This post resonates with me, as I spent some time between grad school and teaching practicing Information Architecture for marketing and government clients.

These fields of communication were realizing the real power of interactivity – that websites are more than just pamphlets on the screen.

It does seem that journalism on the whole has been fairly slow to actualize this same insight – there are however bright spots.

This is all apropos to the class we’ve been discussing that I am teaching in the Spring. We want to try to cover three ideas, all through practical application:

1. Online journalism in context of media convergence, and the practice of information architecture
2. Reporting and producing multimedia news stories using Flash
3. Distribution and syndication of content in a real media marketplace
#1 speaks to the point of your post exactly. #2 is based on your book. #3 is going to be very very interesting, and worth further discussion.

Thanks for the great resources, including this blog. I can see some really rich dialogue as we go down this road.

Best,

Jason

Those of us who deal with Web content on a day to day basis understand the Web’s fluid nature, but I think it’s going to be a while before more folks can understand taxonomies, folksonomies and other data structures. Of course, if a distinct return on investment can be connected to data structure, then the discovery process could accelerate dramatically.

And I ask why? Why is this so? And it’s quite simple really: Newspaper Web sites are still print first, Web second. When newspapers finally become Web first, they’ll understand why tagging stories, photos, videos, etc is so important.

But for now, we’ll still be stuck with excuses. How it’s just not “possible.” How is such a simple concept so daunting?

I think the answer is equally simple. It’s going to take an epiphany by top editors and publishers that this is important. Newspapers could probably make a lot more money off of the same content if it were just easier to find. People don’t thumb through Web sites. Not sure why editors think that people would.

A great example of a horribly hard to search Web site is my papers, and it kills our page views. We, and most newspapers, need more ways for people to find stories than we currently allow.

If people at my paper don’t get it with me working there and harping on all these things, I can only imagine other papers without people saying that they should try new things.