| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | . | 2/20/2009 17:13:22 | Madeline Moy | 60 Minutes | yes | http://feeds.cbsnews.com/CBSNews60Minutes | 1 | yes | http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/03/blogs/main2327516.shtml | 9 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, AddThis.com | yes | The 60 Minutes site is embedded within the CBS News site. This is very confusing! I click on some of the left column navigation expecting it to link to 60 Minutes stuff, but instead it linked to stuff under the larger CBS News umbrella. For example, when I clicked on "Blogs," it took me to a collection of blogs written by different CBS News people. I had expected to go to a page with blogs by 60 Minutes correspondents. | Video is everywhere, easy to access and downloads quickly. Quality is high. I appreciate that all videos have a big "PLAY" button on them so it's obvious that they are videos and not just photos.
I thought it was cool that 60 Minutes had podcasts. They were easy to listen to and download. The only disappointing thing is that 60 Minutes doesn't do anything original with the podcasting. It just repurposes all of its broadcast stories. | | | | . | 2/21/2009 18:16:25 | Tressa Reed | 60 Minutes | yes | http://feeds.cbsnews.com/CBSNews60Minutes | 1 | yes | http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/03/blogs/main2327516.shtml | 8 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail this story | yes | Thorough information but neat and simple. | Several multimedia option and easily accessible. | | | | . | 3/1/2009 22:38:56 | Cindy Umipig | ABC | no | | | no | | | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, E-mail this story | no | There is not alot of interaction. It is mostly one way commentary about the shows. I really had to look for some of these features, they were not easily accessable. Lots of teasers and video that auto starts which is really annoying. There are blogs and commentary on stories but not on the main page. You can not leave comments on blogs. There are also RSS feeds but not on the main page. | This website does a great job on multimedia use which is to be expected as it is a television station. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 15:38:34 | Michael Caputo | ABC News | yes | http://feeds2.feedburner.com/AbcNews_TopStories | 12 | yes | http://abcnews.go.com/technology/blogs | 23 Categories | no | n/a | yes | yes | yes | Digg, E-mail this story, Print It ,Ask, Furl, Reddit, Backflip, Google Bookmarks, Segnalo, BallHype, Kaboodle, Simpy, Bebo, Link-a-Gogo, Slashdot, Blinklist, LinkedIn, Spurl, Blogmarks, Live, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Magnolia, Tailrank, Digg, Mister Wong, Technorati, Diigo, Mixx, Twitter, Facebook, Multiply, Yahoo Bookmarks, Fark, myAOL, YahooBuzz, Faves, MySpace, YahooMyWeb, Favorites, Netvouz, Yardbarker, FeedMeLinks, Newsvine, FriendFeed, Propeller | yes | Good look and clean lines. More links to news stories than most news print services. Sections offer clear view of topics. | The best of the group I covered. A image window on left side of home page that changes every :15 seconds
| | | | . | 2/16/2009 20:13:36 | Quoc Phan | Atlanta Journal Constitution | yes | http://projects.ajc.com/buzz/feeds/all/ | 15 | yes | http://blogs.ajc.com/ | 20 | yes | Blog section | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most blogged stories, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | Very clear and organized on the structure of the website. Browsing around was easy and pictures were clear with the stories. Nothing to eye catching but simple and clean. | Multimedia was there but nothing over the top. | | | | . | 3/11/2009 12:59:50 | Glenn Crotts | Atlanta Journal-Constitution (ajc.com) | yes | http://www.ajc.com/services/content/services/rss/index.html | 107 | yes | http://blogs.ajc.com/ | 51 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail this story, Del.icio.us, Reddit, MySpace, technorati, yahoo, windows live, friendfeed, xanga, blinklist, stumble, Mixx, Google, Propeller | yes | This website was not quite as good as the last few I did because things are a bit cluttered and random on the home page. Categories are offered across the top as well as a search bar but media has to be found by scrolling down the page randomly in the middle. There are no citizen blogs or podcasts offered on the home page. Overall, the website is intuitive and fairly user-friendly, but now that I have seen a few better ones, it could use a bit of a design overhaul. | The multimedia is fairly random as you have to scroll down to the middle of the page. The photo and video categories are in separate sections, although they are relatively close to each other. The blogs and RSS feeds are easy to find. Once again, not bad but it leaves something to be desired based on others I have seen. Videos and photos load and play seamlessly. | | | | . | 3/11/2009 2:16:52 | Glenn Crotts | Baltimore Sun | yes | http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-rss,0,4817645.htmlpage | 131 | yes | http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bal-blogs-page,0,1885327.htmlpage | 38 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, E-mail this story, Buzz, Del.icio.us, Furl.net, Fark, Google, Reddit, Spurl, Mixx | yes | Once again a practical, logically designed website…is there a pattern here? All major user categories are listed down the left hand side of the page with a search bar at the top. Major stories of the day are listed down the middle of the page with other links to entertainment, sports, and many other popular categories right down the center. Maybe I don’t have enough experience with news websites to pick them apart but I simply cannot find a complaint about this site other than there being no podcast link on the home page, and no citizen blogs. It is plain, simple, uncomplicated, and extremely user-friendly. | Top video and photo categories are easily accessible with reliable streaming and high quality. At least the commercials are only 15 seconds in the video clips on this one. I cannot find a complaint about the multimedia so I’m sure the average user would be impressed. | | | | . | 2/16/2009 20:17:41 | Quoc Phan | Baltimore Sun | yes | http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-rss,0,4817645.htmlpage | | yes | http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bal-blogs-page,0,1885327.htmlpage | 20 | yes | Blog section | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most blogged stories, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | The website was easy to navigate around however it was very cluttered looking on the eyes. Used more letters and words on the website with less design ideas and pictures than other websites. | The multimedia was very clearly marked and was easy to use | | | | . | 2/26/2009 22:38:54 | Corey Christiansen | BBC | yes | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/3223484.stm | 16 | yes | http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ | 87 | no | N/A | no | no | yes | Digg, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Most Popular | no | Editable front page is awesome! Very few advertisements. I like the clock on the banner page and the color scheme. Everything is relatively easy to find. | Not a lot of interactive multimedia but quite a bit of video and photos. Interactive most popular story page is really cool! | | | | . | 3/11/2009 13:45:07 | Glenn Crotts | CBS | yes | http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/12/utility/main666437.shtml?tag=main_home_Navigation | 32 | yes | http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/03/blogs/main2327516.shtml?tag=main_home_Navigation | 9 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Over 40 ways to share stories | yes | As it should be, the CBS news website is very neat, clear, organized, and functional. Everything a user could want is located in a category on the left hand side of the screen with a search bar at the top. Even a first-time pc user could figure out this website within seconds of access. Everything is logically arranged on the home page and there is never a need to search for any category or types of news because they are all easily accessible on the home page. This site has the least ads out of any of the others I have done on the home page as well. | The multimedia is very easy to find and all located on the home page. This includes videos, photos, RSS feeds, and Podcasts all neatly in one section down the left side of the screen. I could do without the 30 second commercials on the videos, I think 15 is more appropriate. Overall, a very clean and well structured page.
| | | | . | 2/22/2009 21:29:41 | Rob Lynch | CBS News | yes | http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/12/utility/main666437.shtml?tag=footer;footerSections | 35 | yes | http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/03/blogs/main2327516.shtml?tag=footer;footerSections | 9 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story | yes | I really liked this site's design, the stories were arranged into categories on the front page and these were laid out in clear blocks. | I liked the fact that the amount of multimedia on the front page was light, this enabled me to actually see the stories, many of which had video links. Much better than many other sites that have video and large pictures all over the front page! | | | | . | 2/16/2009 14:11:20 | Cindy Umipig | Charlotte Observer | yes | http://www.charlotteobserver.com/rss/ | 49 | yes | http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/blogs_columnists/ | 9 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Other share options are del.icio.us, magnolia, stumble upon | yes | The Charlotte Observer reminds me of a tabloid in the reporting of off beat stories. With the story of Michael Phelps and John Kerry's mistress making the headlines along with the all star game and a small portion on the economy towards the bottom. I would not use this papaer as a credible source as most of the content looks like it is in blog and commentary format. The stories are very short and not very detailed. You have to be logged in to leave a comment. | For the use of commentary, this website has very little multimedia use. I was very disappointed in how it was arranged. It took me a while just to find the "email this story" link as it is not very user friendly and does not have a very typical news layout. | | | | . | 3/11/2009 1:08:10 | Glenn Crotts | Chicago Tribune | yes | http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-rsspromo-htmlstory,0,3613145.htmlstory | 104 | yes | http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-g3blogpage-htmlstory,0,6170046.htmlstory | 28 | yes | Looked through blogs list, found Vox Pop | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, Del.icio.us, Fark, Google, Reddit, Buzz Up! | yes | The website is laid out logically and practically for the most part but it requires a bit of searching to find the RSS feeds. I looked through it thoroughly and did not locate any podcast options. Mouse-over categories are clear and definitive on the left hand side of the page and major story links are listed down the middle of the page. Overall the website is well designed and would suit the average news consumer. | Top video and photo categories are easily accessible and streaming is seamless. As usual commercials are annoying but understandably necessary. All in all, a well designed website. | | | | . | 2/20/2009 10:39:17 | Quoc Phan | Chicago Tribune | yes | http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/blog/ | 20 + | yes | http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/blog/ | 20+ | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most blogged stories, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | The website design was very colorful and neatly organized. Compared to other websites seen before, this website was more designed to catch the eye. Very vivid images with colorful photos that were used as links | Multimedia was bold and very easy to find and use. | | | | . | 2/26/2009 20:37:30 | Corey Christiansen | Cincinnati Enquirer | yes | http://rss.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=rssenq01&mime=xml | 234 | yes | http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=EDIT | 56 | yes | on the blogs & forums drop down | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | Substantial amount of dead links. There are two completely different section that have lists of blogs. | Very little use of visual media to represent data. One map was used to locate all of the potholes in town! | | | | . | 2/22/2009 21:09:26 | Rob Lynch | Cincinnati Times | no | | | yes | http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=blogs#featured | 30 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story | yes | Good layout and navigation | Use of video, audio, photo galleries that are well integrated into navigation and text stories. | | | | . | 2/15/2009 22:08:41 | Michael Caputo | Cleveland Plain Dealer | yes | feed://blog.cleveland.com/pd_news_impact/atom.xml | 15 | yes | http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/ | 8 Catagories | yes | Tab on top of home page Interact>Blogs | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, De.lici.ous, Google, Redd, Yahoo. Also Links along left margin running top to bottom of page with Links to Editor’s picks, Send a Letter to Editor, Reader Representatives, Submit news, Real-Time News. In a different section is Breaking News Blogs. | yes | Just two headline stories with excerpts and then Lots of Links to other stories. Not being a subscriber I accessed the Plain Dealer through another portal cleveland.com so any information contained here is based on how the page appears in this portal. | One inset Video window, many links to pictures. | | | | . | 3/9/2009 16:33:51 | Gulshan Rustamova | Cleveland Plain Dealer | no | | | no | | | no | | no | no | no | Does not do any of these | no | Very poor design. | Very poor use of multimedia! | | | | . | 3/9/2009 17:01:56 | Gulshan Rustamova | CNN | yes | http://www.cnn.com/services/rss/?iref=rssmorenews | 19 | yes | http://insession.blogs.cnn.com/ | 29 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Twitter, E-mail this story | yes | Good website design! Very interactive! | Great use of multimedia use! More multimedia is made on this homepage than any other one that I have seen yet. | | | | . | 3/9/2009 14:52:24 | Gulshan Rustamova | Courier Journal | yes | http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=cust01&template=middlecol | 46 | yes | http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=GETPUBLISHED03 | 50 | yes | Via blog feature | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, E-mail this story, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Buzz up! | yes | I like the design of this newspaper. It lists everything out clearly, easy to find stuff. | Nice use of multimedia as well! Everything is pretty clearly available. | | | |
|
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | . | 2/22/2009 13:37:19 | Michael Caputo | Courier-Journal | yes | http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=cust01&template=middlecol | 51 | yes | http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=getpublished03 | 50 featured blogs and 10 reader blogs | yes | Tab on top of home page Interact>Blogs | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story, De.lici.ous, Reddit, buzz up! | yes | Action-packed, almost all viewable space is a link. I counted 199 visible links when accessing this site. | There is media galore to access here, I’d assume this was a television site if I didn’t know better.
| | | | . | 2/25/2009 16:36:33 | Bilkay Taner | crosscut.com | yes | http://crosscut.com/feed/ | 100+ | yes | | | yes | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Most blogged stories, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | There is an option to add comments (What do you think?) | It is very easy to use and has been one of the best sites ive looked at recently. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 14:42:52 | Michael Caputo | crosscut.com | yes | http://crosscut.com/feed/ | 110 | yes | http://crosscut.com/blog/crosscut/ | 74 PAGES of blog entries | no | | no | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story | yes | Home page has a very clean look, and this is something print to web new institutions miss badly. Here is a web based platform that suffers nothing in terms of “trying to be something.” It provides the news in a clean, uncluttered way.
| Limited on the homepage. Links can go out to various media sources.
