I spent part of my Sunday morning visiting dozens of newspaper websites and by the time I was done I found myself wanting to scream. WAKE UP! LOOK AT WHAT YOU ARE DOING!

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.

Recently, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about Ron Popeil. An American inventor, Popeil is responsible for such gadgets as the Chop-O-Matic, the Veg-O-Matic, Hair in a Can Spray and the Showtime Rotisserie Oven which he hocked on many late night infomercials. It was this last product that has been on my mind much of late.

Popeil claimed that it was so easy to cook whole chickens in the Showtime Rotisserie Oven that all you had to do was “set it and forget it.” This phrase popped into my head recently while I was trying to explain my approach to website management.

Too many online staffs treat their websites like the Showtime Rotisserie Oven. They, say it with me, “Set it and Forget it.” Enamored with automation, they design sites that is chock full of headline pulls, RSS feeds and automated dayparting, Flash galleries, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a technophobe, but the problem I have is that all the automation becomes an excuse to not deal with their site unless there is a problem or special project. They never stop to ask, are the right stories are being presented at the right time? Is the best photo being featured? Are our visitors being best served? They never ask because well, it’s all automated.

To me, that just spells missed opportunities.

I believe that the pages on your site should showcase not just the best, but the most appropriate and appealing content that your visitors would want at a given moment. And yes, that means change comes often.

My approach is to use metrics to help plot a roadmap and then use your journalistic sense, your common sense to make the right choices. Are there places for automation? Of course, but your site won’t grow automatically it requires your constant attention.

So if you want to cook a chicken follow Popeil’s advice. But if you want to grow your site, take my advice and do the work yourself.

OK, here’s a prime example of a lost linking opportunity that actually annoyed at least one reader (me).

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.

A common refrain I heard in response to my post about enhancing stories was essentially, at many newspapers, there is not enough time and too few people to be doing that AND accomplish everything else they have to. Although I don’t necessarily agree with that analysis, I’m going to save my thoughts on time management for another day and instead offer a potential solution.

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.

Honestly, I don’t understand newspapers who present their stories online as if they were publishing them on a printed page. It’s not just that lack of subheads in a 37-inch long story that frustrates me; it’s the complete ignorance of any web tools that could enhance story presentation and increase the amount of time readers spend on the site.

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.

I recently wanted to get in touch with a former colleague, but when I visited his newspaper’s website I quickly discovered that reaching anyone at his newspaper wouldn’t be that simple. And his newspaper is not alone. If we’re in the communication business, why do we make it so difficult for people to communicate with us?

To be fair, this used to be a much broader problem. Thankfully though, in recent years, some newspapers print email addresses for reporters at the bottom of stories and others use online forms. Some don’t do either and even make it hard to directly contact anyone, hoping instead to channel all interactions through a series of general forms.

In order to get a sense of the practices that are going on in the industry, I looked at the contact practices of the top 30 newspapers according to the most recent Nielsen Online report, and here’s what I found:

• 16 newspaper include reporter email address either at the bottom of stories or via clicking on the byline.
• 5 provide no direct access and instead drive inquires through general online forms.
• 4 use reporter specific contact forms and shield email addresses.
• 5 offer full staff list (email addresses and phone numbers) once you dig through the main contact us list.

Some other practices worth noting:

• On some sites (nytimes.com, startribune.com) in addition to providing a reporter’s email address, clicking on the byline reveals a list of of the reporter’s recent stories.
• At least one site (politico.com) offers full bio and picture for their writers.

As you can see, the trend is toward great ease of access and I argue that is a good thing. Additionally, I encourage newspapers to move away from the master staff list approach. All too often those lists are some sub-category of the Contact Us or About Us navigation. Readers in some of these cases have to first click on (for example) Contact Us, then find the department and then (in some cases) the name of the bureau before getting to a list of reporters. I just don’t see that many people going through that gauntlet and I think that, ultimately, your newspaper loses out.

I think it is important for readers to be able to dialogue with reporters and other staff members. Actually, it doesn’t make any sense to me to provide access to reporting staff but, as is the case at some papers, hide photographers and some editors.

