Newspaper circulation has been on the decline over the past few years, but the traffic to newspaper websites continues to rise. Interestingly, the area of newspaper websites that has experienced the most growth is blogs, perhaps proving that new media formats are beginning to usurp old media in earnest.
As we reported on Saturday, CNN.com went live with a redesigned version of their website over the weekend. I thought it might be interesting to compare three big media sites that have launched new versions of their web news properties in 2007: CNN (redesigned this weekend), USA Today (redesigned in March), and AOL News (redesigned last week). I'll look at the different approaches each news outlet took, and what cues they took from web 2.0.
CNN's relaunched design is much cleaner and easier to read than their previous site. It has softer, rounded corners, lighter-colored and larger link text, and a less-busy header. The new sites also integrates text, photo, and video a lot more smoothly than on their previous site, making use of AJAX so that visitors can switch between different types of media without reloading the page.
The site has placed a greater focus on video and photos, relaunching with a new flash video player and an attractive flash slide show. The focus on multimedia is really no surprise. YouTube has demonstrated just how important video is becoming to today's Internet users, especially in terms of attracting the attention of younger visitors. Further, because Flash has made it possible for people to load relatively high quality video quite quickly, it is no longer an encumbrance for users, but a valuable feature. This has allowed CNN the opportunity to emphasize video and tie their web presence more closely to their core property: their television news network.
The redesigned CNN has a few other features straight out of web 2.0. Their updated "Most Popular" box includes the most viewed, emailed, and searched for stories and videos, as well as the most popular topics. It uses AJAX effects to smoothly load each without need for a page reload. Taking a cue from Amazon, CNN has added a "We Recommend" feature that suggests stories based on your past browsing history. The site is so new it's had to tell how well it works, though -- it just doesn't have much history to go on. CNN also has added commenting to their stories, though in practice I have seen it on very few.
Along with video, CNN now more greatly emphasizes their blogs and podcasts. And today they also launched free live video, though it requires downloading a special plugin.
The design of the new USA Today site puts a lot of emphasis on images (surprise, surprise), and uses much larger text for headline links. The design can take some time to get used to, but it does an excellent job of drawing your eye to the lead stories. The new design also places an emphasis on blogging by placing USA Today's "On Deadline" blog directly in a tab on the main page next to the day's top headlines (it's in the "News Notes" tab).
USA Today does two social features better than anyone else: commenting and voting. Every story on the site, including wire stories, have commenting enabled, and usually people have left comments. Many stories on USA Today attract in the hundreds of comments, making this relatively new feature of their site easily as popular as top blogs that have had commenting enabled for years. Users of USA Today's site can also vote for stories by clicking on the "Recommend" button. This social recommendation feature powers story recommendations throughout the site.
Another page USA Today borrows from the web 2.0 playbook is tagging. In the middle of every story readers will see a line that starts with "FIND MORE STORIES IN:" These are tags, which editors have assigned to stories, and clicking on them will bring you to other stories tagged with the same term. USA Today has also embraced social news by adding Digg, del.icio.us, Newsvine, Reddit, and Facebook buttons to all their posts.
Finally, USA Today's relaunch added social networking to the site. Not only can registered members comment on stories, but they also get their own profile and blog, and can upload photos, send messages, and make friends. The social networking features on the site are powered by Pluck, which powers social features for a number of newspaper properties, though none quite so well integrated as on USA Today.
AOL News' redesign is probably the most radical departure, design-wise, from a traditional newspaper site. Taking a cue from blog design AOL relaunched their news site with less stories on the main page. Right now, for example, the main page shows only six full stories, displayed stacked one on top of the other like a blog. The sites includes headline boxes on the left side column, so the main page actually does show more news than just the blog-style center column.
Further borrowing from blogs, AOL News now supports comments. In practice, however, like CNN I actually found very few stories with commenting enabled. Even some of the stories listed as the most commented on didn't seem to have comments. One thing that was evident on nearly all stories was the social media buttons that let people easily add stories to Digg, del.icio.us, Newsvine, Technorati, Reddit, Ma.gnolia, Blinklist, Furl, and of course: Netscape. Results from Netscape are actually listed in the left-hand column on the main site in an effort to tie AOL's mainstream news site with its social news property.