| | | | . | 2/19/2009 19:38:58 | Chad Larson | Detroit Free Press | yes | http://www.freep.com/rss | 18 | yes | http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=BLOG | 1 (all staff post to the same blog) | yes | tab on the homepage | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | I really like the Java-like navigation on the home page, which allows you to check sections of the site without having to wait for separate page loading. There's also quite a bit of news content on the home page itself, in the form of story leads. No surprises in the layout; this site is easy to navigate and doesn't require much digging. Interesting how they use the word "blog" for a blog POST. "Staff blogs" are actually just a list of posts to one main blog. | Video is featured below the fold, unlike many other sites. The player is embedded on the home page-- I prefer this to a player that loads and opens on a different page. However, a bigger player with more features will open on a new page if you click "More Videos." This player provides an "embed this video" link (first time I've noticed that on a news site), and it allows you to create a playlist as you browse. It's very YouTube-like. I'm surprised at how developed it is. | | | | . | 2/18/2009 13:58:00 | Shane Suzuki | Detroit Free Press | yes | http://www.freep.com/rss | 18 | yes | http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=BLOG | Too many to count | yes | Link on the main page | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Del.i.cious, facebook, reddit, yahoo buzz | yes | Although a busy front page, I did like it because almost all the major stories were quickly linked to from the front page without having to scroll down. The home, local, nation/world, sports, entertainments, life, travel sections were all on a banner across the top of the page, and were listed with headlines if you chose to scroll through the site. The lead story area had three photos, two small recaps and about 15 links to stories. But the section was javascript enabled so that by clicking the tabs you could move quickly between the top headlines, the columns, staff blogs and reader blogs without having the whole page reload. | The multimedia use was ok, I couldn’t find any podcasts, and the videos wouldn’t open on my computer (I use a pretty recent Dell laptop). However, the photo galleries were nice and easy to use and if they worked the videos were easy to find. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 15:40:30 | Chadrose de Guzman | Financial Times | yes | http://www.ft.com/cms/s/48ffafb6-5057-11da-bbd7-0000779e2340.htm?segid=70124&ftcamp=rss/home_link//updates_box/70124/ | 50+ | yes | http://www.ft.com/cms/s/195dd32a-e9b0-11db-91c7-000b5df10621.htm?segid=70117&ftcamp=blogs/home_link//interactive_box/70117/ | 15 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Facebook, Propellar, Linkedin, Reddit, Mixx, Yahoo! Buzz | yes | I liked this site more than the other ones that I looked at earlier.Everything is a little bit more organized. I don't like that the menu to choose from is at the bottom of the page. | The Multimedia use in the Financial times is pretty up to date. I would like to see more photo galleries on the sites that I have visited.Also they should have a citizen blog as well added. | | | | . | 2/24/2009 16:56:32 | Michael Le | Financial Times | yes | http://www.ft.com/cms/s/48ffafb6-5057-11da-bbd7-0000779e2340.htm?segid=70124&ftcamp=rss/home_link//updates_box/70124/ | 262 | yes | http://www.ft.com/comment/blogs | 14 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, del.ici.ous | no | The website color is difficult to read the fonts of the website. The tan color background with the black font was really difficult for me to read. The odd and various sizes in the fonts were really difficult for me to read and follow along. Top linear design is nice and convenient, but the categories of articles is difficult to understand. | There is a long delay for the multimedia to upload. It took about 15 minutes for the video footage to upload, and when it finally did, I did not find the video to be of any good quality or a good variety of videos. | | | | . | 3/11/2009 19:15:28 | JR Lorca | FOX | yes | http://foxnews.com/rss | 82 | yes | http://www.foxnews.com/blogs/index.html | 7 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, E-mail this story | no | The design I thought was ok, good even. The top portion of the site was filled with "entertaining" news. What I have been looking for in the sites that I have been researching is ads and this site had little. The ads kind of snuck into the page, it was not noticeable even though it was in the middle of the page. Overall I approve of the design. | The media use in the site was good, although it did not have podcasting, something I would expect from FOX. Pictures and videos were scattered through out the site, which is probably why I didn't notice the ads, because the ad pictures look like the article pictures. | | | | . | 3/1/2009 19:31:45 | Rylan Leese | Fox News | yes | http://www.foxnews.com/rss/ | 81 | yes | http://www.foxnews.com/blogs/index.html | 7 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, reddit, myspace, stumbleupon, mixx, delicious, technorati, google bookmarks, yahoo, windows live, friendfeed, magnolia, furl, buzzup propeller, xanga, linkedinblink list, slashdot, n4g, mister wong, blogmarks, faves, current, simpy, meneame, yigg, oknotizie.alice.it, fresqui, diigo, care2, funp, kirssy, hugg, sphinn, dealspl.us | yes | This site is pretty well put together, though it is too long. The page scrolls on for much too long. The entire page is essentially white and blends into itself, but the ads are small and far between. The news sections are well defined, and punctuated well with pictures. | The video content is linked into the fox news channel well. The radio channel as well. | | | | . | 2/24/2009 21:46:30 | Mark Gibson | Frontline | no | | | no | | | no | | yes | no | no | E-mail this story | no | This website is design to deliver video programs on PBS documentaries. Little user interaction is available. | Multimedia use is limited to video and mouse-over highlighting. Very simple design. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 15:27:28 | Tyler Morgan | FRONTLINE | no | | | no | | | yes | very bottom of home page, not technically even a blog in my opinion | yes | no | no | Does not do any of these | no | View source again, tables! That's bad.
This website has a great design and uses the space well, everything in clear enough and I can find myself being sucked into streaming hours of Frontline, but everything about the site is strictly "Web 1.0".
This website is firmly in the model of "we are going to give you content, take it or leave it." There is almost no "community" interaction other than a "submit your comments" which are then collected and posted by a PBS editor at a later date. Technically there are some "Join the discussion" type of links but these appear to be simply links to other blogs not affiliated with PBS that have a thread on that particular subject. Continuing this anti-socialnetworking theme, there is literally not a single way to share anything on this website without simply linking to it. I find that surprising since it is a very small and easy design change to add features like this.
Most of the "articles" seem to be a very short blurb about a video, then the video itself. It is a video orientated website that sort of falls into the trap of using a new media (the internet) like old media (television) but this doesn't happen to a high degree in my opinion; it's obvious they're trying to utilize the internet, but they are just so outdated.
It's not a bad website but it ain't great either. | I think a good comparison for this website is a DVD menu. This entire website is video orientated and follows a model close to that of a menu on a DVD. This means there are large, eye catching images with very little text to read and a few links to the relatively few pieces of content (ie: the video for the story that aired and a small handful of interviews and other miscellaneous videos). The website doesn't really step out of this box too much.
While they execute this style quite well, it is not how most websites work. | | | | . | 3/1/2009 19:07:27 | Rylan Leese | Ft. Worth Star Telegram | yes | http://www.star-telegram.com/rss/ | 118 | yes | http://www.star-telegram.com/blogs/ | 11 | no | | no | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, ask, backflip, ballhype, bebo, blinklist, blogmarks, delicious, diigo, facebook, fark, faves, favorites, feedmelinks, friendfeed, furl, google bookmarkds, kaboode, link-a-gogo, linkedin, live, mister wong, mixx, mulitply, myaol, myspace, netvouz, propeller, reddit, segnalo, simpy, slashdot, spurl, stumbleupon, tailrank, technorati, yahoo, yardbarker, | yes | The site is clean overall. The ads are small and far apart. The content is easy to find and clearly defined as content and not ads. | The lack of video on the homepage is a glaring oversight. The multimedia page is buried and has poor performance. | | | | . | 2/18/2009 16:26:45 | Chadrose de Guzman | Ft. Worth StarTelegram.com | yes | http://www.star-telegram.com/rss/ | 110 | yes | http://www.star-telegram.com/blogs/ | 30+ | no | | no | no | no | Digg, Facebook, Most searched stories, Most read stories | yes | I think that the site is very easy to use but I did not find any citizen blogs which is something I wish was included. | I don't use multimedia that much but after looking through this page, I might just have to convert to on line media more. | | | | . | 2/20/2009 15:14:24 | Mandy Weber | Guardian | yes | http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds | hundreds of thousands | yes | http://www.guardian.co.uk/tone/blog | 34 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story | no | I really like the website design. The different story categories have their own color, so it's easy to see the division of the categories as you scroll down the home page. I think it's a very lively-looking news site, and leads the eye all the way to the bottom of the page with its inclusion of bright and colorful photos. | Multimedia on this site is great. From the top to the bottom of the home page, photos and videos catch the eye, and make me really want to read all the stories I can on the page. Very good dispersion of multimedia. | | | | . | 2/20/2009 17:26:09 | Madeline Moy | Guardian | yes | http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/rss | 1 | yes | http://www.guardian.co.uk/tone/blog | 44 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Google Bookmarks, del.icio.us, reddit, Yahoo!MyWeb, StumbleUpon, livejournal, BlinkList | yes | The Guardian's design seems a lot more open and less cluttered than other news sites. There's a lot of white space, which gives your eyes a break. I find it very appealing. The Guardian's site is well-branded. | Of the four sites I've reviewed so far, The Guardian is the only one that has an actual section on the home page dedicated to multimedia. It is labeled "Latest multimedia" and include a couple of videos, photo and a daily podcast. Pretty cool!
I listened to part of the podcast and really liked it.
It's very obvious when multimedia appears on a page and it's clear how you should access it and play it. I really like that. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 14:03:03 | Michael Caputo | Houston Chronicle | yes | <feed://feeds.chron.com/houstonchronicle/metro>, <feed://feeds.chron.com/houstonchronicle/business>, <feed://feeds.chron.com/houstonchronicle/sports>, <feed://feeds.chron.com/houstonchronicle/life> | 4 | yes | http://www.chron.com/news/blogs/ | 71 | yes | Link to “more reader blogs” on main blog page | yes | yes | no | Digg, E-mail this story, Print, Recommend, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Yahoo Buzz | yes | Home page has a clean look, with 10 plus headlines as links to news stories. Not too much in way of animation and refreshing that plagues other news sites.
| Tasteful, not too overwhelming. Podcasts once again are left out.
| | | | . | 3/9/2009 14:06:57 | Gulshan Rustamova | Houston Chronicle | yes | http://www.chron.com/news/rss/ | 177 | yes | http://www.chron.com/news/blogs/ | 65 | yes | Though the blog navigation | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, Technorati, Yahoo! Buzz | yes | The design is overall not bad, but too busy with advertisements and packed with the news, very hard to read or spot what it is that you maybe looking for. | Overall pretty easy to use, but the business of the page makes it hard for the eye to spot it. | | | | . | 3/9/2009 17:14:36 | Gulshan Rustamova | Huffington Post | yes | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/syndication/ | 18 | yes | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/index/ | 10 | no | | yes | no | no | Facebook, E-mail this story, Myspace, Del.icio.us | yes | Plain website design, things are not necesserily easy to find, the page is kind of busy and difficult to navigate thru, slow. | Not very broad use of multimedia, just general availability of videos. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 16:07:19 | Shane Suzuki | HuffingtonPost | yes | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/syndication/ | 17 | yes | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/index/ | hundreds | yes | It's the entire site | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most blogged stories, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | Amazingly current with just amount every gimmick the web has. Nice clean layout, although it looks almost a little tabloidy with the huge bolded fonts and the very basic graphics. Just seems a step below the polish that a normal media site has - which may very well be on purpose. There is so much content that organizing it has to be difficult, and overall I think it succeeds. | It's there, it's available and it get's their point across. If they have podcasts, I couldn't find them - it would surprise me though if they don't sponsor somebody doing them at least on iTunes. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 18:38:14 | Ashika chand | Independent | yes | http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3496/index.rss | A LOT!! | no | | | no | | yes | yes | no | E-mail this story | yes | THE UK! My fav. I heart Prince Harry. Ok, so the Independent looks like a normal news page. The headline of the day is at top. There doesn’t seem to be any media on the homepage. As I was scrolling down looking for media I was distracted with the image of Rihanna’s battered face :( The home page is layed out with a lot of content and mini preview boxes for each section. There is a media tab at the top of the page as well tabs for other sections such as IndyBest, which is list of ‘best of’ things like boxed sets and food. The media tab had a drop down list that includes Opinion, tv/radio, Press, Online and Advertising. The Opinion section is confusing because it has articles in it. | Hmm. .. it seems as though their media tab relates to actual media on tv and not the digital version. I’m confused by this site. There are no links to any actual media. I decided to type in “video” in the search engine and I got more articles. | | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | . | 2/24/2009 22:10:29 | Mark Gibson | Independent | yes | http://www.independent.co.uk/service/list-of-rss-feeds-775086.html | 80 | no | | | no | | no | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, Most viewed | yes | The website design was ok. It seemed very average but did offer all the things that most U.S. news websites offered. | Very limited multimedia use. I found no video, podcast, nor blogs on the home page. It seemed more like an electronic version of a print than an interactive website. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 16:46:01 | Bilkay Taner | Kansas City | yes | http://www.kansascity.com/rss/ | 50 | yes | http://voices.kansascity.com/ | 10 | yes | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | The website has some technical problems when trying going over boxes, it shifts the page or it struggles to bring up secondary boxes or options. besides that its an ok site | The multimedia was used sparingly in this site. | | | | . | 2/21/2009 0:42:28 | Theodore Lang | KansasCity | yes | http://media.kansascity.com/rss/ | 98 | yes | http://www.kansascity.com/starblogs/ | 20 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Ask, Backflip, BallHype, Bebo, Blinklist, Blogmarks, Delicious, Diigo, Fark, Faves, Favorites, FeedmeLinks, FriendFeed, Furl, Google Bookmarks, Kaboodle, Link-a-Gogo, LinkedIn, Live, Magnolia, Mister Wong, Mixx, Multiply, myAOL, mySpace, Netvouz, Propeller, Reddit Segnalo, Simpy, Slashdot, Spurl, StumbleUpon, Tailrank, Technorati, Yahoo Bookmark, Yahoo Buzz, Yahoo MyWeb, Yardbarker | yes | less 'newspaper like", not attractive, felt cluttered. | rudimentary | | | | . | 2/23/2009 17:02:38 | Bilkay Taner | LA Weekly | yes | http://www.laweekly.com/2006-05-18/calendar/rss-feeds-page | 11 | yes | http://blogs.laweekly.com/ | 35 | yes | looked at the end of the blog post | yes | yes | no | Digg, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail this story | yes | No, but they do allow comments on blogs. | The multimedia interface is ok, but little focus on news but mostly focused on blogging and commentary. | | | | . | 2/21/2009 1:01:27 | Theodore Lang | LA Weekly | yes | http://www.laweekly.com/syndication/issue | 1 | yes | http://blogs.laweekly.com/ | 9 | no | | no | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Most commented stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Delicious, Blinklist, Magnolia, | yes | Light blue background made it more attractive to the eye, still too cluttered but better than others viewed so far. | nice photo galleries, easy to use | | | | . | 2/12/2009 10:33:49 | Chad Larson | Los Angeles Times | yes | http://www.latimes.com/services/site/la-rssinfopage,0,5039586.htmlstory | 124 | yes | http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-blogsplashpage-sg,0,843001.special | 36 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, MySpace; Yahoo; Reddit; Del.icio.us; Google; Mixx | yes | Navigation is fairly easy, but the competition for attention between text and visual elements (photo galleries, video and ads) is a bit overwhelming. I counted 231 clickable elements on the home page, not including the supplemental navigation at the bottom of the page. That seems excessive. I would prefer a design that is less busy. | Very impressive. Interface is clean and quick. Surprisingly, video clips did not include ad spots. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 15:53:32 | Shane Suzuki | Los Angeles Times | yes | http://www.latimes.com/services/site/la-rssinfopage,0,5039586.htmlstory | 124 | yes | http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-blogsplashpage-sg,0,843001.special | 36 | no | | no | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Mixx, Google Bookmarks, Del.i.cious, reddit, Yahoo Buzz, Myspace | no | The front page that shows is attractive, I saw no ads, it had lots of links, some nice photos and lots of ways to navigate to different sections of the site. My complaint is the page is long – it takes a long time to scroll down to the bottom and lots of stories are buried because of that. Everything is laid out in a vertical manner, which might be fine for a lot of people, but I hate scrolling down. I am a laptop person and scrolling down pages is not easy with a track pad – even with gestures enabled. | hardly any use of multimedia. I found no videos, no podcasts. This is a representation of the newspaper – text and photos. And nothing else. This surprises me because its an LA paper and I would think plenty of creative people would be willing to do some great things for a newspaper like the LA Times. | | | | . | 3/2/2009 2:54:33 | Cindy Umipig | miami herald | yes | http://www.miamiherald.com/rss/ | 143 | yes | http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/blogs/ | 38 | no | | yes | no | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most blogged stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story | yes | fairly easy to use, strightforward navigation that gets the pont across. | doea not overload you with multimedia clips that are not beneficial. Doea not auto start which is a blessing. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 21:15:50 | Robert Hadley | Miami Herald | yes | http://www.miamiherald.com/rss/ | 143 | yes | http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/blogs/ | 38 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story | yes | The Miami Herald website is not overly flashy and has a layout which isn't altogether unlike what one would expect to find on the front page of their print newspaper. The site is easy to navigate and the layout directs the reader's eye in a natural flow towards the center of the page which has the headline article teaser with an accompanying photo. Click-throughs to actual articles yield to a straightforward story template page with a distinguishable and bolded headline followed by the body of the article. The biggest complaint I have with this site is the use of advertisements. Just opening www.miamiherald.com causes a popup ad to display even on my popup-proof Macintosh Safari browser. Additionally, popup ads accompany every click to stories and obtrusive bannner ads even load on the main page. The right sidebar has advertisements, which is fairly standard, but a pop-up ad on every clickthrough is unacceptable. | The website, like most newspaper websites does not make multimedia the focal point for the website's design, but adequate concern for video, podcasts, and photo galleries is given an entire subheading on the main page. | | | | . | 2/15/2009 19:23:31 | JR | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | yes | http://www.jsonline.com/rss/?c=y&path=%2Fmainheadlines%2Fnews | 4 | yes | javascript:nullFunction() | 44 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story | yes | The website felt cluttered. It just looks real busy, making it hard to navigate through the site. The top bar was the only thing that I liked about the site, it was simple! | It has a lot of multimedia available. Again, I think that things could be arranged better to make more pleasing to the eye. | | | | . | 2/24/2009 16:23:21 | Michael Le | milwaukee journal sentinel | yes | http://www.jsonline.com/rss/ | 85 | yes | http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/ | 44 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook | no | I think the design of the website is okay. The top 1/3rd of the website looks good, but when you get pass the top the middle and the end of the website looks very loud. There are a lot of pictures, little sections and lists that make it difficult for me to understand and follow the layout of the website | I think the media section is well done, though there is no "search" key to find certain specifics to videos or pictures. There is a good "preview" picture section that shows what the picture could be which is a nice option. Videos on the other hand were difficult because there is no real video section, there is a video spot where it specializes in only videos. They all load and work just fine. | | | | . | 3/1/2009 16:07:55 | Jamie Corning | MSNBC.com | yes | http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5216556/ | 205 | no | | | no | | yes | yes | yes | Newsvine, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Rate Story/View Top Rated, MSN Messenger | no | The site design is excellent. The front page is designed very clearly with clear color-coded sections and the ability to expand, contract, and move sections around on the page - this customization is fantastic! The sections are also nicely divided into four: a top story with a short summary, a list of stories, multimedia, and hot topics. Left hand navigation is actually clean, breaks into sub-sections, and has pop-up menus for further drilldown. Articles themselves are very nicely laid out (other than in-line ads!)
| Overall, multi-media use is good. There's plenty of pictures and video, although inline video would be a nice feature. First site so far with Podcasts too.
| | | | . | 2/25/2009 16:19:20 | Shane Suzuki | MSNBC.com | yes | http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5216556/ | 208 | no | | | no | | yes | yes | yes | Newsvine, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, instant message, story ratings, windows live, my yahoo, bloglines, | yes | Nice design, very crisp graphics, pretty easy to find the different sections, they put a lot of information on every page, but the links are all relevant to the topic, so it's good. All in all, one of the better lay outs, lots of nice pictures, enough descriptions of the stories to get you to click, but still leaves enough room for lots of links and headlines. | Excellent. It is a TV station as well, so they have the advantage of just using their already made footage. No podcasts though - somewhat surprising. They have some big names, I figured they would be taking advantage of that. | | | | . | 2/26/2009 19:20:05 | Megan Kircher | News Day | no | | | yes | http://www.newsday.com/ny-blogs,0,4143928.htmlstory | 41 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, Reddit, Del.icio.us, google, mixx it, fark | no | The website feels very cluttered, while it is not too text heavy it seems like there is too much multimedia use going on. Much of the right hand side is advertising and there are many picture, videos and picture links to others places within the website. It is very colorful and offers the view many options. The areas are also clearly defined in terms of what information is put where. | The first things on the home page are scrolling top stories with pictures and right below that is the "pictures and multimedia" box. The also offer the option to join newsdays social media networking site using Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, Typepad, Blogger, and Twitter all on the homepage at the bottom located in one box. Also when clicking on a story, they offer different similar or recommended stories and photo galleries along with media clips for the viewers. | | | | . | 3/1/2009 22:53:10 | Cindy Umipig | newscloud.com | yes | http://newscloud.com/learn/feedlist/ | 23 | yes | http://blog.newscloud.com/ | it seems to be one main blog for the entire site | no | | no | no | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail this story | yes | There are no blogs but you are able to leave commentary on stories. They would like you to sign up for an account. Offbeat stories but straightforward reporting with chaces for commentary. | There is very minimal use of multimedia use. It is all new stories, no videos and only small pictures | | | | . | 2/22/2009 21:16:24 | Rob Lynch | NewsCloud.com | yes | http://newscloud.com/learn/feedlist/ | 23 | no | | | no | | no | no | no | N/A | yes | This website is a new aggregator rather than a news site in itself. It's design is suitable for this. | Multimedia is light on NewsCloud itself as it mainly links to external news sites. Some stories are shown with pictures of NewsCloud's front page. | | | | . | 3/1/2009 16:02:02 | Jamie Corning | Newsday | yes | http://www.newsday.com/news/ny-rss,0,1703190.htmlstory | 28 | yes | http://www.newsday.com/ny-blogs,0,4143928.htmlstory | 41 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Del.icio.us, Fark, Google, Reddit, Buzz up!, Mizz it! | yes | The site design itself is mediocre. The navigation bar on the left is poorly organized and difficult to use. Story titles are confied to a very narrow vertical column that requires excessive scrolling. Use of real estate on the home page is not well thought out. The integration of advertising into the site is not subtle at all, and it can really interfere with usability (for example, burying article comments below a big block of google ads). Also, the use of colors is limited - combining multiple shades of blue with white can be an eyesore and difficult to see. The site doesn't seem to emphasize usability.
| Multimedia use is good, but not great. There's an embedded video player and photo galleries are featured prominently on the home page, but the layout isn't well thought out. There's no signs of podcasting or other audio, and the videos aren't organized at all, making it difficult to find stories of interest.
| | | | . | 2/26/2009 23:02:14 | Corey Christiansen | Newsvine.com | yes | http://www.newsvine.com/_feeds/rss2/index | 1 | no | N/A | N/A | yes | They are everywhere | no | yes | no | Does not do any of these | yes | Front page looks terrible with high res. monitor. Most things are easy to find. Top Stories were of interest to me. | No interactive media. Very few videos and not as many photos as other sites. | | | | . | 3/13/2009 20:12:32 | John Hannay | NowPublic | yes | http://www.nowpublic.com/rss.xml | 66 | no | | | yes | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story | yes | A nice light grey tone margin surrounding the home page with a background cityscape outline gives the site an young and urban feel. This web site doesn't mess around. It says to the reader: "we want you to have access to 'most recommended stories' (from the past 8 hours!), as well as 'most recommended videos'". There is an easy way for the reader to be self-published on the top right of the home page. This collaborative web site is all about bringing the most informative local and global news to the readership of the site.
Now Public has a "see more headlines" feature after each category of stories on the home page that works just like traditional news organizations and takes the viewer to an archive of news articles. The difference is NowPublic's stories are a collection of amateurs not professional journalists. With NowPublic's easy story, picture, and video upload function, there are more authors on the street getting a variety of stories, not covered by other mainstream networks. | It appears as though NowPublic doesn't particularly distinguish between "blogs" and "blogging", and commenting on a news story because I can't tell the difference. In this sense, I don't know what a citizen blog is. Very easy and straight forward design; one change I might like to see is to have articles open in a new tab, so that I can leave news stories open and look at other stuff without clicking the back button every time. The generous sized thumbnail picture of each story does a compelling job of giving the reader a feel for the story, along with the caption, before they click and read! | | | | . | 2/25/2009 15:10:40 | Tyler Morgan | NowPublic.com | yes | http://www.nowpublic.com/rss.xml | 5 | no | | | yes | The whole website seems to be citizen journalism | yes | yes | no | Digg, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most "recommended" stories | yes | In my opinion the website design is great. Being a nerd, the first thing I did was view source to see if they are using div instead of table for layout, and they are (that's a good thing, non-nerds). It seems there are a lot of little "feature modules" like the video player, mini gallery, various lists of recent activity, automatically and manually generated rankings, a directory of sorts at the header; everything you need to have a functional website. And, most importantly, it does this without being a complete mess due to a clean "boxy" design that makes use of the space in a well organized but not overwhelming way.
One other thing I want to say about the site is that it's "playful". Like the subtle background of the dinosaur chasing people. It seems like you can immediately tell this is a website that originated in more of a grassroots, community driven way. But looking at the "about NP" page, this may be an incorrect assumption. | When it comes to websites, I'm a minimalist. It's too much for me (anything beyond plain text and maybe two pictures is too much for me). I mean, what's the point of having a video on the home page that is a guy sitting at his desk telling me stuff? This is a classic example of people using new media (Youtube) like they would old media (citizen print journalism). I just don't see the point and would never click play on this video.
Another thing that bothers me is something that almost all news websites do: Bad use of pictures. For example, on the front page right now is something about farmers and crops, and there's a pretty picture of a big cornfield. I click on it expecting to see it bigger, but I go to the article. In the article I see a gallery of pictures, the first one displayed is not the nice cornfield I was looking for (it's the third picture in the series). Finally, I "click here for larger" and I get something about 100 pixels bigger on each side. While other experiences in the image galleries aren't as bad, it seems to me they are underutilizing images.
