ads in on the low side?an average of just seven on the home page?granted they are quite large, colorful and pretty hard to miss.
CBS 11 TV (www.cbs11tv.com)
The Web site of the local CBS affiliate in Dallas-Forth Worth also stood out among local TV sites for the its web offerings. CBS11tv.com placed highest emphasis on customization and on offering content in different media forms. It also scored in the mid high range for economics, or the level of developing revenue streams.
The site earned lower marks for thedepthof its offering and for giving users a chance to participate in the content.
The homepage?s upper banner features local weather, traffic and a search tool, which is unusual, because most sites feature a banner advertisement in that prime homepage property. Below the banner, the Web site usually calls attention to its lead story with a large headline and picture, often packaged with a video or another multimedia component. Following the lead story are 10 links to other top stories, a featured slide show, most popular videos, and a poll of some sort. The right- and left-hand columns of the homepage feature categories of information (such as ?local news,? ?politics,? and ?health?), more videos, local services like yellow pages, stock quotes and more.
The site scored in the mid-high range in multimedia. The bulk of the content is a mix of narrative, still photos and videos (roughly 90%) with some use of slide shows, polls and interactive graphics. And, while just a small portion of the content comes in these last three forms, the fact that the site uses them at all increases its rank here.
The site has chosen a mix of -options for users to customize the content, ultimately scoring it in the mid-high level. The home page comes as is, but with an advanced search option for archived stories. And, it has leapt over podcasts (not offering them at all) and gone directly to an option for mobile delivery.
One thing it seems to have almost no interest in at the moment is offering participation options to the user. There are no user forums, comments or polls. There is no way to email the correspondent of a report, nor are there lists of the most viewed or emailed stories. There is a section at the bottom of the site that asks readers, ?Got an Idea for a Story?? The link, however, only prompts an e-mail window.
The site also does less than others, to promote its own brand. A slightly obscured category in the left-hand column is a link called ?The Investigators,? which sends a user to CBS11 original reporting, special reports and consumer news. The work of three reporters is highlighted here, along with a picture. Outside of the Investigators section, much of the content on the site comes from the Associated Press. That is true even for some local news stories, though to a lesser extent than for national and international stories.
One of the more unusual content destinations on the site is a section called ?Inspiring People,? which presents a gallery of videos about acts of kindness and heroism. The site also offers three lifestyle sections (?beauty & style,? ?family,? and ?new baby?) aimed at niche audiences, primarily girls and young women.
Most content on the site is free, though users do need to pay for material that is more than a month old. Their biggest hope for revenue, though, seems to come in the advertising realm. We found an average of 15 ads on the homepage, the bulk of which were not tied to any kind of self-promotion.
CBS News (www.cbsnews.com)
Over the past few years, CBS News has attracted the most buzz among the networks for its Web site. After hiring Larry Kramer, who founded MarketWatch.com, as head of CBS Digital in March 2005, it announced a ambitious plan in which a revamped Web site would ?bypass? cable news by providing news to the consumer anytime, anywhere.
In 2005, the CBS News site was the first to allow users to build their own newscasts, and promised to put its entire archive of news video online. Its unique blog, Public Eye, gave readers a look at the inner workings of the editorial process that produced the evening newscast, a move that offered much-needed transparency after the CBS News?s Memogate affair tarnished its credibility in late 2004.
Heading into 2007, what is going on? The changes have given way to more changes. Kramer was ousted in November of 2006 and replaced by Quincy Smith, a 35-year-old venture capitalist, who said he planned to be "much more proactive making acquisitions across the board," according to an interview with MarketWatch.5 Possible targets include social networking sites, the ?hot? sites in 2006 and 2007.
Whether that emphasis will move resources away from the news site is unclear, but for now, CBSNews.com remains one of the Web?s most diverse and robust news sites. In our measurements, indeed, it ranked along with only three others ? the BBC, the Washington Post and a citizen media site called Global Voices, for its breadth and depth. In our loose grouping, it was one of our High Achievers.