Also included in that column is a tag cloud search that links to the most popular topics on blogs according to Sphere. Further, many of AOL's stories include a thumbs up/thumbs down rating widget, though like comments the widget doesn't seem to appear on every story, and I'm not really sure what, if anything, it does.
AOL's embrace of blog culture seems to only go skin deep. The inconsistencies surrounding mainstay blog features, such as commenting, make the site feel a bit disjointed and frustrating to use.
AOL News, USA Today, and CNN are not the only news sites getting in on the web 2.0 act. Many others have embraced various aspects of the new social media landscape. The New York Times added social news sharing buttons to all of its articles last fall, for example, and just about every major news outlet has added blogs to their repertoire in the past couple of years. What do you think of the approaches taken by the three sites profiled above? Does it make sense to emphasize video like CNN? Does USA Today have it right by strongly pushing interaction between its readers? Or is the increasingly more popular blog-style design, a la AOL News, the way to go?
My feeling is that while CNN likely has the most attractive and professional-looking site (they could certainly win some web 2.0 design awards), USA Today has social media down cold. The fact that their users have embraced commenting and rating on news stories so vigorously, so quickly such that every day there are at least two or three stories with in excess of 200 comments is amazing and an affirmation of a tactic that has clearly paid off. However, interestingly, in contrast to what the anecdotal evidence would seem to suggest, USA Today has seen a huge drop off in traffic since their redesign went live in March according to Compete. It's too early to tell how the new site designs will impact readership on CNN and AOL News. Leave you thoughts on the future of mainstream news on the web below.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: New Media Meets Old: A Look at Redesigned Mainstream News Sites.
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Read/WriteWeb's Josh Catone reviews the new designs for USAToday.com, CNN.com and AOL News, specifically looking at how they're incorporating Web 2.0 functionality. My feeling is that while CNN likely has... Read More
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Zanimivo in/ali branja vredno: Kako uƒ?iti novinarstvo?; Demokracija na Kitajskem; Web 2.0 redizajn: CNN, USA Today in AOL News; Multimedijske ve≈°ƒ?ine za citizen novinarje; Plagiati in YouTube za v arhiv. ... Read More
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I like the new CNN site. It's liberal use of Ajax makes it much more fluid and dynamic. It's also good they played up the video. The design itself is only so-so, and the size of the main story photo is very disappointing.
You can read my full review of the new CNN site at my blog: http://patthorntonfiles.com/blog/?p=11
Posted by: Pat Thornton | July 2, 2007 12:35 PMYes CNN design is much better, then it was before, but i like http://abcnews.go.com/ design better.
Posted by: WD-NYC designer | July 2, 2007 12:44 PMExcellent overview of the sites. I'd offer this observation about CNN, though: It falls into the 2.0 video trap that seems to snare everybody these days: Presenting video as video, apropos of nothing. The clips presented above the fold seem randomly selected news segments: a 19-year-old on trial for having an 11-year-old wife, a story about kids still separated from parents after Katrina, even (honest-to-god) one of those "wildfires rage" stories. The challenge of 2.0 is to use video only when it's the best tool for the job. I'd rather see a Google map of the wildfire with links to data on nearby towns. I don't think I want to know anything about the 19-year-old dad or the Katrina kids, but if I did I wouldn't want to just see CNN clips on them. Posting random videos and saying "watch our videos" is sort of like posting random article links and saying "read our words." I'll look forward to CNN doing more than just repurposing its broadcasts.
Posted by: Craig Stoltz | July 2, 2007 2:31 PMGreat article, but was wondering where you got your statistics from? You mentioned 'Compete' but are there any another tools you use?
Posted by: Silka | July 2, 2007 6:08 PMThe Compete charge for USA Today can be accessed here: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/usatoday.com
Alexa shows a less pronounced decline, though still a steady one (however, Alexa shows a steady drop off in page views since prior to the redesign).