The high compression and low resolution of images on popular websites is a relic from the dialup days that we can decisively leave behind now. | | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | . | 3/13/2009 0:23:47 | John Hannay | NPR | yes | http://www.npr.org/rss/ | 101 | yes | http://www.npr.org/blogs/ | 18 | no | | no | yes | yes | Digg, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Stumble Upon, Mixx, Reddit, Delicious | yes | generous white margins give it a sharp look; it's better to have lots of white in the margine rather than spread the home page contents apart.There is only one ad! This is great, and it doesn't deter the reader from access to everything the site has to offer. The site is very well organized; it's simple, clean and there is no question what features the web site offers the viewer. The design of NPR online, says: "here is all we have! Please, we want you to find anything and everything you're looking for, that's why we designed it so easy!" Blogs, cross-referenced! One link for blogs on the first vertical left navigation, and again at the bottom, can't miss it. Browse Topics, Services, Programs, Blogs, all news categories, photo galleries, popular stories, radio stations, music, archives, opinions - is it just me or the generous margins, this ? Although, how do I access the video from the home page? Sharp, clean, professional, everything - that is NPR online. | Its got all the music, radio stations, podcasts, video, photos, web feeds that you want from NPR - and they want feedback to make it better! | | | | . | 2/27/2009 23:36:35 | Theodore Lang | NPR | no | | | yes | http://www.npr.org/blogs/ | 18 | no | | no | yes | yes | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, Del.icio.us, Mixx, Reddit, Stumble Upon, Yahoo! Buzz | yes | nice, open layout. Very easy to read and obtain headline news quickly. High quality of content. | excellent podcasts and surprisingly well made photo galleries. | | | | . | 2/18/2009 16:35:02 | Chadrose de Guzman | NY Daily News | yes | http://www.nydailynews.com/services/rss_tools/index.html | 25+ | yes | http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/index.html | 25+ | no | | yes | no | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Propellar | yes | I thought that this was easier than the other site I searched. | I still think that the information that is shared is monitored more than it should and we as viewers should have citizen blogs. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 21:41:17 | Rylan Leese | NY Daily News | yes | http://www.nydailynews.com/services/rss_tools/index.html | 72 | yes | http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/index.html | 19 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | I like this site. The top story is clearly defined by a picture that is much larger than the rest on the page. The rest of the front page is divided by clear sections that have boarders around them and clearly defined titles. Navigation to and through stories is straight forward.The ads are not overly intrusive and are clear that they are ads and not another form of legit content. | The picture galleries are easy to navigate. The addition of a numbered navigation bar above the photos is great. Not only can you see what photo you are on but how many are left. You could even jump through photos without having to skip through them all. Thumbnails would be nice though. Video is embedded in a clearly defined player right in the main window. The commercials are identified with a title, as are the stories. The share option brings a email form right over the video and the right side of the video area has thumbnails next to the main window show upcoming videos. All of this is snappy to respond and uncluttered. | | | | . | 2/16/2009 13:39:03 | Cindy Umipig | NY TImes | yes | http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/index.html | 70 | yes | http://www.nytimes.com/ref/topnews/blog-index.html | 64 | no | on the right hand side of the page, there is a column marked "most popular" and it has emailed, blogged, and searched. click on the blogged and it will show you comments that people have left about a story, however, comments seem to be limited because the ones that I clicked on were no longer accepting comments which could lead to it not being a true blog. | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Facebook, Most blogged stories, Most searched stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Other share options are Yahoo! Buzz, Mixx, Linkedin, Permalink, Myspace | yes | Very easy to navigate with dark text on light background. Seems to have way too many subcategories even though finding them does not look to be too difficult. I know we defined citizen blogs in class but the regulation that New York Times puts on it's "blogs" does not make it seem as if it is a true blog. There are editor's picks and they limit a cutoff on how many comments they will feature. I don't like the bottom of the page where they give you three story headlines out of each group, if I wanted to see the top stories in that group, I would follow the sidelinks. A littl too much going on here. | I was very suprised to see that they prominently displayed all of the characteristics of multimedia use except for a true citizen blog that I couldn't find. There were RSS feeds all over the place. There were moving pictures of NYFashion week and a box for multimedia/videos. | | | | . | 2/21/2009 1:29:50 | Theodore Lang | NY TImes | yes | http://www.nytimes.com/rss | 70 | yes | http://www.nytimes.com/ref/topnews/blog-index.html | 64 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, LinkedIn, Mixx, MySpace, Yahoo Buzz | yes | wider than other newspaper website but still too cluttered. All multimedia easy to find and website ease to navigate. | the best media available so far, great videos in terms of content and quality. A superior website. | | | | . | 2/23/2009 16:51:16 | Bilkay Taner | NY Times | yes | http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/index.html | 67 | yes | http://www.nytimes.com/ref/topnews/blog-index.html | 68 | yes | by looking for blogger responce | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | no | The NY Times is fairly easy to navigate through, but at times they try to put too much information. The left navigation bar has too much information to filter through. | NYT also uses more text over images. They do provide images but not as often and as many as news agencies like CNN or MSNBC. They do offer video but they are usually posted in the middle of the page and isnt emphasized in the main view. | | | | . | 2/18/2009 14:01:53 | Shane Suzuki | Orange County Register | yes | http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/sections/news/rssfeeds/ | 91 | yes | http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/sections/blogs/ | 39 | yes | http://www.ocregister.com/share/blogs/ | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story | yes | This site is really interesting. It’s very plain, with not a lot of banners or photos, but the more you look the more you find some interesting things. Next to every headline is a comment counter and a thumbs up counter that tallies the recommendations by other readers. The front page is somewhat dynamic as the main photo rotates every few second to reveal one of about 10 lead stories. This is neat, but if you click through the front page to quickly you would miss the photos. There are only three ads on the initial page (before scrolling anywhere) I wonder if that is by design or if they have problems selling ads.
The front page layout is similar to cnn.com, with lead stories and headlines on the top, then the bottom part of the page broken into columns with headers. They could probably promote their own stories a little better, with some snippets of the text instead of just headlines. | Videos and video podcasts are neat, and they have an interactive section for the Oscars (go figure, its Orange County). For a newspaper site, it’s pretty involved and has lots of content, I just wish the design was a little more engaging to make you want to find all the neat features they have hidden away. | | | | . | 2/19/2009 19:14:25 | Chad Larson | Orange County Register | yes | http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/sections/news/rssfeeds/ | 96 | yes | http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/sections/blogs/ | 63 | yes | A link is provided below the listing of staff blogs | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story, Top viewed; Most recommended; Yahoo; StumbleUpon; Reddit; Google; del.icio.us; Spurl.net; Slashdot | yes | This website is highly interactive. Comments are clearly solicited, and there are many ways to share a story. The section of the website that allows readers to "publish their stuff," become a member, or start a blog is very rich. This news organization is obviously very focused on the social network model. | This website uses the most sophisticated media player I've seen at a news site. Also allows readers to submit their own videos. A criticism: on the homepage, photos are constantly changing and cycling (very annoying), and there is an obnoxious news ticker that has text flying across the screen. Bad idea. | | | | . | 2/23/2009 17:27:50 | Bilkay Taner | Oregonian | yes | http://www.oregonlive.com/blogs/index.ssf | 100 | yes | http://www.oregonlive.com/interact/ | 30 | yes | look at the bottom of articles | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Twitter | yes | I really enjoyed the Oregon live web interface and design. It was easy for me to view and understand where to get topics that interest me. | The multimedia was good, but nothing too different from other sites. | | | | . | 2/21/2009 0:28:41 | Theodore Lang | Oregonian | yes | http://www.oregonlive.com/rss/ | 145 | yes | http://www.oregonlive.com/blogs/ | 145 | yes | on blog page | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Facebook, Reddit, del.icio.us, google, yahoo | yes | cluttered; rss not easy to find, nothing striking on web design. | Photo galleries set up well and video sharp with high speed connection. | | | | . | 3/9/2009 15:08:09 | Gulshan Rustamova | Orlando Sentinel | yes | http://www.orlandosentinel.com/about/orl-blogxml,0,7939919.htmlstory | 122 | yes | http://www.orlandosentinel.com/about/orl-blogs,0,718169.htmlpage | 51 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, Google, Redditt, Buzz up!, Mixx it!, Fark, Del.icio.us | yes | Very simple, not very eye catching! | Pretty standard. | | | | . | 2/15/2009 22:03:56 | Michael Caputo | Orlando Sentinel | yes | http://www.orlandosentinel.com/about/orl-blogxml,0,7939919.htmlstory | 19 News, 15 Sports, 9 Classified/ 37 Columnists, 42 Blogs | yes | http://www.orlandosentinel.com/about/orl-blogs,0,718169.htmlpage | 51 | yes | Right margin in a box on the blog page | yes | yes | no | Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most blogged stories, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, De.lici.ous, Fark, Google, Reddit, buzz up!, Mixx it! | yes | Busy! More sections than a Florida grapefruit! Also home page refreshes so often it becomes annoying.
| Video is presented right up front and many links to pictures. Too many moving ads again creates a "busy" feeling to this viewer. | | | | . | 2/20/2009 10:32:13 | Quoc Phan | Pittsburgh Post Gazette | yes | http://www.post-gazette.com/rss/latest.xml | 20+ | yes | http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/ | 8 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most blogged stories, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | The website design was alright. Nothing to over the top but was pretty simple to navigate around. Only tough part was trying to find exact thing such as blogs | The multimedia use such as videos were very easy to find and was scattered through the page. Made it very simple to find. | | | | . | 3/11/2009 1:19:46 | Glenn Crotts | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | yes | http://www.post-gazette.com/rss/list.asp | 88 | yes | http://www.post-gazette.com/journals/ | 27 | yes | Looked through blogs list, found Open Letters | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, Del.icio.us, Reddit, MySpace, Stumble It! | no | The website is quite user-friendly with nearly every option found by mousing-over the toolbar at the top of page. Everything seems to be in its proper place with top articles down the middle. This website is intuitive and one of the better news sites I have been to. News consumers will enjoy this website. | I am very impressed at the absence of commercials in the video and they streamed seamlessly. Lots of video categories and archives as well as photos. I am thoroughly impressed by the ease of finding and playing the media I want. Great website. | | | | . | 2/20/2009 17:05:57 | Mandy Weber | ProPublica | yes | http://www.propublica.org/ | 8 | no | | | no | | no | no | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | This website isn't as "fancy" as the others. It's your basic two-column, straight-forward news design, which isn't a bad thing. As a new visitor to this site, my perceptions are that this is a highly respected source for important news, possibly reporting on the things that mainstream media isn't fully covering. I really like their "promises clock", "scandals watch" and "bank bailout watch". These nifty tools help people keep on top of everything that's going on with the government and economy right now. I especially like that they're aren't any advertisements on this site. Maybe I should start visiting more independent, non-profit news sites from now on, where there are no advertisements to bother me. | Multimedia on this site is sadly lacking, but I guess you can't expect too much from an independent, non-profit newsroom.They do have some photos and "graphics" but that's as far as it goes with multimedia. | | | | . | 3/11/2009 18:08:44 | Megan | Propublica | yes | There is 8 different links on the website, not a single link to the whole lot of RSS feeds | 8 | no | | | no | | no | no | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, yahoo, stumbleupon, reddit, del.icio.us | yes | The overall feel of the website feels more like a blog than a news website when compared to the first four that I looked at and critiqued. The stores are listed one under the other and there is a limited navigation bar on the top of the screen, along with some stories and link listed on the right hand side of the page. I felt like there was an excessive amount of text. | I did not feel that this website made very good use of multimedia. While the RSS feeds were easy to find, that was just about the only use of multimedia that was featured on the homepage.I felt that it could have been better linked with multimedia. | | | | . | 2/21/2009 18:06:09 | Tressa Reed | RealClear Politics | yes | http://www.realclearpolitics.com/rss/ | 10 | yes | http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/ | 1 | yes | link - columist and blogs | yes | yes | no | Most read stories, E-mail this story | yes | Seems overwelming at first but your eyes can easily go from one column to the next. | There are both video and phot galleries on the homepage but there isn't podcasts. The articles were the focus of the homepage not the videos and picture. Also you canNOT share stories other than through email which is different then most news sites. | | | | . | 3/1/2009 16:08:51 | Jamie Corning | RealClearPolitics | yes | http://realclearpolitics.com/rss | 10 | no | | | no | | yes | no | no | Most read stories, E-mail this story | no | Exceedingly poor. The entire front page consists of link after link after link. There's not much aesthetic value to the site, and it's very difficult to navigate and find information -- for that matter, to even tell what is a blog post vs. a news story vs. a link to an external news story.
| Video is pushed to the right hand side and not very apparent at all. There's almost no use of pictures - no photo gallery at all - and no podcasts.
| | | | . | 3/11/2009 19:29:04 | JR Lorca | RedState | no | | | no | | | yes | scrolling | yes | no | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail this story | yes | I was not a big fan of the design. It was tiresome to look at, being mainly text. The page is very long, the page listed a lot of blogs in the main page. The design could be cleaned up a bit more, especially the stories and blogs. | The multimedia was not a featured feature on the site. It was just in the back-round. it did not have a photo gallery, as a weblog, I expected it to have a photo gallery. | | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | . | 2/27/2009 23:42:39 | Theodore Lang | RedState.com | no | | | no | | | yes | listed on the right-hand side | no | no | no | Does not do any of these | yes | design was very professional for a news blog, easier read than online newspapers. | minimal, just a blog. | | | | . | 3/1/2009 16:05:37 | Jamie Corning | Rocky Mountain News | yes | http://www.rockymountainnews.com/rss/ | 138 | yes | http://www.rockymountainnews.com/colorado-blogs/ | 28 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Del.icio.us, Reddit | yes | One of the cleanest, well designed sites that I've seen thus far. Great use of font, layout - looks very clean and crisp. The front page isn't cluttered at all (although hard to know if this is because of the recent closure or not). Two-level navigation bar at the top is very clean and easy to use.
| Good multimedia use on the site. Videos and photos are featured prominently on the home page. Video is all embedded.