Upon opening the homepage, it is clear there is a lot going on. There is a slide show with rotating stories, a lead story in the center of the page, a list of ?Top Stories? next to that, and a large advertisement. Above all that are links to streaming ?Live Video,? E-mail alerts, RSS feeds, Podcasts, and more.
All of this quickly gives users a sense of exactly how much is available and gives them access to it all quickly. With that comes a busier feel than at some other sites, perhaps a bit too busy for some.
Over all, CBSNews.com scored in the top tier in three out of five content categories, one of only two sites to do so of all 38 studied.
The Web site is highly customizable for the user and scored in the top tier in that category with advanced searching, multiple podcast options, mobile phone delivery and several different RSS feeds. The one option it does not give users is the ability to tailor the homepage to their own interests.
The site also scored in the top tier for its mix of multimedia. It offered nearly every kind of multimedia option we had on our checklist. Only about half the content on its homepage was narrative text, with the rest a mix of video, photos, audio, live discussion, polls, slide shows and interactive graphics.
The site was also one of only three studied to score at the high end when it came to the depth of the content. The site updates at least once every 20 minutes and makes significant use of the ability online to ?package? news by offering myriad related stories under the lead headline ? an average of 18 in our study.
Some of those stories have only tangential links to the stories they are tied to. For instance, on January 8, the site?s homepage listed the headline ?Genocide Charges Against Saddam Dropped? in its ?Top Stories? column. The story was bylined CBS/AP and though it was attached to a CBS News video, that video was about how Iraqis might react to a U.S. troop surge, rather than about the genocide charges against Hussein.
There is a lot of CBS video here, but the site is more than a collection of items from what it airs on its news programs. For example, 60 Minutes posts lengthy interview clips that don?t air on the Sunday night broadcast.
The network, however, has stopped short of others when it comes to showing the newscast online before it appears on TV. The site offers a live simulcast of the evening news broadcast, the first to do so. ABCNews.com, on the other hand, offers a 15-minute webcast starting at 3 p.m. CBSNews.com simply offers the potential ?rundown,? or a list of stories being considered for the night?s broadcast, late in the afternoon.
In content, the CBS name still carries weight, but not to the degree of some other destinations, and CBSNews.com earned a high mid-range grade on the level of brand control it tried to exercise. Homepage content comes from either CBS News, sister outlets owned by the CBS Corp., or wire services. The wire service news, though, gets heavy use. The print stories on the site are largely wire or wire that has been edited by CBS (usually bylined ?CBS/AP?). But perhaps because of the heavy reliance on wires, the site makes sure there are few print stories that stand alone.
The reliance on outside news, though, may grow over coming years; CBSNews.com has formed partnerships with two major content producers. First, the site joined forces with WebMD in August 2006, tapping into a growing, somewhat underrepresented market of medical news, where research shows there is considerable consumer demand. Then in October it announced a deal with Answers.com, which allows readers to get more background and information on words and phrases that are hyperlinked in news articles published on the site. But even unoriginal content is subject to staff editing, and most links inside the stories keep people inside the CBS News Web site.
The site fell at the low end of the spectrum when it came to participation, letting the user take part in the news, an area that news sites over all tended to underplay. Users can comment on most stories, but cannot do much beyond that. There is no way to rate the story, to e-mail the author, enter into a user-based blog or contribute original news stories. User choices are recognized through a list of the most-viewed stories of the hour, though the site does not track the most e-mailed or linked-to stories.
One noticeable aspect of the site is the large role the promotion of CBS entertainment programming plays. The homepage page features an entire column of links to clips from that night?s CBS primetime lineup. Katie Couric has a prominent spot on the page, just under the lead story and ?Top Stories? column. A small mug shot of Couric sits next to five video links from the CBS broadcast as well as a link to the Couric & Co. blog, where users can watch video and post comments.