In my perfect newspaper world, readers would be able to engage newspaper staffers via email, instant messaging and/or chat rooms. At the very least, I would think via email. So what does you newspapers do? Are you among the 16 or the 5?

NOTE: I’m proud to be participating, along with fellow journalism bloggers from around the world in the Carnival of Journalism. In addition to reading my post please visit the Carnival host site and see what my colleagues are writing about. Not sure what a blog carnival is? Check out this entry on Wikipedia.

How fast can you turn your ship?

When I look at many newspaper websites, I just can’t help but wonder why some stories are in a featured homepage slot and, even more so, why they remain there for so long.

I recognize that every market has it’s own issues and what is a popular story in say North Jersey, might not work in Ann Arbor, Michigan. So while I sometimes wonder if “Gardening to Extremes” deserves top billing, I will ultimately bow to the taste judgment of local editors. But what I will question is why that and many other stories keep that top billing throughout the day?

Looking at a variety of sites I see a couple of patterns at work: There are sites that keeps their top stories in place until there is breaking news. There are the sites that rotate content based on the time of day. There are the sites that don’t change anything and even breaking news is only treated as an update. And then there are those that appear to take an approach that I think all sites should emulate. The producers and editors at these news sites let their audience guide them.

It make little to no sense to me to keep a story in one of your prime spots if it’s not drawing an audience. Honestly, I don’t care if it was the top of 1A and you think it’s a hoot or the most important story “evah”, if it’s not bringing them in, then what are you achieving?

How do you deal with this at your newspaper? Do you pay attention to your analytics and let the numbers be your guide? I know that previous posts both here and elsewhere have caused readers to bristle over the use of analytics. But come on, can you argue that knowing what is or isn’t working or your site is really a bad thing? Newspapers spend a lot of money for analytics. Omniture, one of those more popular services starts at $20,000 and easily climbs from there. If all you are using it to find out what was popular before the morning meeting or on the previous day, then I would argue that you’re wasting good money.

So back to that nautical talk. I think you should be able to change the direction your site is going as frequently and as often as you find necessary, that you’re always offering your best content (whatever that may be). My suggestion is that you come to an agreement on a threshold for keeping or moving content based whichever metric you want use, and then, by golly, tack to the starboard or tack to the port, but turn your ship.

Too many newspaper websites are simply online recreations of their printed products. These sites do little to take advantage of the opportunities being online provide. And worse, what bad habits they have in print, they replicate online.

Case in point — long stories.

It is well known that “lack of time” is one of the main, if not the main, reasons why readers cancel their subscriptions. Many newspapers have tried to address this by offering shorter stories or, at the very least, reduce the number of long stories that they publish. In a memo last year to the staff of the Washington Post, Executive Editor Len Downie and Managing Editor Phil Bennett wrote:

“For too long we’ve confused length with importance. Often the result has been stories that readers don’t want to finish and displays in the newspaper that don’t do our journalism justice.”

This is not just a problem at the Washington Post and definitely not just a print issue. Look at this story from one of my local newspapers. Not counting the byline and tagline, this piece comes in at 1,808 words, which loosely translates to 48 inches long. In print, that is a long story. Online it is a really long story. And looking at it online it’s clear that it lost any of the ‘elegant’ design that it might have had in print. Actually online it’s just a pain. But it didn’t have to be.

While I’ve heard the argument that subheads can destroy a writers prose, I believe that you need those visual cues to help the reader, in-print and especially online. I would go so far as to support the idea that a long story without subheads, might just as well appear without paragraph marks. OK, maybe that is going too far, but seriously I think we need to keep the reader in mind, both when we write and when we present.

Some newspapers (New York Times, the Star Ledger, etc.,) will take a long story and break it up on multiple screens. Some sites even have a single page view for those who still relish the long form story. But even the papers that divide their stories between screen use subheads.

Now I’m not saying avoid all long stories. Honestly I think that would be a tragedy, but I think we can do a better job presenting them online.

What about you? How do you handle long stories?