| | | | . | 2/26/2009 19:32:11 | Megan Kircher | Rocky Mountain News | yes | News section › TOP Rocky Mountain News - News RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Local stories RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Traffic RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Education RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Government & Politics RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Obituaries RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - News columns and blogs RSS My Yahoo News Columnist - Tina Griego RSS My Yahoo News Columnist - Bill Johnson RSS My Yahoo News Columnist - Mike Littwin RSS My Yahoo News Columnist - Gary Massaro RSS My Yahoo News Columnist - Penny Parker RSS My Yahoo News Columnist - Ed Stein RSS My Yahoo News Columnist - Jean Torkelson RSS My Yahoo News Blogs - RockyTalk Live with Mark Wolf RSS My Yahoo News Blogs - Back Roads to the White House with M.E Sprengelmeyer RSS My Yahoo News Blogs - Fair and Unbalanced with Mike Littwin RSS My Yahoo News Blogs - Editor's Blog with John Temple RSS My Yahoo News Blogs - Stein's View with Ed Stein RSS My Yahoo Special Reports › TOP Rocky Mountain News Special Reports RSS My Yahoo Business section › TOP Rocky Mountain News - Business RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Tech & telecom RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Money & markets RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Airlines & aerospace RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Real Estate RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Energy RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Healthcare RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Retail RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Skiing & tourism RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - More business RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Business columns & blogs RSS My Yahoo Business Columnist - Rob Reuteman RSS My Yahoo Business Columnist - James Paton RSS My Yahoo Business Columnist - David Milstead RSS My Yahoo Business Columnists - Jane hoback & Gil Rudawsky RSS My Yahoo Business Columnists - Dean Bonham & Hinchey RSS My Yahoo Business Blog - John Rebchook on Real Estate RSS My Yahoo Business Blog - Material Disclosures with David Milstead RSS My Yahoo Sports section › TOP Rocky Mountain News - Sports RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Broncos & NFL RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Avalanche & NHL RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Nuggets & NBA RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Rockies & MLB RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Rapids & MLS RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - College RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - College RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - College RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - College Football RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Fantasy sports RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Racing RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Olympics RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Golf RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Cycling RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Tennis RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - More sports RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Rocky Preps RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - More Rocky Preps sports Preps RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Sports columns & blogs RSS My Yahoo Sports Columnist - Jim Benton RSS My Yahoo Sports Columnist - B.G. Brooks RSS My Yahoo Sports Columnist - Jack Etkin RSS My Yahoo Sports Columnist - Dave Krieger RSS My Yahoo Sports Columnist - Jeff Legwold RSS My Yahoo Sports Columnist - Bernie Lincicome RSS My Yahoo Sports Columnist - Drew Litton RSS My Yahoo Sports Columnist - Marcia Neville RSS My Yahoo Sports Columnist - Scott Stocker & Gerry Valerio RSS My Yahoo Sports Columnist - Tracy Ringolsby RSS My Yahoo Sports Columnist - Rick Sadowski RSS My Yahoo Sports Blog - Broncos 24/7 RSS My Yahoo Sports Blog - Rockies 24/7 RSS My Yahoo Sports Blog - Avalanche 24/7 RSS My Yahoo Sports Blog - Nuggets 24/7 RSS My Yahoo Sports Blog - FC Rocky Soccer Blog RSS My Yahoo Sports Blog - Rocky Preps with Scott Stocker & Gerry Valerio RSS My Yahoo Sports Blog - win, lose & Drew with Drew Litton RSS My Yahoo Sports Blog - Open Mic with Sam Adams RSS My Yahoo Sports videos RSS My Yahoo Outdoors section › TOP Rocky Mountain News - Mountain Activities RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Escapes RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Hunting & fishing RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - More outdoors RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Outdoors columns and blogs RSS My Yahoo Outdoors Columnist - Ed Dentry RSS My Yahoo Entertainment section › TOP Rocky Mountain News - Entertainment RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Movies RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News -TV RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Music RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Arts & architecture RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Theater RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Dining RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Nightlife RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Books RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Events RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - More entertainment RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Entertainment columns & blogs RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Lisa Bornstein RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Mark Brown RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Mary Voeltz Chandler RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - John Lehndoff RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Tom Noel RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Mike Pearson RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Norman Provizer RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Marc Shulgold RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Patti Thorn RSS My Yahoo Living section › TOP Rocky Mountain News - Living RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Health & fitness RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Fashion RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News -Food RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Home & garden RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - More living RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News -Living Columns and blogs RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Todd Bardwick RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - W. Bruce Cameron RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Maria Cote RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Dave Flomberg RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Jennifer Rosen RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Marty Meitus RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Mike Rudeen RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Lisa Ryckman RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnists - Judie Schwartz & Evelinda Urman- Style Matters RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Columnist - Mary Winter RSS My Yahoo Entertainment Blog - Ask! with Mike Rudeen RSS My Yahoo Opinion section › TOP Rocky Mountain News - Opinion RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Editorials RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Letters to the Editor RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Speakout RSS My Yahoo Rocky Mountain News - Opinion columns RSS My Yahoo Opinion Columnist - Vincent Carroll RSS My Yahoo Opinion Columnist - Paul Campos RSS My Yahoo Opinion Columnist - Dave Kopel RSS My Yahoo Opinion Columnist - Jason Salzman RSS My Yahoo Opinion Columnist - Mike Rosen RSS My Yahoo Opinion Columnist - John Temple RSS My Yahoo Multimedia › TOP Rocky Mountain News - Video RSS My Yahoo Associated Press › TOP Associated Press - Nation RSS My Yahoo Associated Press - World RSS My Yahoo Associated Press - Busines | 138 | yes | http://www.rockymountainnews.com/colorado-blogs/ | 28 | no | | yes | yes | no | E-mail this story | no | The design on this website is absolutely beautiful. Everything is clearly marked and has a home. The text is a good size and the multimedia and photos do not take up all of your attention. It is easy to navigate and just well organized overall. | On the homepage they do a great job of integrating multimedia. through the use of pictures for the headline stories and the RSS feeds. Also they have polls that the public can take part in and a scroll through of the featured articles and ares on the website. While they do not offer much in the way of social networking site I think that the overall clean design of the site and use of other multimedia functions wins out. | | | | . | 2/24/2009 17:23:09 | JR Lorca | San Antonio Express-News | yes | http://www.mysanantonio.com/rss | 100+ | yes | http://www.mysanantonio.com/blogs | 98 | yes | scrolling | yes | yes | no | E-mail this story | no | The website seemed cluttered, which made it difficult to look for information. The balance between pictures and text was not good. There were just too many pictures in an area. It also made it difficult know where categories started and ended. | The site had all the latest multimedia except for podcasting. | | | | . | 2/18/2009 8:41:27 | Michael Le | San Antonio News | yes | http://www.mysanantonio.com/rss | 167 | yes | http://www.mysanantonio.com/sacultura/SACultura_blogs_.html | 97 | no | | yes | yes | no | Newsvine, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Yahoo, Google, Delicious | yes | The website design is very "loud." There are is a lot of information, images, and colors coming out at once that makes it difficult to concentrate on stories or specific articles. The article links are all the same monotonous color which makes it difficult for me to find anything to pop out, maybe more bold or some different splashes of colors would help, but there is already so much splash going on that it would be more of a distraction probably. | The multimedia use is very good. The response and the quality is very nice. The only problem is that it is difficult to navigate between which movies to watch. There is a side bar of maybe 6 movies, but then you have to click on the "next page" in order to view the other videos. If you go to the main categories of the pages you like then the videos would go to your preference, but still would not let you navigate a larger portion of videos. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 18:32:33 | Ashika chand | San Diego Union tribune | yes | http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/rss2/index.html | 26 | yes | http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/weblogs/index.html | | yes | LOTS! | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story | yes | Nothing on the homepage that stands out as interactive. They do have a multimedia tab at the top of the page that has a drop down list for photo galleries, video, talk radio, music radio and multimedia. The photo aren’t categorized there are pages you can click through. They have a search engine at the top page where you can type in a word and pick a category such as entertainment. The video page is a little different as it has tabs at the top for different categories such as top videos and business. | The top of the page also provides the ability to search for a specific item. I found the talk radio section to be pretty interesting. They have a lot of different shows that they do! To list a few digital politics, I’m there for you baby: The Entrepreneur’s guide to galaxy and Fill in the blank. Their music radio is called AmplifySD. They have links on the site for itunes, realplayer, Flash MX and windows media player so that people that listeners can stream from the website. Looks like they also have a Myspace! Their media page provides an overview of all the media as well as an archive. | | | | . | 2/21/2009 14:43:28 | Tressa Reed | San Diego Union Tribune | yes | http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/rss2/index.html | 26 | yes | http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/index.html | 4 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Most Saved, Most Printed, Most Popular | yes | The homepage design is very busy. Advertisements were infront of the share and email this links so the reader could not access all their options. | There are lots of videos, pictures, comments, and blogging. | | | | . | 3/2/2009 20:27:34 | John Hannay | San Francisco Chronicle | yes | http://www.sfgate.com/rss/ | 181 | yes | http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/ | 39 | yes | by clicking "select another blog" and navigating away from "staff blogs" | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | I like the white margins down both vertical sides of the page; this allows the reader to visualize and understand the boundaries of all the content and I think this removes stress of finding the plethora of news stories on the web site. The search tool is the first thing you see below the web site logo on the top left, and the adjacent corner at the bottom contains an alphabetical site index. The site gives you instant control of the news article categories, news, sports, business, etc with an easy left to right horizontal navigation bar, and most of these categories are also contained in a secondary horizontal navigation down the left side with more user options for each category. It is challenging to find the blogs half way down on the right underneath and embedded in various graphic heavy ads. The RSS feed is located on the bottom navigation bar in small text. Overall, I give the site a high rating for organization and usability. | This website seems to have all the bells and whistles for the modern user; photos, videos, article comments, blogging, pod casting, and rss feeds. I like the fact that the site is designed for the total user who has equal easy navigation to either read a text article, further decide to comment, view photos, or the user who wants to hang out in the sites “blogosphere”, or publish music and videos. | | | | . | 2/24/2009 21:35:24 | Mark Gibson | San Francisco Chronicle | yes | http://www.sfgate.com/rss/ | 181 | yes | http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/main/page | 34 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | The website design was average. It future the usual stuff but lacked any flair. | Multimedia use was also average. It seemed that this website was just placed to show a online presence without alot of effort to connect with the potential audience. | | | | . | 2/26/2009 21:40:16 | Corey Christiansen | San Jose Mercury News | yes | http://www.mercurynews.com/rss | 155 | yes | http://blogs.mercurynews.com/ | 11 | no | N/A | yes | no | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | They require that you login to post comments on stories. Some article require login. Had to use bugmenot.com. Site is designed well, small banner ad on top and a few on the sides, nothing to flashy. | Few interactive media objects. A few graphics and graphs that were used in the print newspaper. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 20:41:16 | Rob Lynch | San Jose Mercury Times | yes | http://www.mercurynews.com/rss | 152 | yes | http://blogs.mercurynews.com/ | 11 | no | | yes | no | no | Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | The news site is layed out well, though the front page does looks rather crowded. However, it was fairly easy to move around the site using the navigation. | This site has video, photo galleries, blogs and makes good use of photos to break up text. | | | | . | 2/26/2009 19:51:52 | Megan Kircher | south florida sun sentinel | yes | http://www.sun-sentinel.com/services/sfl-rss,0,2123370.htmlstory | 73 | yes | http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/sfl-blogs-main-g3,0,2452505.htmlstory | 37 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, del.icio.us, fark, google, reddit, buzz up, mix it | yes | The overall design of this page is very easy on the eyes. There is a good balance between pictures and text, when there are many pictures then the text is limited, and vice versa. The tool bar with extra navigation on the left is rather bland, but it helps the readers find what they are looking for without having to scour the entire homepage first. | Blogs, video, and multimedia gallery are all readily available on the navigation bar on the left hand side of the page which is nice to have them in an easy place to see aside from begin embedded in the homepage layout. They do a really great job of having a variety of blogs and RSS feeds available to the readers for download. | | | | . | 3/1/2009 16:06:52 | Jamie Corning | South Florida Sun-Sentinel | yes | http://www.sun-sentinel.com/services/sfl-rss,0,2123370.htmlstory | 73 | yes | http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/sfl-blogs-main-g3,0,2452505.htmlstory | 37 | yes | Featured prominently on home page | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Del.icio.us, Fark, Google, Reddit, Buzz up!, Mizz it! | yes | Left-hand navigation with one level, but the main page is very nicely laid out with sections and "white space" used to divide the page. Individual article pages tend to be too narrow in width but integrate media well into the space.
| Good integration of multimedia and social media within the sections. The social media components, comments sections, and "Most xx stories" seems to use the exact same technology with the same options as the Newsday site. Very graphic intensive.