Economically, CBSNews.com demands something from its users but not as much as others, scoring in the second tier on revenue stream. All content is free, even in the archives. Users can register if they choose, but don?t have to, What they must do instead is make their way through a number of different ads ? we found an average of 18 just on the home page, many of which were self-promotions.
Ultimately, there is a lot on CBSNews.com. It is an example of a site that sees the Web?s potential as a multimedia news outlet, but also as a way to win viewers for CBS.
Chicago Sun-Times (www.suntimes.com)
Chicago?s tabloid daily, the Sun-Times, has created an online identity that is clean, well-organized and very local, with a dash of sensationalism thrown in.
Suntimes.com uses a two-column layout with a white background and mostly emphasizes news from the Chicago area, particularly the print headlines. But the video links, which are played high here, are focused more on celebrity and news of the weird.
What the site emphasizes is the personality of the paper. It earned its lone top mark for branding, the level of original content and its own editorial judgment and style.
As for the rest of the inventory, it sat in the third tier on customization. The home page cannot be modified to personal taste. Users cannot get podcasts or a mobile version of the site. It was similarly in the third tier on user participation. Beyond the ability to e-mail the author, there was little opportunity for users to contribute to the site. The only other participatory option was the most controversial one, an online vote or so-called poll.
The site landed in the lowest tier in its use of multimedia. There were video and slide-show links on the homepage, but more space was taken up by text than on other sites. The site also fell in the last tier relative to others for depth. It was updated less often and offered fewer links to go deeper into topics and events.
When it came to economics, or the number of revenue streams Suntimes.com fell to the bottom tier. Advertising was the only revenue stream, and the number of ads was small.
The content here was again, highly local. Other than video AP links high on the page, national and international news takes a back seat on the site. Links to those kinds of stories come only after the lead item on the page, the videos and metro and tri-state headlines.
The site?s homepage on February 12, 2007, for example, led with a piece about car fatalities caused by a drunken driver in the Chicago-area community of Oswego, Ill. The feature under it asked users to ?Outguess Roger Ebert?s? Oscar predictions. The film reviewer, incidentally, has his own navigational tab on the site. Then the site ran three local headlines ranging from the shooting death of an off-duty police officer to a winter storm watch. After that came two national headlines, two world headlines and two politics headlines. And that was after a big weekend for Illinois politics as Sen. Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president.
CNN (www.cnn.com)
Streaming an average of 50 million news videos a month, and averaging about 24 million unique visitors a month,6 CNN.com comes second to MSNBC among the three cable news sites in traffic.
While MSNBC has the advantage of being a partner of MSN, the leading Internet portal in the U.S., CNN benefits from its commercial relationship with Yahoo, which is the search engine for CNN and sells the advertising displayed on the site.7 It is also working to tie together its digital media components. In October of 2006, the channel formed ?CNN Events,? a division devoted to cross-media marketing that allows a marketer to buy advertising across the CNN spectrum ? television, the Internet, and newscasts provided through cell phones and podcasts.8
What impression does the site give its users? Like MSNBC, the site seems more about doing many different things than identifying itself around particular skills. Again like MSNBC, the site did not earn top marks in any one of our content categories, but scored in the mid-range for all, and earned low marks for none.
The site maintains the cable channel?s focus on up-to-the-minute information. But it also makes some effort to develop its own Web identity with less emphasis on the on-air personalities and more on user?s ability to customize the news. Beyond the top few stories, however, it also relies more often than not on outside wire copy for its headlines and its breadth.
On the homepage, the latest headlines take up the bulk of the screen view. The lead story dominates the site on the left of the screen, and is normally accompanied by three or four related stories that have some multimedia elements. On September 22, 2006 it was a story about the E. coli outbreak in spinach with links to a CNN video report on the lack of standards for spinach safety and a graphic map of states with E. coli outbreaks.
