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| 11:00 UK time, Tuesday, 8 May 2007
The 鶹 News website won two last week – best news site and the People's Voice award in the same category.
Firstly I want to thank everyone who voted for us for the People's Voice award - it's great to know you appreciate what we do. The main Webby award winners are chosen by members of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, whose website says: "To be selected among the best is an incredible achievement worthy of praise -- and perhaps a little bragging." So here goes.
It's the third year that we have won both awards, which is a major tribute to the journalists, developers and designers who make the site what it is.
Over the past year we’ve brought in some new things – introducing personalisation of local news, weather and sport, making video easier to find, adding the "most popular now" pages and introducing this blog, among others.
The range and quality of the 鶹's journalism underpins what we do, and finding new ways of presenting it on the site, as the tools of our trade get updated and reinvented (last week's , for example), is one of the best things about being in online news.
We've got some exciting plans for the coming year which I can’t share in huge detail yet, but will include further developing video on the site, pulling together key editorial content more readily for big issues and stories, and raising the profile on the site of some of the key 鶹 News programmes. That’s a few of the things we’re working on – what else would you like to see?
Comments
"raising the profile on the site of some of the key 鶹 News programmes", so we can expect even more programme plugs masquerading as news stories?
Sort out the hectares of white space to the right. It's 2007, I'm pretty sure people have monitor resolutions over 800x600.
Please leave your site Ad free.
Its a wonderful breathe of fresh air .
We live in the States and you are my home page.
Thanks
Jackie
I'd like to see links to related textual articles in the video player. I often don't want to sit and watch a video, but am still interested in the story (for instance, if I'm reading with my phone's web browser).
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Second, I'd like you to start categorizing your "Have Your Say" responses better: I don't really want to trawl through 10 pages of people's responses, and I doubt that most people do, or that many people actually read anything past page 1. I think that you need to seriously consider some kind of user-driven moderation like Slashdot in order to improve the quality of responses that most people will see.
Secondly, it would be nice if the HYS responses allowed counter-responses. You clearly don't want it to become a messageboard or blog comments, but just as clearly, this is what they have become, and if that's what people want, you should probably think harder about supporting people in doing this, either by threading (that is, allowing a tree-like approach) or by hard-numbering and linking comments.
There remains room, though, for an innovative new solution to coping with large volumes of comments, something that the 鶹 has the potential to develop. It's not a problem that's been satisfactorily solved, but I believe that it can be, with the right combination of user-interface cleverness, voting by users and "karma".
Please make transcripts of the video and audio content available.
bbcnews.com is the site i depend upon to get the news about anything that happens in the world. i love its sleek design and enjoy reading the features, views and analysis the most. congratulations for winning the award three years in a row.
thany you
The video quality is quite often so bad it's disappointing.
I also appreciate the site being ad-free, which is one of the main reasons I keep coming back.
Still my first stop after the computer warms up for action; why ?
A. No Adverts nor spamming potential.
B. Good editorials.
C. Neutral in depth specials.
D. Worldly coverage.
Accolades to your teams
In addition to even better cross-linking of content, I would like more customisation in the form of user preferences which can be stored in user profiles activated upon logging in to the site. One important thing to consider while customising is to ensure that all the different permutations of settings are in working order. People behind this site have done a good job so far. I hope they continue improving.
I'm not suprised. I always say your website is the best. Not clumsy, not chaotic and friendly and professional. My favorites sections are Africa, Science/Nature, Entertaiment, Have your say, Technology and weather. Great things. Thanks for giving me the best 30 minutes I spent on you Web site before I start work every morning.
"Raising the profile on the site of some of the key 鶹 News programmes" worries me. I come here because I *don't* want to get my news on TV or radio.
Steve, some thoughts....
1) Refuse to succumb to the downward pull of dressing up the news. Keep editorial decisions free of the tabloid mentality, and leave that to the websits of Sky News and ITV. Don't ever succumb to their cheap tabloid tricks (e.g. big emotional shot of little girl with child language headlines like "where's mummy?)
