Too many of the sites I visited looked as if they’re frozen in time or, at the very least, not working with any sense of urgency. When I tweeted my observation:

“Where’s the innovation? Where’s the experimentation? Don’t see most newspaper sites doing anything different or new. What happened?”

Steve Yelvington came back with this on-point response:

“Biggest risk of organizational (i.e., newsroom) convergence is a loss of imagination and innovative spirit.”

While I agree with his comment, I just don’t feel like any of these sites can afford to rest on their laurels or to be stuck in neutral. With marketing budgets at many newspapers shrinking or disappearing altogether, for the most part, it’s up to the individual web staffs to increase metrics such as page views, time or site and return visitors (for example).

What concerns me even more is that I’m not sure the people at any of these sites realize that they have a problem. On too many occasions I’ve heard the cliché “if it ain’t broke, why fix it?”.

I once worked for a VP who said something along the lines of “if you’ve been doing it for the past 20 years, then it’s time to change what you’ve been doing.” With that in mind, I’ve got a suggestion for all the online staffers out there – consider this a low tech intervention. Take a piece of paper, or create a document and number the lines 1 through 10. Then, on each line, list something that you have done in the past three to six months at your site that you consider innovative or experimental.

For example:

1. Experimented with commenting
2. Incorporated user generated galleries
3. Staffed the site overnight, etc.

Now if you don’t want to do this brief exercise or if your list contains only one or two items, then I would suggest that you have a problem. I would even go so far as to predict that your site (barring the occasional Druge or Fark) is seeing traffic hold steady. While that might seem like a good thing, it really, really isn’t.

With print products struggling just to maintain their depleted numbers, online growth must occur and innovation and experimentation, I believe, is key to that growth.

Now before you run off and put floating eyeballs on your site, I would suggest first of all setting, at the very least, a monthly traffic goal. This will help you gauge the effectiveness of what you attempt and justify those changes or alterations to those you work with.

Once you have that done, try something. It doesn’t have to cost money even, as there is plenty of free tech that you can leverage. Want chats? Try CoveritLive. Want widgets that you can centrally update? Try SproutBuilder. The list goes on and on.

And as you go, share your successes and your stumbles. Just like we’re seeing more cooperation on the content side between news outlets, we need to see more cooperation on the tech side (more on this another time).

Now lets get down to innovating and experimenting and be sure to let me know how it goes.

On Sunday, the New York Times posted a story “Dancers in the Crowd Bring Back ‘Thriller’.” It’s an interesting and entertaining piece about how Sony BMG has used viral marketing as part of the 25th anniversary of the release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album. Central to the story is that videos of paid dancers breaking into “spontaneous” zombie dances aboard trains and on city streets have become very popular on YouTube, the video sharing site.

Although I’m familiar with the Jackson inspired dance (not that I can do it myself), I found the idea of a video of “zombies” dancing on board a London subway car an entertaining enough idea to check out. The article has visible links to Sony, Kanye West and Fergie (artists who both appear on the a Thriller tribute album) and Tesco. And thanks to their partnership with Answer.com, you can double-click on any term or word for a definition. But nowhere were there any links to the videos on YouTube, nor did the Times decide to embed them.

Instead, the Times forced me to open a new browser window go to YouTube and then search for the videos myself. A rather annoying endeavor that I felt was unnecessary and took up time that I really didn’t want to spend. See, as a reader of the Times, I expect them to be comprehensive in their reporting AND in their print and online presentation. To me, not providing the related links is the Times disrespecting me and frankly, being lazy after all, how big is their online staff?

My guess is, that your readers would feel the same way if you did this to them. But something else to think of, because the Times drove me to find the videos on YouTube myself, I didn’t return to their site. My visit that might have encompassed say half a dozen page views, stopped with that single one. In a time when we’re talking about how to further engage our readers and how to get them to spend more time, is this an opportunity any of us can afford to overlook?

Want to see the videos yourself? Here they are:

Feel free to provide links to others as you come across them.

As I wrote in a previous post, there is a growing sentiment at many papers that there are just too few people to tackle what seems like ever-growing to-do lists. What concerns me about that reaction is that I fear it reflects organizations who are only considering the first “no one can do it all” part of the above phrase.

While organizations can keep on increasing the responsibilities for their reporters, editors, photographers or producers, the reality is quality will suffer and morale will decline. In my mind, it should not be a case of simply adding, but of adding and subtracting. I would encourage you to look for redundancies or places where you can leverage either your existing print or online operation.

For example:

• Is the same content being entered twice, once for print and once for online?
• Is there work that either readers can do or that technology can assist with? For example can letter to the editor be scanned rather then manually entered in your editorial system or can readers be encouraged to complete an online form?
• Could reporters provide a list of the websites they used to research a story to help enhance it when it appears online?
• Can copy editors provide a web headline when they come up with the print headline?

