Advice from Rob Curley
In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Rob Curley offers these tips:
# Own breaking news. Don’t let any other media in your community ever beat you on a developing local news story. As soon as we know something, we need to have it on our Web sites, on our mobile-phone editions, and in the e-mail box of every subscriber who wants it. We have to train our readers that they should want to turn to us several times a day, and absolutely turn to us when they know something big has just happened. Regardless of what some traditional print reporters think, you can’t scoop yourself by posting something early on your own newspaper’s Web site. Get over it. That sort of thinking will kill us in this new era.
# Hyper-local content. The Internet may be a global medium, but it’s local content that sets most newspaper sites apart. And getting granular with everything from local kids’ sports stories to neighborhood politics is how newspapers will win. National and international news is a commodity that every site can have. For most local newspaper sites, local news produced by its newsroom is how our industry will win on the Internet.
# Embrace databases. Calendars. Restaurants. Churches, Taxes. Home sales. Traffic tickets. Crime. Anything that can be searched like that should be on your site. People want that sort of information, and we should want to make sure that they know the newspaper can give it to them.
# Multimedia. Using video, audio, Flash animations, etc…, should be a key part of a “new” newspaper’s toolbelt. Youtube.com and iTunes are successful for a reason — multimedia is now a hugely important part of the Internet. If your publisher hasn’t heard of youtube or iTunes, get your resume ready.
# Evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that you build once that can last forever on your site. Sometimes amazing evergreen content appears in our print edition, and all we need to do is compile it and make it easy to find on our Web sites – things like local guides, etc… But sometimes evergreen content needs to be built or collected just for the Web site. Evergreen content can be anything — the history of your city, all of the information you can gather about someone famous from your city, maybe an overview of your local sports team’s greatest season, etc…
# Make sure your content can work on any device imaginable. Web. E-mail. RSS. iPods. Mobile phones. Other mobile devices. Sony PSPs. Right now, I really think newspapers should be focusing in on content for mobile phones.
# Make sure your newspaper isn’t a monologue, but a dialogue with you audience. Can readers’ post comments on stories? Can they easily contact reporters and editors from each story? Are public-produced blogs on your site? Can readers easily post their own photos, video and text on your site, etc…?
Jan 21, 2007 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT | PERMALINK | DISCUSS(0)
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