Make PressDemocrat.com Better, Pt 1: Internet Friendly

I’ve been a lifelong reader of Sonoma County’s Press Democrat newspaper. Still remember waking up before school and following PD coverage of the Polly Klaas case when I was 9 years old.

Nowadays I read my newspaper online. NYT, WaPost, WSJ, etc. I don’t have a subscription to a single print newspaper. This means that I also read the Press Democrat online, too.

The trouble is that the PressDemocrat.com seems to be an afterthought. It doesn’t feel to be born of the web. It’s stiff and clunky. It feels as if the print articles were copy-and-pasted to PD.com since it’s 2008 and “you got to be online”.

For instance, my mom will email me that I need to read a specific PD article in “today’s paper”. So, I’ll jump online and browse the PD.com headlines and use the site’s search feature to find the article. But, I usually come up empty-handed. That is until I jump over to Google and do an extreme search function like:

site:http://www.pressdemocrat.com “car crash in Windsor”

Anyways, my point is that PressDemocrat.com needs to become more Internet friendly. How do they do this? Here are a couple of suggestions:

1) Clean, granular RSS feeds
2) Better navigation
3) Blogs
4) Beta.pressdemocrat.com

Now with more explanation:

1) Clean, granular RSS feeds

RSS feeds are very important, especially ones with full articles and unbroken links (my Google homepage PD widget feed is always stale). Allow me to track the specific news section on PD.com that I really like. Yes, I know that PressDemocrat.com currently has RSS feeds, but they aren’t clean and they aren’t granular enough. Right now, PD.com has five RSS options. There should be way more (i.e. RSS feeds for public notices, CA news, SR-only news).

2) Better navigation

The homepage is a mess. PD.com mixes national and local news. It has too much white space, too many font changes, and too many photos with different shapes and sizes. It’s highly un-scannable and seems like a jumbled mess that doesn’t have rhyme or reason. Take a cue from a massive yet simple news site like CNN.com. Seriously, I can scan CNN.com fast and understand its navigation on first visit.

PressDemocrat.com homepage CNN.com homepage

3) Blogs

Blogs are truly born of the web. They’re form, style, and immediacy are all things that PD.com could use more of. They should give Matt Maiocco (49ers), John Beck (Pop Culture), and Nathan Halverson (Technology, Biz) real blogs. Real blogs create better conversations, traffic, community, etc, which all lead to a successful web property.

4) Beta.pressdemocrat.com

Messing around with your site is always a scary thought. So, why not create an experimental playground at a subdomain like beta.pressdemocrat.com? Think about it.

I will continue to spit posts like these as I’ve been thinking about how to make PressDemocrat.com better a lot lately. Feel free to email me at andrew@buzzyeah.com with ideas, etc.

Tagged as: Make PressDemocrat.com Better, Newspaper, PressDemocrat.com, The Press Democrat

Nathan Halverson

You make some strong points. The Press Democrat has a long ways to go. And I'm not just saying that because you advocate for me to have a bigger presence in the publication. ;)
The one thing you left out was the need to improve our forums and comments. Right now the comments are often vile attacks against victims, professionals, and way too often minority groups. Very few tools have been given to online readers to help police the forums -- and they don't appear to be effective. In my opinion, our comment section in its current iteration drops the overall value of the online publication.
I'd also be interested in hearing you expand on your definition of "real blogs." Because while I don't have a blog, both Beck and Maiocco do. And Maiocco's blog drives HUGE traffic to the Web site. I don't have the exact numbers, but I think it's fair to say his blog contributes a double-digit percentage of traffic. That said, the blogs are fairly basic, text-oriented pages, with few options for us to expand on. What more would you like to see on the blogs?

Andrew Meyer

Comments/community conversation is part 2. :)

Andrew Meyer

I was saving comments/forum suggestions for Pt 2, which can be found here: http://buzzyeah.com/2008/09/17/make-pressdemocr...

As for what I mean by "real blogs", I don't have a deep, philosophical Web 2.0 babble definition. The blogs just seem clunky like the main site. I guess they both have comments, blogrolls, and recent posts lists; and John Beck's links out of his posts. So, they meet the basics there. I'm just used to the feel and look of excellent blogging platforms like Wordpress. Blogs don't seem Internet friendly to me unless they're using a "real" blogging platform like Wordpress, etc. What platform do you guys use?

Do the PD blogs use the same site structure as the main site? Because if they do they aren't Google search friendly. You could probably get way better traffic flow for the blogs using the Wordpress platform.

Sara Mariani

I couldn't agree more. I grew up in Santa Rosa and used to read the PD every day. I moved to LA a few years ago and now live Austin, and I try to read online. But, to your points above, it's a chore. Navigation is horrible, the RSS feeds are just as bad, and when my family members in Windsor mention a current article, I have to do the same search. I also agree with Nathan's comment below; I've stopped viewing or participating in any aspect of the community/forums/comments because I'm appalled at the level of racism and nastiness some people post on the site. It's especially disappointing to me because I'd love to be able to feel connected to Sonoma County and read about the local news every day. I hope they'll make some changes.

Andrew Meyer

Sara, thanks for providing your input all the way from Austin. I'll definitely be touching on the "local news" part of your comment in Pt 3. You guys keep jumping ahead of me. :)

Make PressDemocrat.com Better, Pt 1: Internet Friendly

Archives