It adds new content at least every 20 minutes, with a time stamp for the latest update at the top of the homepage and time stamps at the top of each full story. The focus on continuous updates, though, seems to take priority over otherdepthto the news. The site averaged just four related story links to lead story and just over one for other top headlines.
The CNN name is important on the site, but as with depth, takes second seat to timeliness. Most headlines are wire stories, and those that come from CNN staff carry no bylines, except when stories are taken directly from the cable channel or occasionally from a sister outlet from the Time Warner family. The layout of the page is by top news and then by topic area like World, Health, Travel and Law, and the stories here are mostly AP as well. Overall, CNN.com fell in the high-mid range for the level of brand control.
Under the headlines is a list of video segments, offered again in two ways: either most popular or ?best video? (though it is not entirely clear how ?best? is determined). Next to that the site displays its premium video content ? CNN Pipeline. A commercial-free subscription service of streaming video content, it was launched in December 2005 and has helped to make the site more appealing.9
CNN puts noticeable effort into letting the user customize the material. The site scored in the mid-high range here. Users can create a customized home page. They can also choose to have the information come to them through RSS with more than 20 feeds, ranging from straight news to blogs, Podcasts (both audio and video) or even to their mobile phones (an option not yet available at even some of the higher-tech sites we examined but available on all three cable news sites).
The site?s mobile content is in a section called CNN to Go, which includes news headlines, alerts on breaking news and an audio-video newscast produced specifically for the Web called ?Now in the News.? CNN also offers a live audio feed of CNN Radio. What?s more, nearly all of the content on CNN.com is free. That includes all archives, a feature quickly fading on many Web sites. Users don?t even have to register to go through content, but can if they choose. The only fee-based content is CNN Pipeline.
In an attempt to be more interactive, CNN launched a citizen journalism initiative in August 2006. Called ?I-Report,? it invites people to contribute news items for possible use on the Web and on the cable channel. On a subsidiary site called CNN Exchange, users can submit their own news reports, photos or video either on specific solicited topics or those of their own choosing. CNN editors then screen the material and decide what to publish. (CNN does not pay for the material).
The user content here stands out among news sites, but some of the more standard ways to invite user input are absent. There is no place on the homepage for users to post comments, enter live discussion, rate stories or take part in a user-dedicated blog. Even the ability to email the author is offered in only the most general capacity.
When it comes to multimedia components of its content, the site landed right in the middle of our ranking scale. It is still heavily based on narrative text?it made up roughly 70% of all the content on the homepage. Pre-recorded video and photography were still the most common other forms, but the site also offered live streams, slide shows and interactive polls. The lead story was almost always made into a ?package? of reports offered in at least three different media formats.
When it came to revenue options, the site demands little of users and varies on its use of ads. The only fee-based content is on CNN Pipeline, a broadband channel providing live streaming video, video-on-demand clips and video archives. Its subscription fee is $25 a year or $2.95 a month.10 For the rest of CNN.com, the ?cost? to users is putting up with a barrage of ads. When it comes to ads, one visit to the home page displayed 19 separate ads, only 6 of which were self-promotional. But another visit had just six ads, all but one of which was non-CNN related.
Crooks and Liars (www.crooksandliars.com)
The liberal blog Crooks and Liars labels itself a ?virtual online magazine,? but the site is ultimately a relatively straightforward Web diary of links and excerpts of other material. The element that differentiates this blog from others is its heavy use of video links. And for that material it seems to rely heavily on cable news to provide the fodder, positive and negative.
In our site inventory, Crooks and Liars scored it s highest marks for branding, where it placed in the highest tier of the 38 sites studied. But that score is somewhat misleading. While the site does have bylined entries that included some editorial commentary (which helped its score) the majority of those entries were excerpts from other places.
Beyond that, the site didn?t score highly in any of the categories measured. Even its multimedia score was in the third tier despite the many video links on the page. That was largely because even with those links, the page was dominated by text. Crooks and Liars also fell into the third tier for the level at which it allows users to participate, offering little beyond the ability to e-mail authors and comment on stories. There was no user blog here.
