New USAToday.com has launched
Cory Bergman March 4th, 2007
As we’ve previewed, USAToday.com has launched a bold new design that takes user participation and social networking in a newspaper website to a new level. Digg-style voting, user profiles, comments, tagging and aggregation — it’s all here. “The real change is in the approach, not the appearance,” write USAToday’s editors. “While we’ve refined the design, we’ve also expanded the journalistic mission: Our ambition is to help readers quickly and easily make sense of the world around them by giving them a wider view of the news of the day and connecting them with other readers who can contribute to their understanding of events.” Home page grab…
Update: Out of the gate, USAToday.com is struggling to manage user comments. The story on the NAACP president was “full of unmoderated hate speech,” writes Rex below. At last check, the objectionable comments are gone, but one user writes, “Judging by the lack of class and command of the English language in many of the comments, it is its own best argument for taking USAToday back to the way it was. The comment section, when too closely juxtaposed to the actual news leaves the undesirable impression that the comments are somehow on a par with the news.” Personally, I’m a big believer in user comments, but the struggle has always been how to keep the conversation constructive without tying up a ton of resources to moderate it.
What does everyone think of the redesign…?
6 Comments Add your own
1. Rex | March 5th, 2007 at 12:49 am
I’ll slightly retract my previous statements — the social features feel more integrated than in the original mockups.
But they’re getting trashed in the comments by their users. Negative feedback is the norm for relaunches, but they’re averaging about 90% negative right now.
All in all, I like the boldness of several of the features. I’m already wondering how this will work in the long run. The story on NAACP president is full of unmoderated hate speech, and I’m not sure how they’re going to police that in the long run.
Nice work, and it will be fun to watch how they manage community over time…
2. Swift Loris | March 5th, 2007 at 1:03 am
The redesign is the worst mess I think I’ve ever seen.
They’ve apparently policed the hate speech on the NAACP president comments thread by removing it entirely.
3. Safran | March 5th, 2007 at 6:22 am
Every relaunch I’ve ever done - whether it was on the web or on TV news - had its share of flames, outraged letters and emails, and angry calls to the station. Your established audience will always have its share of malcontents. They are worth listening to - absolutely. But the trick is to hear - as once was the case with a project I worked on in television - if they are the majority or simply a tiny, tiny vocal minority. People hate change.
4. David Johnson | March 5th, 2007 at 10:54 am
agreed, saf, although i would quote Wayne and Garth, “We fear change.” and clearly, fear is in play here on the editorial side and leads to wiping out whole comment threads, which i think is a very, very bad decision in terms of both old and new journalism.
barney frank told bill maher on friday’s real time that it is easy to protect free speech for what we agree with, but we need to protect free speech for the speech we don’t agree with… although he chose a more colorful term to describe the latter group.
donning my pith helmet and speaking as an anthropologist, change is inherent and unavoidable. in naturally occuring systems, rates of change can be clocked and even predicted. in societies and cultures, you can’t stop change, you can only try to manage it.
5. John Icard | July 20th, 2007 at 10:15 am
If the comments do not meet the “criteria” of the USA Today Monitors, then they are censored. What kind of free speach is that? Either stop all comments or cease to edit comments. Even profanity has a place in free speach! If people do not want to see the thoughts of people that comment, they should not read them.
6. John Icard | July 20th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Are you really serious about wanting comments?
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