2) Re-examine the criteria you use for deciding to present a big story as "A BIG STORY" (not sure what the technical term is, but it's when you increase your font size and change the homepage layout slightly). Personally I think you should only choose the big story layout when there is a logistical reason for it, such as to make room for the inevitably greater background/related stories and links. At the moment, I think there's a danger that you're using this device simply to shout about a story's prominence, which kind of echoes that old Chris Morris quote (paraphrased: "coming up after the break, we'll tell you how to feel"). Whatever you do, don't go down the route of over-using this device.
3) Keep the "breaking news" ticker to a minimum. We don't need it to be exciting (well, perhaps many of us do, but we shouldn't!) As before, to follow what Sky news have just done with theirs would be to succumb to tabloid values. Resist! Or we'll end up like the US networks where editorial decisions are driven by an underlying need to project excitement.
4) I'm still finding those red video bars on the homepage distracting - they completely break up the flow of the page. Maybe I need to give it another year!
5) Editors blogs are superb. I'm sure some will disagree with me here, but I think they really help make the 鶹 more transparent.
6) By all means adapt, evolve and improve, but please don't ever tinker with the site for the sake of it!
Please make News24 available all the time but improve video quality. Watching the live streaming of the elections on News24 recently it was impossible to see the numbers or read text.
A "green" blog where people can share ideas, plans, products and tricks to save power, water, and air. ie: Stop eating shrimp because they are fished by destroying coral reefs with giant steel sheets that destroy the reefs and scoop up the shrimp and hundreds of corals and fish are destroyed and thrown away.
You've found a winning formula and have people in place to make wise changes even if they're the ones I wouldn't always have made myself; please don't change for change's sake, just keep giving us more and more of the same, only even more so.
Please review the decision to treat chess, bridge and other mind sports as news stories rather than sport stories, with which they have a much closer fit.
Glad to know your profesionalism is recognised, time after time after time...makes me ashamed of the quality of my country's main mass media. 鶹 is my reference for international news, but I've got one observation: I would like to remind you that AMERICA is a huge continent reaching all the way down (or up?) to Cape Horn, It's not just the USA.
I fully agree with comment 12 !!!
I miss the World Press Reviews
You are my preferred and trusted news website.
Keep up the GREAT WORK.
F.
I am delighted to see that News 24 is now being streamed online. However, I do have a few niggles with the 鶹 News web site at the moment:
1) The fact that the main content container does not centre itself in the screen or stretch to fill the browser window.
2) The fact that the desktop alert application only updates itself at sporadic intervals, and will only receive its updates by polling a flat XML file instead of using an RSS feed. This is an externally developed application - can the 鶹 not develop its own in-house solution?
3) Can someone please tell the bbc.co.uk webmaster that the UK style top bar now looks incredibly out-of-date and bland - could we not have a tab-style top bar with the 鶹 logo like the international version of the site?
4) *hint* Google gadget/Dashboard widget for the News 24 stream??
Apart from that, everything is excellent.
I don't want to turn 鶹 News into some kind of Google Homepage but if there was a way (if people wished) to save their settings to show only the news that interested them.
Such as Local, Political and Technology for instance. So instead of the Main Page being filled up with stories in which the Editors think is best, it could be a Mix Match of the Most Popular Stories or Most Newsworthy from the Pre-Selected Topics.
I hope that makes sense, I just think then more people would benefit and would help them see what is most relavent to them.
Improve the video quality.
Don't change much else. You've got a winning combination here!! It's fantastic. Keep it the same!
1. Please keep the 鶹 News page ad free. The best part of visiting 鶹 News is knowing that I'm only going to see news. Any ads you put in are trivially easy to filter/block anyway and just muck up the layout of the site.
2. Please offer an adjustable layout for different screen resolutions. Many people have 1024x768 or larger now and the white space is waisted although clearly not everyone has left 800x600.
3. Please increase the size of your photos. Bandwidth must be expensive considering the number of visitors and this directly conflicts with the request to be ad free, but even the current enlarged versions of some of your photos are still not big enough to convey the impact that they deserve.
4. Otherwise, your Webby awards are well-deserved and I vote for the 鶹 each year. It's my favorite source for news.
I agree about the Have Your Say comment.. there are just wayyyy too many posts. Back in the old format I used to read them all, now I never read past the first page
Please, in future, never refer to Britain as the mainland from an Irish perspective. It is an island, just as Ireland is (aside from political lines). Continental Europe is the mainland if such a large focus is needed.