The site also scored in the third tier for deptht doesn?t offer much of an archive and does little to link stories together into compete packages. It also wasn?t updated as often as other sites.
Crooks and Liars scored in the bottom tier on customization. This is essentially a static site. There is no way for users to modify the homepage. There are also no podcasts for users and no mobile version of the site.
The home page reflects one revenue stream, advertising, and it had a fairly high number of ads, about 12.
In content, Crooks and Liars is similar to many blogs with a political agenda. It uses print and video clips to hit at issues, politicians and personalities on the right, and uses other material to support those on the left. On March 5, for instance, one of the site?s authors posted a clip of the MSNBC host Keith Olbermann?s ?World?s Worst Wingnut Trifecta? (Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter). On the same day a different author posted video of CNN?s Jack Cafferty calling the recently chronicled problems at Walter Reed Hospital ?a disgrace.? The same post also quoted the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman as calling the Walter Reed fiasco ?another Katrina.?
Daily Kos (www.dailykos.com)
With 20 million unique visitors monthly, Daily Kos, the liberal blog started in 2002, is one of the busiest on the Web, and the site shows it. With its orange and white color scheme and professional-looking banner, it does not look like a mom-and-pop operation. It also offers it own line of merchandise ? t-shirts, sweatshirts and hats. And its founder, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, has become something of a TV talking head, appearing on cable shows to discuss issues in the news.
In terms of format the site does the usual linking and quoting one expects on a blog, but there is more original text and commentary mixed in. Indeed, some posts are largely the author?s thoughts about the topic he?s discussing, with the cited material making up only a few lines. That is a big reason why the site scored in the highest tier on branding. This site is about the mind of Daily Kos.
Daily Kos also received high scores for user participation, sitting in the top tier in that category. It lets users blog, e-mail authors, add their own content and rate stories. It was the only blog we examined that scored in the top tier in this category.
The site scored lower, in the third tier, for customization, or the degree to which it allows users to make the site their own by customizing what they see or how it is delivered. Like most blogs, it does not offer some of the customizing features that bigger sites do. There are no podcasts, for instance, and the site has no mobile version. Users do have the ability to modify the homepage, however.
Daily Kos also scored lower on multimedia, again in the third tier. It does not offer photos or audio links on the front page and only a few video links. Daily Kos is largely focused on words.
It placed in the lowest tier on depth. Posts were not packaged together by issue or topic, and stories didn?t offer links to archived material to add context for users.
The site?s heavy readership has led to a fairly strong revenue stream. It was in the second tier of all the sites we looked at in that area with about 15 ads on the page.
Daily Kos?s approach to content varies depending on who is posting, but the site is more likely than other blogs to include extensive comments from posters. Excerpts from other outlets are often used as jumping-off points for longer, column-like entries. And the posts here, from the left side of the political spectrum tend to be more inside-politics than on other sites. There is less commentary on other commentary than there are posts about actual news. For example, many posts the week of March 5, 2007, addressed the inquiry into whether several U.S. attorneys had been forced from their positions for political reasons. The posts looked at the specifics of the case, who might be coming forward in the days ahead and what groups were filing additional ethics complaints.
Des Moines Register (www.desmoinesregister.com)
The Web site for the Des Moines Register bears the hallmarks of an online home that has been added to and expanded to make room for new features. Yet the content can seem to be competing with itself.
Dominating the top of the page is a DesMoinesRegister.com logo with a score of navigation buttons above and below it. The main story on the page sits in the extra-wide second column of the four column layout, with a headline and teaser text, but no picture. The space that might be used for a photo is occupied by a tabbed box that features, depending on the tab a visitor clicks, staff blogs, local news videos, photos or online extras. Under that lead story are nine more headlines, mostly local. Next to those are four ads, three of which include flash animation. And in the far-right column is a bit of a catch-all space that holds weather, a searchable calendar of local events, and a series of ads. After news at the top of the page, there is a section on sports in the middle, followed by ?entertainment & life.? Those sections have photos connected to their top items. On the bottom of the page are links to a variety of sites the page says are ?worth a click.?