| | | | . | 2/25/2009 18:29:36 | Ashika chand | St. Louis dispatch | yes | http://www.stltoday.com/rss/ | 34 | no | | | no | | yes | yes | no | E-mail this story | yes | top of the page has a latest headlines media viewer. It’s a timed slide show that goes through the pictures of the headlining news for the day. Underneath the pictures are buttons to click on the news story you want. Pretty handy. The middle of the page has a little window for, Featured Reader Photo. You can view or share your photos here. There’s no link at the top of the page for media but there is one fore Photos. Ah, apparently clicking on the photo tab takes you to all the multimedia. Games, maps and quizzes it says. There are interactive links for local news, traffic/construction, politics, crime, business, sports, entertainment, movies/tv and education. They have some pretty neat quizzes like the Game of Risk, do you live on your life on the edge? | Actually has a lot more than I had anticipated. they seem to encourage readers to send in their photos and have an entire area dedicated to it. you can also purchase prints for them which I havent before. | | | | . | 2/21/2009 15:29:21 | Tressa Reed | St. Louis Post Dispatch | yes | http://www.stltoday.com/rss/ | 30 | yes | http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/ | 10+ | yes | Through the blogs link ... there hidden | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | There are a lot of links that take you to different pages at the top of the homepage. This makes it complicated. The blogs and columns were combined on the homepage but each section such as Sports, Entertainment,News, etc had over 5-15 blogs. Pop-Up Advertisements when your mouse moves over them. | It was very limited in different "sharing options". | | | | . | 2/13/2009 21:47:03 | Mandy Weber | St. Paul Pioneer Press | yes | http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/xsl/memv/xml/569_most_viewed_rss.xml | 7 | yes | http://www.twincities.com/blogs | 17 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | Very organized 3-column website design. Advertisements are somewhat annoying, as one at the very top of the home page is one that expands when the mouse rolls over it. Other advertisements stick out, and I'm sure that's how the advertisers prefer it, but it's gets in the way when I'm trying to focus on the headlines, and news content. | Multimedia use is as should be expected. The site features a "media cafe" on the left column with video, photos and podcasts. | | | | . | 3/2/2009 3:03:18 | Cindy Umipig | st. petersburg times | no | | | yes | http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/ | 16 | no | | yes | no | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | fairly straight forward. Not alot of flair and nonsense to where it is difficult to navigate. | It is not overdone so that when it is in use, it seems important. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 20:57:15 | Robert Hadley | St. Petersburg Times | yes | http://www.tampabay.com/sitemap/feeds/ | 81 | yes | http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/ | 39 | no | N/A | yes | no | no | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, E-mail this story | yes | The St. Petersburg Times uses a website called Tampabay.com as its online portal. This website is clearly not up to Web 2.0 standards and relies on hyperlink tabs across the top of the page to direct you to various sections of the paper. As for the layout of the main page itself, it is busy and cluttered with too much text and too many hyperlinks. Scrolling down below the headline yields only more columns of text hyperlinks giving the whole website a user unfriendly look which would especially turn off senior citizens--a sizeable demographic in St. Petersburg. The problem is magnified when one clicks through to individual stories. Were it not for the use of black to differentiate between the blue text hyperlinks, in some cases it might be difficult to discern what is part of the story and what are extraneous hyperlinks. | Tampabay.com makes minimal use of multimedia, but it appears gimmicky and is clearly not the focal point of the site. Text dominates! The main page does have a video bar below the "front page" headline and sidebar stories and there is sparse use of photos. | | | | . | 2/26/2009 22:15:37 | Corey Christiansen | Star Tribune | yes | http://www.startribune.com/help/12374506.html | 116 | yes | http://www.startribune.com/blogs/?elr=KArksLD78UnDk4Dy_0D%3AaDyUiacyKUQ7c4E7ME5U | 31 | no | N/A | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | I like the design, nothing to special though. | The infoCenter is filled with interactive media projects. Very few stories include multimedia though. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 20:32:03 | Rob Lynch | Star Tribune | yes | http://www.startribune.com/rss/?sf=1&s=/ | 12 | yes | http://www.startribune.com/blogs/ | 31 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | no | The website has a great layout and sensible navigation, it looks like it would be fairly easy to get to the news that your looking for with between three or four clicks max. | The front page has a lot of multimedia but it is contained nicely so that it's not overwhelming. The site in general makes great use if several different types of media. | | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | . | 2/22/2009 12:38:56 | Chadrose de Guzman | SunTimes | yes | http://www.suntimes.com/rss/ | 12 | yes | http://blogs.suntimes.com/ | 42 | yes | looked at the title of the blog | yes | no | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, yardbarker | yes | It looks too busy. There needs to be some kind of order in placement of articles and advertisements. I felt overwhelmed and wanted to hurry through my assignment so that I would not have to be on this site for longer than need be. | The site did a great job in multimedia use, but podcast was not present on their home page, if it was they would gain more user that are on the go that would still would like to use their site for information. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 21:02:08 | Rylan Leese | suntimes.com | yes | http://www.suntimes.com/rss/index.html | 12 | yes | http://blogs.suntimes.com/ | 41 | yes | Referenced at the bottom of the main blog page. The subject matter was the only tip-off | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail this story | yes | Honestly, how am I supposed to know what to read when the page is two full scroll pages of almost pure text? The images are in there but they don't really break the txt into meaning ful chunks. Giant expanding banner ads pervade the entire top of the site and distract me from gathering any information right off the bat. An ill placed mouse cursor further engages the ads into a sudo-interactive state where apparently the increase in size is my fault for indicating I was interested in the car enough to hover my mouse cursor there for a millisecond while I moved from the address bar to the page. Also, is it a bad sign when their dedicated RSS page has a list of "popular" news readers that I've never heard of? Perhaps I'm not as plugged in as I thought. Another newspaper thrown online with some added content. Belive it or not I'm not upset that my newspaper doesn't have video or audio. I like it just the way it is. Please keep it off the internet, this isn't a cork board. | The inclusion of video on the homepage seems out of place. With every site trying to be a one stop shopping place I find that they fail, as this site does, on two counts. Not doing it all, and not doing it well. Each picture I opened had the sponsor ad almost as prominent as the image itself. The video section opened slowly and seemed to have little context for its content. I'm sure that if I wasn't testing the site I wouldn't have entered into it. | | | | . | 2/15/2009 19:39:04 | JR | The Arizona Republic | yes | http://www.azcentral.com/help/articles/info-rss.html | over 100 | yes | http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/new/ | 12 | yes | scrolling | yes | yes | no | Digg, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail this story | yes | This website is organized but filled with the usual ads. It is cleaner than some of the other sites I have looked at. | The multimedia use was good. The share feature is really nice, it gives you the options of using the most popular of network site available. Video and photo use was also available which makes this site like any other site out there. | | | | . | 2/24/2009 16:37:23 | Michael Le | The Arizona Republic | yes | http://www.azcentral.com/help/articles/info-rss.html | 104 | yes | http://www.azcentral.com/help/articles/info-rss.html | 38 | yes | http://www.azcentral.com/members/ | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story | yes | I thought this was an excellent video design that was simple but it really helped the overall design and layout of the website. Out of the four I checked, I really enjoyed this website because it had categories clearly defined and little stories to each category. It was user friendly and the color schemes, fonts, pictures were all proportionate and well inputted.. | The multimedia use was very well put. The only downside was the video section where it automatically plays the video when you check the site. Other than that there are no real complaints, there was a search bar and it was helpful. Photos were clear and were well put on the site. | | | | . | 3/11/2009 15:37:15 | John Hannay | The Boston Globe | yes | http://www.boston.com/tools/rss/ | 122 | no | | | yes | by clicking on “A list of all other Boston-area blogs” | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | Nice linear design layout on home page with page broken into thirds. There is a very subtle margin with a blue dashed line consistent with the Boston Globe’s “look and feel” brand. Boston Globe has clean and simple main menu navigation with static sub-category menu bar in a light easy to read great, instead of dynamic appearing sub-menus on rollover, which allows the user better control. The web site displays a nice balance of text and pictures with its news presentation, although, the “special reports” section on the right seems a bit image heavy, especially since this along with a large home delivery subscription and online store ad, forces the user to scroll down in order to view the blog section. This blog section doesn’t do the best job at giving the viewer a sense of its extensive list of Globe and community blogs; the user has to click “see all globe blogs” beneath only three visible blog titles on the home page. Overall, the Globe provides a lot of valuable news and categories with user-friendly organization. | While The Boston Globe is definitely not on the leading edge of sharing its news stories with social networking sites (only Digg and Facebook), it is however, competitive with its list of available blogs both in the newspaper and in the Community of Boston. The home page offers a section called “Reporters Questions”, where editorialists invite readers to engage current news issues such as money spending during a financial crisis, and provide their input. The Globe online provides relatively easy access to photo galleries, videos, pod casting, blogs, and web feeds. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 13:51:57 | Mark Gibson | The Boston Globe | yes | http://www.boston.com/tools/rss/ | 120 | yes | http://www.boston.com/news/blogs/ | 52 | yes | 1 | yes | yes | yes | E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Yahoo! Buzz | yes | I thought the Boston Globe website was very user friendly. Most things were very easy to find and an wide array of articles and links were offered for the user to personalize his/her interests. The page offered easy printing, e-mail sharing, etc. | The downside on this webpage was that the RSS feeds were only located at the bottom of the page, yet the blogs sites were on the left side on the page midway down. The main blog sites were only listed after the featured blog sites were noted. The main blog sites were offered as if an after thought of the featured blog pages. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 18:06:26 | Ashika chand | The Columbus Dispatch | no | | | yes | http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/blogs/index.html | | yes | 13 | no | no | no | E-mail this story, Story tools, yahoo buz | no | The homepage is layed pretty neat and clean. The top has links to all the different part of the site such as news, local, politics and even blogs. The top stories at the top of the page with the latest headlines. Following the headlines is of course SPORTS! Next they have politics and then entertainment/weekender. The next feature caught me a bit off guard because we don’t normally see it here in Washington, Faith and Values. The headlining article here was called Showing up, but not signing up. The title follows with a short description of the article, Fewer of those in pews want to become official church members, for a variety of reasons; pastors say they are wary of pressuring such worshippers. Beneath this is a calendar with links to movie times and other events. This site was pretty clean cut. Nothing really stands out. The entire background is white with blue lettering. Very plain and simple. | Of you mouse over the multimedia it gives you the options for video, podcasts, Photographers and Columbus on camera. really cool actually. if you click on photopgraphers it brings up a page called A year in photos. | | | | . | 2/21/2009 15:50:19 | Tressa Reed | The Columbus Dispatch | yes | http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/rss/index.html | 61 | yes | http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/blogs/index.html | 55 | no | | no | no | no | E-mail this story, Yahoo! Buzz | no | Very simple and easy to read. There were a lot of advertisments on the side and out of the way. | There videos, podcasts, and photgalleries but featured through a multimedia link at the top of the homepage | | | | . | 2/20/2009 16:40:58 | Madeline Moy | The Dallas Morning News | yes | http://www.dallasnews.com/rss/ | 211 | no | | | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, AddThis.com | yes | The home page is very cluttered (as well as all supporting pages). There's a lot going on. My eye doesn't know where to settle. It's hard to find stuff. I would be more likely to use the horizontal navigation than scroll down.
It's weird that blogs aren't included in the main navigation because the paper has a lot of them.
The site isn't branded very strongly. It's not obvious that this is the Dallas Morning News site. This could be any news site. | The site actually has a lot of video, but you wouldn't really know that looking at the home page. Photos/Video are lumped together in the main navigation. And the photos/video box in the right column is confusing. It's not clear that the videos are featured should be played. There should be something that says "Play video" or at least a play triangle like they have on YouTube videos.
Once you do get to the videos, they download very quickly and are high quality.
Each section on the home page should have a videos link. | | | | . | 3/11/2009 10:26:38 | John Hannay | The Denver Post | yes | http://www.denverpost.com/webfeeds#entertainment | 428 | yes | http://blogs.denverpost.com/ | 125 | yes | On the blog page; under "Other Colorodo Bloggers" | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Most Recommended | yes | The first thing I notice is no margins which requires work on the readers part to scan left to right to absorb all the home page has to offer. The plus side of this is that the information is broken up into even thirds for easy visual content organization. I like the weather information posted in the top title row of the home page, it provides reliable access and value for the reader and draws them to the web site – locals know where they can get the weather and the news. The home page contains a very plain and simple main menu bar with unique ‘change-of-color-and-sub-category’ navigation, a statement that sophistication and valuable content doesn’t have to be complicated. The web site is designed with lots of white space that helps the reader find the content they are looking for. However, there is a big blank space in the top right third of the home page that I’m not sure is dedicated to article comments or just a gaping empty space. The home page provides all the necessary information a reader is looking for, so the empty space isn’t a significant deterrent. Overall, the web site has an efficient design; the main news is contained in the middle third of the home page, and photos and video along the left third. | The Denver Post offers accessible multi-media via main navigation and on the home page. The blogs are organized with a user-friendly fixed vertical left navigation. The rss access is conveniently located after each news section, as well as a full list on the web feeds page for cross-reference. While the photo galleries are easily accessible from the home page, they seem to be too far off to the left, and the pictures open in a pop-up window, which clutters the viewer’s task bar. Overall, I think it’s a competitive web site for regular multi-media users. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 14:15:47 | Mark Gibson | The Denver Post | yes | http://www.denverpost.com/webfeeds | 449 | yes | http://blogs.denverpost.com/ | 118 | yes | Listed under heading "Local Bloggers" | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most searched stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, MySpace | yes | Wow! This website is extremely easy to use. The articles are easy to read and areb laid out in columns where they can easily be scanned without much scrolling. The top line allows the user to easily narrow their search for different topics. Excellent user-friendly design. | The website offers easy navigation, mouse-over highlighting, and offers most options (RSS feeds, Blogs, Podcast, etc...) on the top line. This site was definately designed with the end-user in mind. | | | | . | 2/20/2009 14:52:27 | Mandy Weber | The Indianapolis Star | yes | http://www.indystar.com/rss | 98 | yes | http://www.indystar.com/columnists | 36 | yes | On the same page as the others | yes | yes | no | Digg, Most commented stories, E-mail this story | yes | I really like the website design. The news stories stand out with bold headlines, popular stories are in tabs, and I really like the way the categories are separated, and enhanced with photos or video. I also like that I didn't notice any advertisements standing out. The ones present really blend in to the rest of the site so as not to distract the reader. | Multimedia use on this site is well done. Videos and photos go along with most every story category and featured as part of the story, rather than something pushed off to the side (or bottom of the page like the Sacramento Bee's multimedia). | | | | . | 3/11/2009 14:16:30 | Glenn Crotts | The Moderate Voice | no | | | yes | Blogs are all individual links on home page, I had to use ctrl-f then click "next" 96 times. VERY tedious! | 96 | yes | Some of the blogs were from Wordpress an blogger.com | no | no | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail this story, Over 40 ways to share stories | yes | This is a very different type of website from the others I looked at. This site is all about varying opinions on politics and political stories. This would not be a website to use for national daily news unless you are only looking for political stories. The website is almost impossible to navigate in any logical fashion and I had to use the ctrl-f command to search for anything I wanted on the absurdly long and confusing home page. I would not recommend this website unless you only want to read varying political opinions and be linked to many different websites.
| In short, virtually non-existent. The only real multimedia available is embedded in the various websites and blogs you can link to. The site itself has no photos, videos, or RSS feeds. There are tons of random blogs one can link to if you are only searching for those. This is by far the worst site for multimedia I have seen. | | | | . | 3/1/2009 19:17:13 | Rylan Leese | The ModerateVoice | no | | | no | | | yes | They are listed along the left side of the site. | yes | no | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail this story, ask, backflip, ballhype, bebo, blinklist, blogmarks, delicious, diigo, facebook, fark, faves, favorites, feedmelinks, friendfeed, furl, google bookmarkds, kaboode, link-a-gogo, linkedin, live, mister wong, mixx, mulitply, myaol, myspace, netvouz, propeller, reddit, segnalo, simpy, slashdot, spurl, stumbleupon, tailrank, technorati, yahoo, yardbarker, | yes | The website is too long. The page runs for many many scrolls and looks like an unmanaged blog. The content links on the left are so numerous that you may never get through all of them in a moderate lifetime. The relative lack of ads is refreshing though. | The inclusion of only article specific video and pictures is actually my preference. Instead of looking through that type of content in isolation it actually has to pertain to the article itself. In a way it will only be there if it is an enhancement. | | | | . | 2/12/2009 11:01:30 | Chad Larson | The Oklahoman | yes | http://newsok.com/rss/home | 1 | no | | | no | | yes | yes | no | Twitter, Buzz Up | yes | Navigation is easy. I appreciate how the sections of the paper are clearly represented on the home page. The huge banner ad at the top of the home page degrades the site-- I prefer when these ads are placed to the left and right of the publication title, so in effect, no ad trumps the news organization itself. | I like that the multimedia is not too intrusive on the home page. However, the multimedia player loaded slowly, and the :15 sponsor message inserted before news clips is a deal breaker. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 15:51:27 | Shane Suzuki | The Oklahoman | yes | http://newsok.com/rss/home | 1 | yes | http://newsok.com/blogs | 53 | no | | yes | yes | no | Most read stories, Yahoo Buzz, Related Stories, Related topics | yes | first impression was nice, that it looked like a nice website with lots of images and links. The colors were vivid, but not blindingly bright, which was nice. Although a long page that took time to scroll, the layout was more horizontal in nature which is nice for us laptop users. | these guys have it all, except for podcasts. Video, links with local to stations, photo galleries. I was surprised though they don’t have many linking or sharing options, even a basic email this story link would be nice. | | | | . | 2/24/2009 16:58:38 | JR Lorca | The Philadelphia Inquirer | yes | http://www.philly.com/philly_news.rss | 50 | yes | http://www.philly.com/inquirer/blogs_columns/ | 24 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story | yes | The website design was actually decent. It was clean not as cluttered as some sites. I liked that most of the ads were on the very right of the site and not anywhere else. I also like the three column design, I was able to look for more info by scanning quickly. | As with any websites these days, it had multimedia use. The use of multimedia use is adequate, although it did not have podcasting, which might not matter to the users in Philly. | | | | . | 2/19/2009 10:59:14 | michael Le | The Philadelphia Inquirer | yes | http://www.philly.com/philly/about/rss_index/ | 203 | yes | http://www.philly.com/inquirer/blogs_columns/ | 86 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Facebook, Most searched stories, Most read stories, yahoo, google | yes | I thought the website design was typical for a major city news website. It was a linear web design which allowed me to scroll down from the top which consisted of the categories as well as when I scrolled down towards the bottom with other follow up stories. The colors selected were again soft and typical colors, dark blue for headlines, black for texts, and red for "updates." Overall I thought it was a simple well rounded design. | I found multimedia use to be quite simple. The layout on the films were a little difficult to understand, but if I singled out my search to a specific category like local news or sports, it would be much easier to find a video to my preference. | | | | . | 2/20/2009 14:29:28 | Mandy Weber | The Sacramento Bee | yes | http://www.sacbee.com/rss/ | 295 | yes | http://www.sacbee.com/blogs/#news | 17 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story | yes | This website is just what you would expect from a newspaper website. The advertisements aren't as in-your-face as a few of the other sites I've visited which utilize the roll-over and expand kind of advertising. I hate those. The columns are well organized, but the multimedia box seems to be separate from the rest of the page with its location all the way at the bottom.