I know these are rather basic suggestions, but my point is — if you look at your process before you simply start handing out new responsibilities, you might find that either you can replace existing duties or that someone is already doing it, but in a way you didn’t see. In a time when being efficient is key, it’s inefficient to blindly hand out new tasks.

I think you need to first decide whether or not you believe that enhancing your stories has value. Do you think it is important to present something more then just what you offer in your daily paper? If the answer to either question is no, then you can stop reading here and I wish you a pleasant day. If your answer is yes, then read on.

One suggestion is to essentially allow all your content to have outbound links attached to them. Not sure what I’m talking about? Try visiting the New York Times’s website and open a story. Double-click on any word and “a new window will open with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry.” This has nothing to do with the minions who work at the Times or the large stacks of cash that the newspaper spends on technology, rather, it’s via a third-party vendor. The Times, like CBS News, partners with Answers.com.

Answers.com was founded in 1999 by Bob Rosenschein. So what is it? Well,

Answers.com is an advertising-supported, free website. Since its launch in January 2005, it has become one of the leading information portals on the Internet. Answers.com’s collection of over four million answers is drawn from over 180 titles from brand-name publishers, original content created by Answers.com’s own editorial team, community-contributed articles from Wikipedia, and user-generated questions & answers from Answers.com’s industry-leading WikiAnswers. The site offers useful answers in categories like business, health, travel, technology, science, entertainment, arts, history and many more.

The Times, CBS News, blogs (like editor on the verge) and other sites are using Answers.com’s AnswerTips “small information bubbles that define any word when double-clicked without opening a new browser or following outbound links. AnswerTips deliver instant definitions, explanations and facts including biographies, tech terms, geography, pop culture and much more.”

Using this service on your site would allow you to offer outbound links without having to have a designated staffer research and complete them. I’m not necessarily endorsing Answers.com, if there’s another comparative service or another way to approach this issue, I’m all ears. I just believe your losing out if you simple do nothing.

Sadly, far too many newspapers continue to treat their websites as simply the online version of their printed papers. I thought that it was widely understood at this point that you will never grow your online audience if all your do is reprint only what is in your daily newspaper.

Take this story from The Journal News (Yonkers, NY) about the increasing frequency with which local police are arresting mothers who are driving while intoxicated.

“There has been an increase in the number of mothers arrested for driving while intoxicated with children in the car, said Bob Watson, supervising probation officer for Westchester County’s DWI enforcement unit. He said that more mothers than fathers are on probation for the offense.”

I would say that this is an important story that deserves attention. So lets look at how it was presented.

To begin with, the article comes in at 1,164 words or 31.45-inches (using the 37-words-per-column-inch equation). While that is not a huge story (a front-page New York Times story on presidential campaign fundraising comes in 600 words longer), it is not a quick read.

My immediate thought is that the story does needs subheads. During my initial read, I counted four places where subheads could have been used to help the reader navigate the story and to emphasize key points.

In addition to those two points, the story lacks any outbound links. I counted nearly a dozen instances where links to external sites could have enhanced the story including:

• Alcoholics Anonymous
• National Council on Alcoholism & Drug Dependence
• Westchester County Police

Perhaps even more important then outbound links, the story has no internal links. Given that the reporter cited about 10 recent cases, I would believe that the newspaper has written about more then just a few of them. And actually a look through their (paid) archives saw at least 20 links to just one of those cases.

And finally, along the same line, additional photos from previous stories.

I would argue that these suggestions only scratch the surface. An argument could have also been made, for example, for a video or audio-only interview(s) or even the inclusion of a poll.

Lohud is not alone, visit newspaper websites across the country, and you’ll find many similar examples of sites failing to engage readers. It’s a problem, I would offer, that has an easy fix. This is the type of issue that needs to be consciously built into the workflow, one possibility is to even make it the responsibility of one or a few people.

Don’t think that you can make all of the changes to add all the components I’ve suggested? Well, start by picking just one, perhaps previous stories and once you’ve got that a regular part of the process, add another.

No matter what you decide, don’t just offer the same old; that’s a mistake you might find you won’t be able to make for much longer.

For many newspapers, covering the caucus or primary meant the creation of landing pages or a micro-site, blog(s) and possibly experimenting with sites/services such as Twitter or Facebook. Days of planning, reporting and writing went into your coverage, not to mention the involvement of staff from probably throughout your organization. So why let all that work go stale with only the occasional local or AP story to perk it up? And why allow all that new traffic that you garnered to just wander away?