Like many newspaper sites in our inventory Desmoinesregister.com earned its highest marks for branding, or the emphasis put on its own content and editorial standards and judgment. It scored closer to the bottom in other content areas.
The site was not particularly customizable, ranking in the third tier. It did not offer users the chance to modify the homepage, download podcasts or receive a mobile version. The site?s text-heavy front page, 70% of which was narrative, also placed it in the third tier on use of multimedia. There were photos and some video links, but no other multimedia options.
It ranked in the third tier relative to other sites, too, on user participation. The site did not give users the ability to e-mail authors or create blogs and offered no live discussions or other options. And it ranked in the lowest tier relative for depth, or the use of links and other methods to give users access to background material, archival content, documents, reference sites or more.
The site did rank at the high end for economics. There was no fee content, but there were more than 20 advertisements on the page, over a quarter of them from local advertisers.
The content on the site is updated throughout the day and is extremely local. A visitor has to hunt through the front page to find national or international news; they are down near the bottom with headlines from the AP and USA Today. And that means the majority of the copy here is from the staff, though not all of it. Even in the lead-stories section of the site, editors are not averse to running AP copy for pieces they don?t have staff to cover, though those stories, too, are from Iowa.
Many of the stories updated during the day are relatively short, some only a few graphs. But the main piece, which stays on top as the content beneath it changes, is a longer, newspaper-length piece.
Because the paper is based in Iowa, home of the nation?s first presidential caucuses, it has a blog devoted to politics written by the paper?s well-known political David Yepsen.
The video on the site is noteworthy because it is mostly local ? everything from high school sports features to highlights from a karaoke contest ? a pattern not seen on even bigger sites. Reporters off-camera ask questions of interview subjects or simply record action. There are links to USA Today video as well.
Digg (www.digg.com)
Digg is democracy in action. The site, which calls itself a ?user driven social content Web site,?? is all about user participation. Users do more than participate ? they select, create and manage the content. Indeed, with its high level of customization and user involvement, it was among the most user centric sites examined.
It works like this. A user ? any user?posts new stories that appear in a simple column format. They are originally posted in chronological order, but then users rate them as stories they either ?digg? (like) or don?t like and want to bury further down the list. The list of stories constantly changes with new posts and rankings.
Each story has a headline, a line on who submitted the story to the site and a few lines of teaser text. Next to that a small box shows how many users ?digg it? as well as a way for others to rate, blog or e-mail the story and its topic.
There is no editorial staff making decisions on the content or even determining what the page looks like. The only requirement made of users before they begin adding their input is a fairly unobtrusive registration process ? choose a user name and password and submit your e-mail address.
While most of the layout is determined by the masses, users can customize it a bit to fit their own interests, placing the site in our top tier as one might imagine. When users register with the site and begin to ?digg? and ?bury? items they are able to get a feel for other users who post things they are interested in, and over time they can make those people ?friends.? They can then remake the homepage to feature posts by ?friends.? RSS is also an option prominently located on the front page. A podcast tab was also available, though in beta-test at the time of the study, and mobile-phone options were absent.
Over all, Digg scored in the top tier of user participation as well. The entire site, after all, wouldn?t really exist without users supplying content and they ultimately control where stories end up on the page through participation.
The site, like some other citizen based sites, was largely narrative, and it scored in the lowest tier on the scale of multimedia. Its home page offered no audio or video links and nearly 85% of it was text.
As an aggregator, Digg also scored near the bottom, the fourth tier, in branding. Editors don?t really play a role here and there is no site-generated content.