| The site does use multimedia. It features photos for most of the headline stories, but compared to other sites, this one uses less video. There is a box at the bottom of the page dedicated to video, photos, interactive graphics, databases, puzzles and games, but I think they should include video in the top half of the site as well. It's as if they're assuming only a small portion of the readers would be interested in video, so they put the video links all the way at the bottom. | | | | . | 2/20/2009 16:58:50 | Madeline Moy | The Seattle Times | no | | | yes | http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/blogsdiscussions/?from=stnql | 19 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Most commented stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story | yes | Design is pretty good. It's easy to navigate and find things. The thing that catches my eye the most on the home page is a big ad in the right column. I understand the need for that, but shouldn't a news story catch my eye first? But to be fair, the home page isn't overally cluttered with ads. | Video is a quick link in the main navigation. You have to scroll down quite a bit to find the video box in the right column. I think it's weird that the photo box is above video. There are local videos and then an AP video feed. The Seattle Times videos are amateurish in quality. They aren't news videos. They don't tell a story. They seem like random YouTube videos, except I think YouTube videos are better!
The AP video feed is much, much better.
And where are the podcasts?
I am shocked that the Times doesn't have better video and multimedia in general. Seattle is such a techy town. The newspaper should reflect this. The Seattle P-I is miles ahead of the Times in this respect. Too bad the P-I is going to fold. | | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | . | 3/1/2009 16:04:17 | Jamie Corning | The Star-Ledger | yes | http://www.nj.com/rss/ | 79 | yes | http://www.nj.com/blogs/ | 55 | yes | Top menu (Interact -> Blogs) - under the title of each blog, they distinguish between blogs run by staff and by members of the community. | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story, Del.icio.us, Google, Reddit, Buzz up! | yes | The navigation is designed fairly well with a ncie two-level nav bar at the top, reserving the bulk of the page for content. Sections do seem to be a little scattered on the page itself, and it can be a little hard to find exactly what you're looking for. Design-wise, a white background with blue links and grey headers with light shading is visually appealing and not difficult to see.
| Mutimedia is fairly slim pickings. There's a handful of pictures and a video applet on the front page, but the site is otherwise very text-heavy. Most articles seem to have only one picture. The photo gallery is actually hidden in a tab behind the video on the home page, making it fairly hard to find. It seems clear that media use was an afterthought in designing this site.
| | | | . | 2/26/2009 19:08:19 | Megan Kircher | The Star-Ledger | yes | http://www.nj.com/rss/ | 79 | no | | | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, Reddit, Del.icio.us, google, yahoo, buzz up | yes | It is very text heavy, with few pictures. You have to have an idea of what you are looking for on the website or else you are required to skim through all of the text in order to find what you are looking for. The information is not easily separated in a way that is easy for the eye to navigate. | I feel that it does a good job integrating multimedia into the website, but personally I would not spend my time trying to figure out how to navigate it in order to use the features or comment to the posts. It lets you search for classifieds and local business which is a great feature to have, but it is all so closely pushed together that it makes me forget what I am looking for in the first place. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 16:27:14 | Bilkay Taner | The Sun | yes | http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/hygiene/rss_sign_up/article247949.ece | 70 | yes | http://www.thesun.co.uk/portal/site/mysun/ | 8+ | yes | Link that asked reader opinion | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | The website design looks more like a gossip magazine then a news website. The most confusing part of the website is that they do have real news mixed with celebrity gossip news. | The multimedia is very visual with many pictures and artistic graphics throughout the entire website. | | | | . | 3/11/2009 18:20:27 | Megan | The Sun | no | | | no | | | no | | no | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, myspace, fark, nowpublic, reddit, del.icio.us | yes | The design of this website was WAY too busy! I feel like I am reading a tabloid when I first brought up the site. There are moving pictures on the home page, and the text is half red on white.The organization of the site is very "long", on the left hand side of the page and is broken up into all of the section, making the searcher look through all of the columns to find what they are looking for. | I feel like overall their multimedia use is very poor. While there are many pictures and video links, it is too busy to make me want to use any of it. I am overwhelmed when I am on the home page by the multimedia that they do have available. I found the site overall to be very poor. | | | | . | 3/10/2009 21:31:14 | John Hannay | The Tampa Tribune | yes | http://www.tbo.com/tools/rss/ | 87 | no | | | yes | by clicking on the "COMMUNITY" link on main navigation | no | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Most Printed | yes | This web site gives off a bright and easy feel. The multi-colored palm tree logo with grass green and ocean blue colored main menu bar with reversed bold white lettering gives the website a bright Spring signature feel to it. I love lots of white space and generous clean margins down each side with a soft grey is pleasing to the eye, allows the viewer to assess how to discover the features of the web site relatively easily. This news site dedicates to much of its home page to large graphic ads, especially the moving adds across the top. Furthermore, there is too much white space along the top, the absence of which would give the web site better sophistication and therefore visual credibility as a major newspaper. Removing this white space along the top, however, unfortunately doesn’t give the user much more access without scrolling; the pictures of the columnists and their articles running horizontally across the bottom of a 1280 by 960 pixel resolution screen (the minimum viewable without scrolling), are almost viewable if there wasn’t any white space at the top. If there were a line or two of white space surrounding the large Tampa Tribune text reduced, this would make the columnists visible at this resolution. | The Tampa Tribune seems to have all multi-media available, however the usability is something to be desired. The web site does not feature video or podcasting on the home page, nor blogging in the main navigation. The site offers a blog and rss link in the directory list at the bottom, and this doesn’t provide the user the best access to this multi-media experience. The picture gallery on the home page contains two photos, and it doesn’t seem very useful to have the pictures auto change with only two of them! The organization of the blogs and rss feeds on their respective pages, seem easy to use. The rss feed categories on the rss page are however, confusing, with a list of blog sub-categories. | | | | . | 2/24/2009 21:12:26 | Mark Gibson | The Tampa Tribune | yes | http://www.tbo.com/tools/rss/ | 87 | yes | http://tbo.com/weblogs/index.shtml | 52 | no | | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | I thought this website lacked user friendly design. It seemed like not alot of effort was put it but rather it was just designed to have a online presence for the newspaper. | Multimedia use was limited and featured just the basic things. This one needs some work to compete with some of the others I've seen. | | | | . | 2/24/2009 16:46:31 | Michael Le | The Uptake | yes | http://theuptake.org/rss/summary/ | n/a | no | | | yes | through the advertisements on the site | yes | yes | no | Does not do any of these | no | Upon opening the web site right away there is a live video and a live blog being implemented. I found it surprising, but also not very convenient. I did not enjoy the website design at all, but it may be because I am not a member, there is a member log in page that might be important with the overall design and commenting on the web site. Either way, this was one of my least favorite sites. | There are only three photo albums on this site, but each story that The Uptake.org has, also incorporates a video story as well. I found that to be useful and very nice since I enjoy video news. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 18:35:53 | Ashika chand | The uptake.com | yes | http://theuptake.com/rss/summary/ | 10 | yes | http://theuptake.org/en/index/blog/ | 10 | yes | homepage | yes | no | no | Does not do any of these | yes | This is a site that I have NEVER heard of before. Their motto is, Will journalism by you or to you? Deep. I guess this is citizen journalism at its best! Their homepage is filled with giant flash media. As I am clicking through the site I realized that every single story has a short description of what it is about and then it has a some sort of media attached to it either video or photos. The page layouts are actually very simple and uncomplicated. The top of the page has tabs that link to News Groups, Future News, Stories, Photos, Lists, Discussions and Blog. The site feels fairly new but it has a lot of content. Some of it seems sort of obscure. Uptake seems to have web pages started for varies different states but not every state is accounted for as of yet. I don’t know what it is but I’m not impressed by this site and a little put off by it. It’s just not attention grabbing. | The whole website is multimedia video. that is how they give their news. I don't like it. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 18:18:59 | Ashika chand | The Wall Street Journal | yes | http://commerce.wsj.com/auth/login?mg=reno-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Fpage%2F0_0813.html | must log in | yes | http://online.wsj.com/public/page/8_0019.html | A LOT! | yes | going to blogs | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, E-mail this story | yes | Their page is busier with information. The top of the page actually has two lines of links that go to varies places on the website such as Obama’s 100 days, Executive pay and Personal finance. Obviously the Wall Street Journal is directed more towards money so their information base on just that, money. The top of the page has the latest headline, recent articles and the Market Data Center where people can track stocks. The middle of the page has some more current articles, Fashion Week news, Arts and Entertainment and video links. The page goes on even further to include news boxes for U.S., World, Business and Tech. There seems to be a mini window with links for a a whole bunch more categories. The page is set against a black background which makes it a little more dramatic looking. | they have their video page categorized with tabs for each section of their site such as new business and management. They have a graphics tab is leads to their picture section. hard to find and doesn't have a solid multimedia area. | | | | . | 2/21/2009 16:04:25 | Tressa Reed | The Wall Street Journal | yes | http://online.wsj.com/public/page/rss_news_and_feeds.html?mod=djmr_rsspodcast | 75+ | yes | http://online.wsj.com/public/page/8_0019.html | 24 | yes | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most blogged stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories | yes | very well organized and easy to find what your are looking for. | there were several options to choose from on the homepage as well as other links | | | | . | 2/13/2009 21:27:00 | Mandy Weber | USA Today | yes | http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/usatoday-NewsTopStories | 7 | yes | http://www.usatoday.com/blog-index.htm | 21 | no | | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story | yes | USA Today's website design is very organized and clear-cut. The different story categories and multimedia is separated so that readers know exactly what they'll be getting when they click on a link. I really like that advertisements are not "in your face", as they blend in to the rest of the site, and aren't so big as to be annoying or in the way. | USA Today online features lots of multimedia, enough to keep a person occupied for hours. The site utilizes as much multimedia as one would expect from a popular news source. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 12:53:52 | Chadrose de Guzman | Village Voice | yes | http://www.villagevoice.com/syndication/issue | 35+ | yes | http://blogs.villagevoice.com/ | 8 | yes | I can't find where they would be. | no | no | no | Most commented stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story | yes | This site is pretty simple in layout. I do like that the page is not distracting. Without the bright colors an it seems easy to navigate through. User friendly page, but it could also add a few features to its page to make a little more enticing. | This site needs more multimedia use. They did not have a photo gallery, video stream, and no pod casting. This the wave currently and if they want to continue to be a popular site they need to keep up with the times. People are more technologically savvy, websites like these might lose some of the youth who look for these features. They do a good job on allowing the readers to comment on the articles. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 21:22:35 | Rylan Leese | Village Voice | yes | http://www.villagevoice.com/syndication/issue | N/A | yes | http://blogs.villagevoice.com/ | 1 | yes | They are clearly listed on the front page | no | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Reddit, Stumble Upon, Buzzit, Fark | yes | Why do online sites have to feel like I'm reading a mash up of Shakespeare and the yellow pages? The text of the article I am trying to read is smashed between ads that blend so well into the background that I forget what part I actually wanted to read. Good for them I suppose. The truth is, this is a below average site, but not that bad in comparison to its competition. Same story as the rest, too many obnoxious ads. Too many subtle ads. No way to discern important content from unimportant content.
The RSS feed link was in 6 point type face at the extreme bottom of the main page and linked to a jumble of HTML text and interlaced text content. There were other feeds eluded to throughout the pages but on a one to one ratio, and only in the individual sections. Those links led to an error with feed burner.
| The picture galleries were easy to navigate, and plentiful. Each gallery had a slideshow feature that made navigation easier. A speed control would have been nice though. There weren't any obvious video feeds or podcasts. The site worked technically just as it should. | | | | . | 2/16/2009 21:32:50 | Corey Christiansen | Washington Post | yes | http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/rss/index.html?hpid=distribution | 150 | yes | http://blog.washingtonpost.com/ | 90 | no | N/A | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Yahoo! Buzz | yes | The blue link bar looks like it was pieced together.