Here are some ideas to keep your political engine chugging and your readers coming back for more:

• Identify and profile local convention delegates and super delegates. While your states selection process may not have begun yet, you can speak with people who have previously attended and identify those who are planning to apply. You can also provide an primer on the application process as it does differ from state to state.
• If you haven’t already, identify local political bloggers and create your own blog network. Consider aggregating all their feeds on your site, you can even divide it by party affiliation.
• Join the Publish2 Election News Network. As Scott Karp (Publish 2 founder) explains it, this would allow you to “post links to coverage in states that still have primaries upcoming and of course national coverage. This could be a great editorial supplement in states where there’s not much to report locally with the primary past.” And I couldn’t agree more.
• Keep an eye on the money. With candidates still vying for the Democratic and Republican party nominations, fund raising will continue in earnest. Use these sources to track who is donating in your coverage area:
  • Follow The Money
  • Open Secrets
  • Fundrace 2008
• Look at how the campaigns are spending money locally? Are they still running any ads, still planting political signs? What are they doing to keep supporters engaged?
• Invite local campaign coordinators to blog about their efforts. (Think you have a problem staying motivated!)
• Have any locals running as Third party candidates?
• Check out this widget set from MSNBC. Might be an easy way to dress-up your page and keep the data current.
• Offer a Google Maps mashup showing where the candidates are on a given day. Here’s one effort via Slate.

So those are a few from me, what are your thoughts? What stories and/or features are you thinking of doing? I think this is one of those areas where their is no reason to reinvent the wheel, so share your thoughts and ideas, by helping someone else you might just help yourself.

But as a visitor to these sites, the lists leave me wondering. I want to know how they’re calculated, how frequently they’re updated and what span of time they supposedly cover. But I find that few, if any, sites that I was able to find, provide even a piece of that transparency.

For a lot of visitors, the technology behind a website could just as well be witchcraft. They don’t know the Java on their computer screen from the java in their cup. By the time they come to your site, many of them have already had mixed experiences with recommendation engines on sites like Amazon or Digg. I include myself in that category and I’m sure you could as well. I mean how many times have you visited Amazon only to be recommended a product that left you shaking your head and wondering what it had to do with you?

So what can you do?

First of all, if your site doesn’t already have a most popular list, get one going; it really can make a difference.

Secondly, make it clear what the list is — is it “Most Popular” of the day, week or month? For example, if you dig deeper into the New York Times’s list, you’ll find that they offer a 3, 7 or 30 day list as well as what I guess is a daily list. Now I’m not saying you have to go as far as multiple lists, but you can state the period it covers. Find a place on your site to explain how the list works and include how often it is updated.

Finally, cross promote it. There is no reason why you can’t include in print what the previous day’s most popular story was and where readers can normally find this information on your site. Doing all of this will help drive more traffic to your site, keep people on it longer, spread your page rank, oh and make me happy.

Traditionally, new initiatives are announced at a staff meeting or by memo, a timeline is attached, training sessions are scheduled and staffers are told that rollover will occur on X date. There is absolutely nothing exciting about that. Actually, no amount of kitch (you know the mouse pads, mini footballs, mugs, or pens that offer accompany these efforts) will excite a staff and truly engage them in the effort.

Now in the “private beta mode” approach there would be no distracting staff meetings or memos (that few actually entirely read). Instead, introduction would happen more subtly. Let’s say, for example, you want all reporters to start shooting their own video and plan to supply them with Nokia N95s (feel free to include me in that distribution by the way!). In this approach, you might select a core group of staffers (maybe some who are already tech savvy) and quietly corral them, explain that they are part of the “private beta” and provide them the new devices.

These staffers, won’t focus on having to shoot their own video and instead will be excited to be part of a select group chosen to use a new technology. You can tell them that they will help shape the program, that other reporters will be able to get the devices as the program develops and that you are excited to hear their thoughts and get their feedback. And this scales — you can do this in a small newsroom with one or two reporters and in a large newsroom with a dozen or more reporters.

In either case, members of the “private beta” will infect some with their excitement. They will show off, in this case, the device and what it can do. Others will be attracted by their excitement or by witnessing what these reporters are now capable of doing. After a period of time, you can implement a way for others to sign-up to be part of the program and then rollout the next round. Excitement will continue to grow and best of all, it will happen organically.

While this may sound like it will take longer then the traditional approach, I would maintain that it won’t. And in the end, even if it takes just as long, more staffers will be fully engaged when rollout is complete. As a whole, staffers will feel more ownership of the program and a sense of control that will infect the rest of their work.

This approach can work for everything from new phones and cameras to a new CMS or bookmarking software. And best of all, you can try it and if you decide it doesn’t work for your newsroom, you can still return to the traditional approach. But I think you’ll find that the viral nature of “private beta” will work for your newsroom just as it does for sites across the Internet.