Ads are limited, helping place the site in the bottom tier of economics. Small Google ads appearing under the header and down the right column are the only sign of revenue-producing advertisements. And in terms of depth, Digg was a third tier site, with frequent updates and an archive, but no story packages.
So about what kind of things do these users post? Perhaps not surprisingly, since this is an online group made up largely of early adapters, there is a heavy focus on technology. For instance, on January 11, the morning after President Bush?s major speech on his policy shift in Iraq, only one of the top 15 stories on Digg in the previous 24 hours concerned Iraq ? a map showing where the U.S. armed forces casualties were from. Eight of the top 15 stories were about technology.
The top story on Digg can also look dramatically different depending on what minute a user comes by ? literally. At 5:29 p.m. January 10, the top story was ?A First Person Shooter in javascript?? a piece about what users can do with the program Java. At 5:30 p.m. it was ?Nastiest traffic jam EVER? with a picture of lions eating a giraffe carcass on a highway in Africa.
The Economist (www.economist.com)
The brand. The brand. The brand. If there is one thing that Economist.com accomplishes, it is clearly and successfully pushing the Economist brand online. Lest anyone wonder, the site is anchored in the top left corner by the signature white lettering in a red box ? in this case spelling Economist.com ? with a picture of the current magazine?s cover prominently beneath.
Like the magazine, the site is clean, well-organized and text-heavy. It is also, like its print sibling not heavy with pictures or graphics (there were six on a representative homepage, and four of them were quite small). Even the site?s ads, (often for petroleum companies or large blue-chip corporations) are designed without a lot of colors or jumpy graphics.11
There is a lot of free content here, but most of the stories from the print edition are accessible only to subscribers ? those who get the magazine delivered or pay a fee to access premium online content.
At the time we did an accounting of Economist.com it was in the second tier in terms of customization, receiving points for having a multiple-component search and several RSS feeds. It was also in the second tier on multimedia, due to the photos on the page several and podcast options.
Its weakest scores came in interactivity and depth, where it was in the bottom tier. A user-based blog (one where the Web editor picks a topic of the day and users are invited to sound off on it) was essentially the only way for users to participate on the site, hurting its interactivity score. And the site?s twice daily updating ? as a magazine site it seems less interested in being up-to-the-minute ? cost it points in outdepthraking.
The site was in the top tier for having a number of revenue streams boosted by a significant number of advertising combined with the content available for a fee helped its economic score.
But it was brand that stood out. The content here all comes from the staff of the magazine. This is not a place to go to keep up with what?s on the wire. Nor is there content from other publications in The Economist Group, which includes Roll Call and European Voice.
Nonetheless, Economist.com does keep a steady flow of content coming by magazine standards. The top story is new every day, as are the items in Today?s Views ? which includes a staff column and a Correspondents Diary (both unbylined) and Debate, a blog devoted to an interesting topic elsewhere on the Web. That is the closest economist.com gets to outside sources for news. The online pieces are short ? in most cases, it appears, a bit shorter than the tightly written pieces that appear in the magazine ? but they attempt the same kind of news blended with analysis for which the magazine is known.
One of the best features may be the staggering amount of data accessible here. Beyond the news and analysis pieces there are entire separate sections like the site?s Cities Guide, with information about happenings in 27 cities around the world, from Atlanta to Zurich. And there are the country briefings, which look at economic and political news from countries around the world. They include recent stories from the magazine on each country and an economic forecast, a fact sheet and information on the political structure of each.
For The Economist, which prides itself on giving readers data and raw facts along with its analysis, it is yet another way to extend the brand.
Fox News (www.foxnews.com)
Fox News, the star on cable, lags behind the other two cable news channels online. Its Web site has roughly a third the audience of its competitors, though it made efforts to address that lag in 2006.
In November, Roger Ailes appointed Ken LaCorte, Fox Television?s Los Angeles bureau chief, to head Foxnews.com and take over all editorial and design functions. He will report directly to John Moody, vice president of news for the Fox network.