Could you invest in a few proof readers?
I read and enjoyed the excellent 'Timeline: Northern Ireland's road to peace' page, but it would have benefited from being read through and corrected before it was put up.
In places there was no distinction between direct speech, reported speech and other text. In other places there were typos, font codes, and blocks of text without commas, full stops or any other punctuation.
This can be a serious barrier to comprehension. It must be worse for those who are not native English speakers.
I also noted that the possessive apostrophe was almost nowhere to be seen. This goes for the 鶹 site as whole. Is it now site (or 鶹) policy that that the apostrophe should no longer be used?
(That is not necessarily a bad thing - I'm just interested in the way the English language changes.)
Best regards,
Martin
I am a Brit in the USA and sick of the USA news outlets like CNN.com only ever reporting USA news and having virtually no international news.
Congratulations 鶹 on winning yet another Webby. The 鶹.com site is an example to the American sites
International news from all over the world whether it pertains directly to the UK or not. And in 32 languages!
CNN.com's 'international' page has two stories today and both about America!!
Dear 鶹 online
I use the site every day. The only thing I find truly odd is the "search" function. Why is it you group "news" and "sports" in the same category?
If I am interested in, say, developments in Nigeria, a search will generate numerous results about sports. I could not care less about Nigerian sports - i care about the politics, society, economy and so on.
I guess many sports fans will care equally less about these topics when looking for news about sports.
So why not separate the two?
I love this site it is my homepage and my way of keeping updated in the world.
One comment, I would like to be able to read a transcript of the video news clips without having to follow the actual video, could we have that as an option?
Like others I'd like to see HYS improved, it's a confusing mess as it is now. The ability to reply to others comments would be great, the "recommended" system you use just leads to those comments that were posted first becoming the most popular.
Fantastic website. It has allowed me to follow the international news and sportes news without leaving my work desk.
However, I would like to say that I often find myself shocked to see grammatical errors in the contents of the news. This is one place I trust would stay true to standards....please pay your attention to this.
Great news website.
I think the magazine is one of your most inspired sections. I love the layout which you changed recently - much easier to see everything past and present. There's always something topical and interesting and it's my chill out lunchtime read. Definitely a competitor with the newspapers sections such as G2.
I really enjoy the website but am disappointed when stories are only presented in a video format (which I cannot view). I would urge you to consider this when thinking of expanding video output.
I think that by far the best development in 鶹 journalism has been the development of a range of 鶹 blogs. "Consuming the 鶹" used to be a much more passive experience but now there is the opportunity to engage in a dialogue between the 鶹 and its audience in a very active way.
The normal 鶹 have your say forums are OK but the blog format is by far superior because users can contribute longer pieces and develop an argument. The problem with the normal 鶹 have your say forums is that the length restriction prevents this and leads to sound bite arguments where opinions sometimes sound more black and white than they really are.
The other good thing about the blog format is that readers can follow user contributions back to the users page so the converrsation is often able to broaden out. This allows the B鶹 to effectively act as a hub for debate.
Just wanted you to know that the 鶹 has the best news channel on the Internet.
I love it a lot.. And thanks fir sending it to me.
Another award for your web site, much praised by many people who don't pay a licence fee. I reckon many organisations could also win awards if they have the budget the 鶹 has. So get real and realise you are reading a gold plated web site paid for by people who may go to jail if they refuse to contribute.
Hello - some responses to some of your points.
JG (1) - You might not be surprised that I don’t agree we do “programme plugs masquerading as news stories” - but we do report it when a programme has broken a significant news story – as regularly happens with investigative programmes such as Panorama or File on Four, for example, as well as a range of others.
Jackie (3), glad to hear we are your homepage. John (21) - thanks for your vote of confidence. On photos and screen resolution – noted. On the ads - the decision about whether they could appear on the international edition of the website is in the hands of the 鶹 Trust – you can read about the recent progress of this .
Kendrick (4) - This point has come up before and is clearly something we should bear in mind – we are looking in general at how video relates to text stories – there’s an example of a different approach .