There are large advertisements allover the page. Even some of the pop up menus have advertisements
Interestingly enough, I believe they use word press for the backbones of the system.
| At the bottom of many of the articles they have a box called 'understand more about'. Five different topic categories are listed. When clicked on they show a web of related articles and other related topics on WashingtonPost.com and on the web. | | | | . | 2/22/2009 20:59:54 | Rob Lynch | Washington Post | yes | http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/rss/index.html?hpid=distribution | More than 150 | yes | http://blog.washingtonpost.com/ | 89 | no | | yes | yes | yes | E-mail this story | yes | This website reminds me of three years ago. Still has a login screen, has an e-mail this article feature but little in the way of blogging. The front page is crowded and is at least 4 scrolls down worth. | Use of multimedia is less than the other two sites I reviewed but is still considerable, videos, photos and audio are used, though seem less integrated into the site. | | | | . | 2/25/2009 15:49:20 | Chadrose de Guzman | Westseattleblog.com | yes | http://westseattleblog.com/blog/?page_id=13962 | | yes | http://westseattleblog.com/blog/?page_id=13962 | 30+ | no | | no | no | no | Facebook, MySpace, Typepad, Wordpress, Live Journal, Blogger | yes | It is very simple, and no advertisements unless you want to click on it. | The West Seattle Blog needs more multimedia use. There are so many ways that people learn and seeing things is one of them when using video, podcast and photo galleries. | | | | . | 2/20/2009 10:43:02 | Quoc Phan | WestSeattleblog.com | yes | http://westseattleblog.com/blog/?page_id=13962 | 8 | yes | http://westseattleblog.com/blog/?page_id=432 | 20+ | yes | In the blog section | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook | yes | Very simple design. Nothing over the top and dramatic. Very simple based website that looked like a blog | Some media use but not to much to find. | | | | . | 5/10/2009 18:45:17 | Robert Hadley | New York Post | yes | http://www.nypost.com/rss/ | 53 | yes | http://blogs.nypost.com/ | 10 | no | N/A | yes | no | no | Digg, Facebook, Most commented stories, Most read stories, E-mail this story, Most emailed stories, Fark It, Reddit, Link, Print | yes | Yikes! Busy Busy Busy! The NY Post website looks like the digital version of a super market stand tabloid. And with good reason: it is supposed to. Lots of flashy and bold headlines with accompanying images and advanced (Flash-based?) page design (which though, well done, almost made my Safari 3.0 browser crash) make you want to click here; there; everywhere and see who's killing who while sleeping with somebody else! This website would not likely be very accessible to elderly, very young, or visually disabled viewers because there is just too much going on. Bold, red, black, and white headings, coupled with flashy and ever-changing pictures and equally sized ads could confuse someone or just as easily make someone give up on trying to navigate the site.
| I was a little disappointed that the NY Post website, for being more of a society broadsheet, did not take advantage of design elements seen in more serious newspapers--or even other gossip sites--such as photo galleries or podcasts available from the home page--though there are links to such content.
One nice touch was the ability to access the hard copy's covers as a PDF from the home page, though having the full paper accessible in such a format would have been even better.
The video section on the home page is buried in a side bar half way down the page which made it hard enough to find that on my first glance, I actually selected that video was not available directly on the home page. And because it blends in so easily with all of the other busy content and advertising boxes that are grabbing for your attention, even for someone looking specifically for it; it proved easy to miss. | | | | . | 5/10/2009 19:11:45 | Robert Hadley | Charlotte Observer | yes | http://www.charlotteobserver.com/rss/ | 50 | yes | http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/blogs_columnists/ | 13 | no | N/A | yes | yes | no | Digg, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story, del.icio.us, Magnolia, Stumble Upon, Print | yes | Comparatively frill-free to some of the newspaper websites I have reviewed so far, the Charlotte Observer website is elegant, simple, and manages to quite efficiently do what it was made to do: deliver the news.
The general website scheme employs easy-to-read blue and black sans serif fonts on a white background with four clearly delineated columns. Like a traditional paper, the headline story is larger and bolded and coupled with a large photo which links through to the article.
Extras such as photos and videos are available via a media bar that divides the page horizontally from the main articles of the day to the paper's various section links below.
While featuring some amount of online advertising content, nothing popped up or blocked my ability to read the news before clicking 'close' in the five articles I browsed through. The current temperature and weather, along with a link to an extended forecast in the upper right-hand corner of the home page was a nice touch.
Last update time stamps on the home page and alongside feature articles was also helpful, as one thing many viewers of online content are seeking is up-to-the-minute information. That's part of the appeal of the Internet as a medium, versus just reading the paper on the newsstand or watching the nightly news on TV.
| Multimedia use is in line with that of other major newspaper websites and neither dominates, nor is employed too sparsely on the Charlotte Observer's home page and individual articles. Linked articles, particularly if they are major stories, often feature a linked photo gallery with an embedded thumbnail in the article itself, or even a video news story to accompany the print article.
Podcasts and blogging are one area in which the Observer seems to lag behind competitors as many other markets offer their readers the ability to create citizen blogs or upload podcasts, a feature which is sorely absent.
Additionally, and this is just as a personal comment, many of the blogs which appear on the blog home page are authored by a similar demographic--just looking at the bloggers' head shots, the amount of grey hair in the photos tells the whole story--and this sort of seems counterintuitive to the audience that typically reads and writes blogs. Get some fresh blood on your blogosphere, Charlotte! Otherwise, open it up to the general citizenry. (In contrast, the NY Post has a section blog on video games; I somehow don't see any of the people featured on the Observer's websites writing about video games, much less playing them.) | | | | . | 5/10/2009 19:41:45 | Robert Hadley | Newsvine | yes | http://www.newsvine.com/_feeds/rss2/cs?id=38&f=u&d=v&n=6&s=s&c=a | 25 | no | N/A | N/A | no | N/A | no | yes | no | Does not do any of these | yes | Newsvine is different from newspaper websites in that it has no local section or no affiliation with a particular media market to cater to. Additionally, as an aggregator, it does not produce news content of its own. The general lay out therefore chooses its headline via an algorithm which counts the popularity of the articles which are voted up the "vine" from various other websites.
Like many other news websites, Newsvine has a headline story with an accompanying photo and four general columns, one of which serves to explain what Newsvine is and how to use it. In addition, the fourth column on the right is a live side bar which pops in stories which have been voted along the "vine" by users of the Newsvine service.
There is not excessive advertising or overbearing graphical elements which make the site difficult to view, however, the sheer number of articles Newsvine links to, makes it difficult for me as a first-time visitor, really to know where to begin.
The website's nature has one flaw, which may or may not be addressable by the site's developers; namely, that through a concerted effort, the site could be manipulated by a dedicated mass base of users to promote content of a certain ideological perspective. That is to say, the neutrality of Newsvine could at least theoretically, be manipulated by the efforts of its regular users. Otherwise, Newsvine's design and lay out are very functional and make pulling news together from a variety of sources an easy and quick task. | Newsvine features a photo gallery from its home page in a media box called, "The News in Pictures" which is similar to photo galleries found on many newspaper websites. Aside from this, as an aggregator, Newsvine does not really feature video or other multimedia content, because these elements belong to the articles that Newsvine provides links to.
In summary, there is little in the way of multimedia on Newsvine, but there really isn't a practical purpose for such content being there in the first place. | | | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | . | 5/10/2009 20:12:23 | Robert Hadley | CNN | yes | http://www.cnn.com/services/rss/?iref=rsssvcs | 19 | yes | N/A There is a drop down menu | 28 | no | N/A | yes | no | yes | Digg, Facebook, E-mail this story, reddit, stumble upon, my space, mixx it, yahoo buzz, del.icio.us, | no | CNN.com is easy to read, simple, and everything you would expect from the people that invented cable news. There is one column with a headline story and photo with link-through to article; there is an accompanying column with latest news stories and last updated time stamps, and a third column featuring the often annoying extras, such as advertisements and extraneous elements that may not be of interest to all viewers (such as video, the financial markets, polls, etc.).
The website is consistent with CNN's branding and visual style which one sees when one watches its television station, and links between cross-medium content are easily apparent.
CNN keeps a tight control on the quality of its web presence and this may play a role in explaining why CNN.com does not allow user commentary on its stories. Personally, I think that for an international news outlet such as CNN, this is a better way to go--though the BBC offers a competing model which does allow user commentary with great success.
CNN.com is clean and uncluttered, easy to navigate, loads quickly, and has a wide variety of content to cover various interests. In my opinion, this news site is flawless. | Lighter on the multimedia use than some news sites, but with the ability to tailor your use of multimedia to the degree that you like. Clicking video on the CNN home page in the upper right hand corner will take web multimedia afficionados to CNN Video, a news portal that is completely based around video, live video, podcasts, and CNN Radio. The price of all this Web 2.0 glory? Ads, ads, and more ads. Every video has an ad that precedes it, and for me the price of watching a 15 to 30 second advertisement for a video clip that is only a minute long, is hardly worth the reward.
If multimedia is your thing though, CNN Video has more content than even the most avid YouTube addict could probably stand to sit through. | | | | . | 5/10/2009 21:08:07 | Robert Hadley | Seattle Times | yes | http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/flatpages/services/rss.html | 75 | yes | http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/blogsdiscussions/?from=stnql | 29 | no | N/A | yes | yes | no | Digg, Newsvine, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story, Print | yes | The aside from the masthead of the website, which features the gothic logo of the Seattle Times' print edition, the entire Seattle Times website features a unified, simple, and easy to navigate page design. One area of major opportunity for the Seattle Times website however, is to stick with one headline story, rather than attempting to crowd three or four headlines with leeds underneath. This has the undesired effect of cluttering the home page, and could be addressed by placing the additional stories all uniformly underneath the main headline, rather than grouping them around the headline in the current lay out.
Individual article pages are not overly busy, though the occasional pop-up ad will require the user to click through, prior to allowing the user to read the story and this is always annoying. Individual article pages feature a latest headlines, most read/most commented, and related stories column next to the article, which makes it easier for users to navigate to and from relevant stories of interest, or simply to move on when done reading--as opposed to having to go back to the home page or section page in order to find other articles of interest.
Overall, the Seattle Times gets it right, though the website lacks any graphical design qualities that make it particularly memorable or visually engaging. For some, this might be seen as an advantage. | Multimedia use on this website is in line with that of other mid-market newspaper websites, featuring a video and photo side bar element towards the bottom half of the home page. One major complaint with the Seattle Times' use of multimedia is the often perilous attempt to enlarge images via the + enlarge button available on all photos which accompany articles. Most of the time, any attempt to enlarge the image results in an enlargement which is only marginally larger (10-20%) or even worse, results in an image of the same size being displayed. This is annoying and makes this user wonder, why even bother including images, or paying the fee to use Getty/AP images if they are so tiny that the user can't see what is going on.
Video is provided through a third party video player which is utilized on many newspaper websites and is nothing spectacular, however the content is usually of interesting stories that are better suited to the medium than a print article would be; so this is a nice touch. | | | | . | 5/10/2009 21:35:46 | Robert Hadley | Dallas Morning News | yes | http://www.dallasnews.com/rss/ | 195 | yes | http://www.dallasnews.com/blogs/ | 40 | no | N/A | yes | yes | no | Digg, Twitter, Facebook, Most commented stories, E-mail this story, Yahoo Buzz, RSS, Print | yes | The Dallas Morning News website is very modular and features a lot of small subheadings with even smaller headlines underneath. Though fairly easy to navigate, the amount of information in smaller print might prove to be distracting or inaccessible for younger or older users. Not too unlike Newsvine or other aggregators, the DMN does prominently feature comment and recommend buttons on all of its stories, even from the home page, though its not clear if these buttons function to move the stories to or from the home page based on popularity.
The RSS page on the DMN website went from being thorough (195 feeds) to plain obnoxious with the discovery that one of these feeds is labeled "Halloween", as if we need a feed for stories about Halloween for any month other than October.
Unlike many newspaper websites which relegate video to the lower half of the home page, or do not feature video at all, the DMN does have a video side bar element at the upper right-hand side of the home page.
Perhaps it is just the lay out, or perhaps it is just the reality, but either way the DMN website feels as though there is too much pixel space devoted to advertisement. With ads in the masthead and on the first column viewers see (left), and then another squarish ad block just under the page break, this site can feel like an eyesore, in spite of its otherwise good design. | Nice that the headline story features links to a graphical map, photos, video, and a blog for additional coverage of the same story. Otherwise, the DMN is standard newspaper website fare, with a photos of the day element and a small video section, which is at least not relegated to the gutter of the page. Podcasts and user blogs are missing, but this is a common theme among newspaper websites. As one of the nation's largest media markets, I might have expected an overall stronger investment in quality multimedia/interactive elements in the DMN' website, but the amount of advertisements on the home page show the bottom line philosophy that this website's owners had in mind when designing the site.
As a comparison, the DMN' regional competitor, the Houston Chronicle, features citizen blogs on its home page and has only one ad above the masthead before the page break. | | | | . | 5/10/2009 21:58:14 | Robert Hadley | USA Today | yes | feed://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/usatoday-NewsTopStories | 15 | yes | http://www.usatoday.com/blog-index.htm | 21 | no | N/A | yes | yes | yes | Digg, Newsvine, Facebook, E-mail this story, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz, Mixx It, Print | yes | Like the CNN website, but perhaps even better. The USA Today website is uncluttered, easy to read, and doesn't make the mistake which news websites almost universally do: overload you with links and stories and information.
The USA Today website has two columns: one which features the headline story and and accompanying image and subtitle; and a second which has a manageable six other headlines, with no leeds underneath. Compare that to the 19 bullets alongside the headline story on CNN.com at the time of this review.
Underneath the headline the site sticks with two major columns, dedicated to various sections and subheadings with the continued motif of less is more. Photos, while available, do not dominate the page and the same holds true for advertisements.
Individual stories are similarly clutter-free with black sans serif text on a white page and usually an image.
The website features a comments and recommend button which allows even non-registered users to recommend a story.
Simple, elegant, easy. This website was not on my list of daily news sources, but it is now. | The USA Today website does not make excessive use of multimedia but certainly has it available for those who want it. One negative is that even viewing photo galleries, which are larger and better designed than on most news sites, will cost you to sit through a 15 second video advertisement. For those who Twitter, USA Today does prominently feature its Twitter address on its home page. The technology USA Today uses for its photo and video media looks proprietary and is designed with enough care that it matches the smooth and easy flow that is characteristic of the rest of the site's graphical style. | | | |
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