The site was revamped in September 2006 in an effort to streamline the content. It also added new interactive and delivery features. Visitors to the site can now customize it as they like and have the option of getting Fox News headlines on their Blackberry phones and cell phones.12 As a result, the Fox site now earns the highest marks for both the level of customization offered on the site and for the level of multi media offerings, and mid-range marks in all other categories. It has become somewhat more competitive, by those measures, with its rivals.
Even so, Foxnews.com still feeds off the identity and strength of the cable channel more than it embodies an identity for itself. For the most part, the site is the Fox News Channel. The brand promoted here are the Fox personalities rather than individual stories, to a much greater degree than CNN or MSNBC.
The top of the page is dedicated to the news headlines, but up-to-the-minute news is clearly not given the same kind of priority as at other cable news sites. It updates every half hour, but there are usually just three or four headlines, which are brief unadorned reports from wires. Each headline stands alone, sometimes with a related wire story link underneath. There is little attempt to create coverage packages with multimedia reports or backgrounders from Fox News. About a quarter of the stories we captured had been augmented somehow by staff members, whose names, unknown to most, appear on the inside (i.e. landing) page at the very bottom of the story. What?s more, the page has just one overall time stamp of the latest update, rather than time stamps on each story as is common at other sites.
After top headlines and other ?latest news? from the AP, the page focuses on promoting the Fox Brand with content involving Fox hosts and programs. In the upper right corner when we looked in September 2006 were Fox News videos, with a Web-exclusive interview with Senator Barack Obama. The interview was an exclusive that first aired about 10 hours earlier. That same interview also appeared as the lead item in the next section down, ?Only on Fox,? along with a link to a science report ?Black hole won?t devour Earth, scientists say.? Other subsections on the page also carry the Fox name and previously aired Fox News content: Fox411, Fox Online, FNC iMag, Fox News Talk and individual program listings.
The site does emphasize the use of multimedia more than those of its cable rivals. Just over half of the content was text-based (primarily the wire feed stories) with heavy use of video and still photos but also some live streams, podcast items, polls and interactive graphics. In October 2006, Foxnews.com launched two new video products, collectively called ?Fox News Flash.?13 They include two one-minute newscasts, in the morning by Fox & Friends and in the afternoon by the Fox Report with Shepard Smith. Those news segments can also be received, without any need to subscribe to the site, in the form of video podcasts.
The site also targeted mobile phone users starting in January 2007 when it launched a new service called ?#FOXN,? the acronym for the digits you dial to access it. It allows customers to listen to live audio of the cable channel?s on-air broadcasts. The service costs $2.99 a month and so far is available only to Cingular wireless service customers . It will also offer headlines on demand as well as a call-back service to let users know when a particular program is about to begin on the television channel.14
In promoting its brand, the site places little emphasis on making its users part of that identity, ranking in the low-mid tier of all 38 sites. The personalities on Foxnews.com speak to you much more than you speak to them or even to each other. The site had one of the lowest user-participation scores of any Web site in the study, offering only the most basic ability to e-mail the author of a report along with a poll on how visitors rated the Fed (related to a topic to be discussed on ?Your World? later that day). Even the e-mail ability is only occasional, and the e-mail goes not to the staff member who worked on the piece but to the nameless ?editor? of that section. There is no way to post comments or rate a story, no live discussion and no user-oriented blog.
When it comes to economics, the main revenue stream on Fox News.com is commercial ads. Upon entering the site, Foxnews.com visitors see a lot them?on average 21 ads on the home page alone, among the highest number we encountered.
There is a news archive, at least two years of which is free to users. It includes stories from all the main sections of the site, though video components are quite spotty at this point.
All in all, Foxnews.com is the lesser-nourished sibling of the Fox News Channel. Whether attention and resources begin to even out as the online world expands remains to be seen.
Continue lendo "Site Profile" parte 2