Rajat (22), Jim (28). We do have a “readers recommended” tab on our Have your Say pages which lists them in order of most recommended – so you could always start reading there. We do allow counter-responses but are wary of letting the pages become narrow conversations by just a few people – we are aiming for a wider range of contributors and perspectives. Thank you for the feedback in general on the Have your Say pages - we’re always looking to improve on them - for example we’ve recently added an indicator of comments awaiting publication.
Andrea (27), Claire (31). Logistically transcripts would be a challenge, given the amount of audio and video we have, but we do have text versions of most of the AV stories on the site anyway.
Prabin (6), Huocjk (8) and Allen (10) – thank you for your comments – it’s good to know what we do is appreciated.
Koas (20) - we know video quality is a priority and it’s a key part of our development plans.
thebigman (19). Customisation, or personalisation, is an area we’ve made some progress with – UK users can set their preferences for local news, weather and sport – so it’s good to know you’d like to see this developed further
Stephen (11) – we’re still committed to providing the news online – in text, audio and video. It’s just that the 鶹’s TV and radio programmes do some great journalism which we can reflect well on the News website so it’s available to a different audience, and lives on beyond the broadcast. Have a look at the Newsnight website as an example of where a programme has produced great web content.
Steve (12) - thanks for your thoughts – in response: I can see what you mean about use of bigger headlines – we try not to do it too often, when we do it’s when we think a story is of really major importance and we want to draw special attention to it, and when it’s likely to develop lots of extra angles which we need to display; on the video bars – if you wait long enough I expect we’ll redesign the site again! On the editors’ blog – I hope it does as you say – that’s what we’re trying to do.
Daniel (14) - We’ve got a regular place on the site where we run viewpoints on environmental issues and invite comments – it’s called the and is worth checking out if you haven’t seen it. It has succeeded in sparking wider debate on a number of issues over the months.
H Munoz (16) - thanks for your comments. Point taken on America – we do know it’s a continent and not just the US but you’re right we do a lot of US stories. Incidentally you might have spotted recently that we have a new Brazil correspondent – he’s Gary Duffy, formerly this website’s UK editor, and he’s already filed quite a bit for us (you can see one story ).
Jonathan (18) - Good that you mostly like the way things work, and on the niggles, they look suspiciously technical so I am forwarding them to our website manager and developers.
Martin (24), tewodros (29). We have sub-editors – but it’s also the responsibility of every journalist to get the basics like spelling and punctuation right. I’ll circulate your comments to the editorial desks – we shouldn’t be letting things like the ones you mention slip through. Martin, on the lack of apostrophes you report – I haven’t gone to have a look, but we certainly haven’t banned them.
K.Barney (30) – Are you by any chance related to our Magazine editor? I’ll have to check to see if he wrote this comment – but assuming not – thank you for your assessment of our Magazine section – I have passed it on to the team. I agree it’s always interesting – no subject is too obscure or unexpected for them – recently they’ve ranged from Helvetica font, to skinheads via a historian’s view of ethnic conflict and the physiology of blushing – excellent stuff.
The communication angle of the 鶹 web site with the viewers is one of the strongest developments that I have seen.
The blogs are all excellent with good feedback from the 鶹 staff themselves (the PM blog is a great example of this) and the Magazine section is a lot of fun.
The one area which is rather ruined for me is the Have Your Say section which appears to have been hijacked by a small group of people with pre-determined political agendas who derail every thread with their off-topic thoughts meaning that the real views of people are lost. If there was a way of countering that, then the forums would be a more enjoyable place to visit.
Another person whose admiration for the 鶹's journalistic work is diluted by a perception of a deplorably low standard of grammar and punctuation (particularly the indiscriminate omission and incorrect use of the apostrophe) in many of your stories.
I like that you link to recent world service radio programmes audio feeds (newhour, world today), but I think it would be very useful if you made it clear which programme was most recently broadcast. I don't really differentiate between World Service news programmes -- I just want to hear the one tht was most recently broadcast.
So, rather than just saying:
* Newshour
* World Today
It might be good to say
* Newshour (broadcast 2 hours ago)
* World Today (broadcast 5 hours ago)
Or, even bettwe in my opinion, would be to just provide a link to the most recent world service news programme, whatever that happens to be.
don't make me think :-D
Thanks!
Donal