By Mindy McAdams

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Teaching Online Journalism

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Notes from the classroom and observations about today’s practice of journalism online

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What do you want from your local news site?

I pondered this question as I looked at some various site fronts this week, including the somewhat updated front of my local daily.

With more and more sites focusing their efforts on frequent updates, there’s a chance that the front page would become a useful destination for people in the community. What would it take to make that happen? I mean, frequent updates alone won’t do it if the content is lacking.

These belong on the front page of the site as soon as they are known and confirmed:

  • Any real threat or danger (e.g., hurricane warnings)
  • Traffic and commuting (e.g., closed roads, major traffic jams)
  • Local and state education (e.g., teacher cutbacks, tuition increases, reports of dropout rates)
  • Property taxes and home prices — if they change
  • Local employment: Businesses opening or closing, layoffs, strikes
  • Anything that might affect someone’s home budget, such as new taxes — in advance, not after the fact
  • Health news (e.g., local encephalitis outbreak, free flu shots)
  • Big trials (local) and killers on the loose (otherwise, have a routine crime news map, for crying out loud)
  • FUTURE events that people can attend

This is hardly brilliant new thinking, but what I’m getting at is relevance. If I go to that page and I see a bunch of “news” I already know, I’m not going to be coming back very often. Also, if I see the kind of stuff that TV news likes to blow all out of proportion (”Rats! We found rats at a local restaturant! Shocker!”), that’s also not going to make me a frequent visitor. The same goes for contests and cute baby photos, etc.

Here are three examples from the front of the Web site from my local daily (The Gainesville Sun) today:

Gatornationals: One of the biggest annual events in north-central Florida, these car and motorcycle races will be held this weekend. The Sun has a perfect story for all the people — like me — who know about the races but have never gone to them. There’s a map, ticket prices, everything. The races do start TODAY, so maybe this should have run yesterday. But never mind. This is 1,000 times better than after-the-fact coverage, and every paper needs more stories like this.

Headline on an AP wire story: Governor promotes openness by actions. Okay, if the governor of the state does something that will actually have a effect, that should be on the front. And if you have to run a wire story, that’s okay too. But with no summary paragraph under this head, who would ever read this? What does that mean, anyway? Our governor’s name is Crist — perfect usable in a headline, and shorter than “governor,” yes? This story is about better enforcing open government and public records laws. Shouldn’t the headline say THAT? (Crist to enforce open-records laws.)

Another good local story (state again, but not wire) with a lackluster head: Property assessment falls under scrutiny. It turns out the state Senate would like to help us out with our skyrocketing property taxes. The report is that the Senate doesn’t like the state House’s solution — a higher sales tax. This is stuff people would like to know about, but you’ve got to write it in a way that doesn’t bore them to death — and even more important, you’ve got to get them to click the link to read it!

Headlines have got to get better. That is huge. I love the headlines at BBC News; I think they are the best on the Web.

Moreover, these front page designs with no capsule summaries or teasers are just plain stupid. News organizations need to put more utility into these page designs. And that means making them more efficient and more usable. (The BBC also provides useful summaries for many, but not all, of the stories on the Web front.)

I want a news front that looks more like these:

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007, at 3:45 pm and is filed under design, news, newspapers, online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 responses to “What do you want from your local news site?”

  1. Isaac writes:

    I don’t think it’s mandatory that stories have summaries. If they don’t, headlines should definitely be written literally.

    In print, a page one centerpiece with a headline of ‘The chosen one’ can work. Online it won’t without a summary.

    At my paper, we try not to use those vague headlines online. Our site is designed for longer and descriptive headlines.Check us out

    March 16, 2007 at 7:42 pm
  2. Mindy McAdams writes:

    I agree, not all stories need a summary on the front page. But the big stories deserve one. If you want me to click, you’ve got to persuade me to do it.

    March 17, 2007 at 12:53 pm

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