www.roanoke.com

USA Today's beta site

It’s always exciting to see how another newspaper handles a redesign.

In this case, it’s USA Today, which launched its redesigned beta website and newspaper (follow this link for a front page look courtesy of the Newseum) last week.

For those of you familiar with iPad’s Flipboard, you’ll notice some similarities in the way USA Today’s beta site presents entries into other sections. It’s also a very visually driven site, and note the bar at the bottom of the page, with icons directing you how to “get the paper” or leave feedback.

Overall, the beta site feels very tablet/small-screen-focused.

What do you think of the redesign? What aspects do you like or dislike? And what do you think of the redesigned newspaper?

This post is from Managing Editor Michael Stowe.

A few years ago I wrote a column noting how the front page story selection of our printed newspaper has evolved in the past 15 years.

For years, the front page was dominated by the top national and international news. That’s reversed today, with news from the Roanoke and New River valleys featured prominently every day.

Why? You can get national news from dozens of sources — but  our newsroom uncovers and tells the stories of Western Virginia better than anyone else.

We used the same philosophy when we launched roanoke.com in 1997 with the goal of making it the destination Web site for news and information about the Roanoke region. The Gateway page of the site is designed to showcase content produced by our staff, content you can’t find anywhere else online.

You might be underwhelmed if you come to roanoke.com hunting for the latest national and world headline. It’s there — look for the link in the left corner of the gateway — but it’s hardly prominent and, if you click on it, you get a text-heavy listing of stories.

We receive calls from readers looking for a non-local story that published in the paper but not on roanoke.com. Currently we don’t archive stories from the Associated Press on our site. But that could change with the redesign.

Do you think it should?

We have an opportunity to rethink how we package and display news from the Associated Press. It will never be the focal point of the site but that doesn’t mean it can’t be better than now.  Your feedback to these questions will help us moving forward:

Do you look at roanoke.com for national and international news?

Are there specific topics of content — politics, education … — that you would like to see more prominently displayed on roanoke.com?

Do you have suggestions of other local/regional news Web sites that better integrate national and international stories on their sites?

If not roanoke.com, where do you go online for national news? Why do you like that site?

What other comments do you have in regards to our national and international coverage on roanoke.com?

Last month, we had a lively discussion over our commenting system (original post and follow-up post), with readers making lots of suggestions and providing examples.

Now we’d like to revisit that topic, but focus more on what the rules should be for commenters. We’re taking a look at other websites that introduce their comments sections with some rules (and oftentimes a link to terms of use). The Roanoke Times currently has a “Submission Rules” section on its “Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions” page.

A great example can be found on the website of The Virginian-Pilot, a our sister newspaper in Norfolk, which we’ve talked about in earlier posts.

“COMMENTS ADVISORY: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here; comments do not reflect the views of The Virginian-Pilot or its websites. Users must follow agreed-upon rules: Be civil, be clean, be on topic; don’t attack private individuals, other users or classes of people. Read the full rules here.
- Comments are automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules, click the report violation link below it.”

We found another succinct advisory from TUAW (or The Unofficial Apple Weblog):

“Be nice, stay relevant and don’t say anything you wouldn’t say to someone in person.”

So our question today is: If you could make the rules for commenting on our website, name your top three …

Thanks for all the feedback this week. We’ve had several suggestions of different mobile news sites and apps you enjoy, including New York Times, Politico, Huffington Post, Slate, Twitter and News Republic. These are favored for their clean layout and ease of navigation. Continue letting us know which sites you use for news on the go.

Thanks for continuing to give your input on commenting.  After citing the Virginian-Pilot’s commenting system as an example on Monday, you shared what you liked   – and disliked  –  about it. Commenters seemed to agree that a “hide” function would be useful on a comment thread, to silence “trolls,” as one person said. But consensus was split on the usefulness of a thumbs up/thumbs down feature.

To learn more about PilotOnline.com‘s commenting system, we talked  to Mark Edelen, director of online production at  PilotOnline.com, to get a better sense on how that site’s registration system works. Here are some interesting notes from the conversation:

- PilotOnline.com commenters must register with a user name and an email address, which is used to confirm the registration. Once registered, the user goes through a “probationary” period where his comments must be approved by an online producer before being posted. When the user has met a certain number of approved comments, his comments are then automatically posted afterward.

- If a user “misbehaves” by posting inappropriate comments, he then gets switched back to permanent moderation, meaning producers must approve his comments before they’re posted.

- Commenting is allowed on all blogs and columns. It is turned on for news stories at the judgment call of the producers. Most routine crime briefs, for instance, do not allow comments. And some sensitive stories might only allow moderated comments.

- The registration system for the opinion section is a little different because the department wants its commenters to be verified. To comment on the opinion pages, you must register and post with your real name. A verfieid ID, such as a credit card, is also required for registration.

- The Pittsburg Post-Gazette (postgazette.com) is trying out commenting via Facebook. If you’d like to see how it works, check out the site, click on a story and scroll down.

We are reading your comments, sharing them with different teams working on the redesign, and implementing some changes immediately based on what we’re hearing (like adding the full site option to our mobile site).

Coming next week:  Managing Editor Michael Stowe talks about breaking news — how we cover it and how it’s displayed on roanoke.com. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Our discussion last week on commenting yielded lots of suggestions from readers.

As an example, commenter Other John pointed us to the system that our sister paper, The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, uses: pilotonline.com.

It looks like the site allows comments on all local stories posted, and uses a registration system for comments.

Look like you can register with whatever name you choose.

Some other features include: being able to report comments for violations; allowing responses to other comments; creating nests within a thread; and the “thumbs up/thumbs down” button. You can also “hide” comments by specific users, sort by thread or by date posted.

We have some questions out to the Pilot folks to get a little more detail as to how registration works and how the comments are moderated.

Check it out (click on the image for a larger view) and let us know what you think.

Charles Apple

This morning, media blogger Charles Apple shared this funny 30-second Newsday ad for its new iPad app.

It’s nice to see a paper have a sense of humor, isn’t it?

Apple has a blog on the American Copy Editors Society’s website called “The Visual Side of Journalism.” You can follow him on Twitter at @charlesapple.