The stats about the drop in paper circulation and rise in newspaper website stats in general were linked to in the first paragraph (and came from the Newspaper Association of America and Nielsen//NetRatings, respectively).
Posted by: Josh Catone | July 2, 2007 6:24 PMGood article, however it has some factual and technical flaws.
"It uses AJAX effects to smoothly load each without need for a page reload" - false! The "Most Popular" and other article related tabs do not use ajax - it is plain javascript.
There are so many people writing about the web in paper media and online, and doing it wrong, trying to be cool by using the words the great people of the web are use. If you write for a web tech specific publication like readwriteweb, please check the terminology and apply it accordingly.
Posted by: random | July 3, 2007 2:32 AMJosh,
You might be interested to check out the news page of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which was recently redesigned. It's very Web 2.0 as well.
http://abc.net.au/news
Posted by: Downunder | July 3, 2007 11:36 PMWhile Josh has provided a breakdown of three recently changed News sites, I would like to clear up some inaccuracies in his post regarding AOL.
AOL has taken great efforts to produce an informative and engaging News site that provides users with a running news experience. The blog-format utilizes social networking, AOL’s News editors’ programming voice and top news headlines to deliver news based on today’s users’ consumption habits.
First of all, the headline boxes are located on the right side of the page, not the left. While this is just one small item that was incorrect, the rest of the post concerning users’ comments missed the mark as well.
Regarding commenting, the post indicates that the commenting feature is not enabled, when in fact, it is enabled and a popular tool used by AOL users. If you go to the site, you will see this appear on all news stories, along with various links to polls, photos and videos. In fact, many of the AOL News posts receive thousands of users’ comments, while – as Josh pointed out - other sites’ comments receive only hundreds. Users can also vote, rank and share stories – a key component in blogs.
The AOL News site is a departure from traditional mainstream online news delivery, and one that embraces Web 2.0 features and social networking tools to deliver an engaging and quality news experience. I truly believe that AOL News has one of the best sites available online today.
Lewis D’Vorkin
Posted by: Lewis Dvorkin | July 6, 2007 9:46 AMSenior Vice President, AOL News & Sports
While the commenting feature appears to be active on all stories today, I will stand by my statement that this was not the case the day that I reviewed the site.
In fact, as you can see from my screenshot above, the strip that appears below stories on the main page today that includes the "Must Read," "Share," "Comments," and "Permalink" links is not visible on that story about floods in Kansas. The simple reason was that for whatever reason, they were not showing up on a large number of stories that day.
Posted by: Josh Catone | July 6, 2007 10:04 AMRandom,
The CNN site clearly uses Ajax in several instances, and Ajax is JavaScript. It's an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.
Without using the DOM, CNN is not able to achieve those effects. Whether everything on the site is Ajax or just "plain" javascript is semantics. The site clearly uses both.
~Pat
Posted by: Pat | July 7, 2007 3:48 PMwww.patthorntonfiles.com/blog
Nice article Josh and kudos to all those reviewed. We may critique the execution here and there, but the move towards open comments, social features and advanced UI with AJAX is to be applauded. As a fellow newspaper publisher, I can empathize and understand the difficulty in getting out of the one-way, page view driven mode and embracing the information exchange changes driving the web today. We recently redesigned (www.observer.com)to add in many similar social and UI features and we are finding the transition to have its challenges, yet well worth it.
On the subject of the USA Today decline in Page views, I have noticed that when making a site easier to use (especially when incorporating AJAX)you can actually depress page views. This actually is quite natural, readers have to click through less pages to find what they want. This will naturally degrade as a problem however as the metrics around web advertising shift and begin to rely more on time spent on ste and other more appropriate measurements for the new web. In fact, Nielsen is making that shift now.
-Brian
Posted by: Brian Kroski | July 10, 2007 7:29 AMhttp://www.observer.com
We did an interview with the CNN team behind the new design.
Check it out on iqcontent.com
Posted by: Lar | July 10, 2007 4:06 PMOne thing I noticed is that CNN is now running Google ads and powering it's site search with Google.
That used to be Yahoo's bounty...ouch.
Posted by: Nate | July 11, 2007 6:46 PM