NEW TECHNOLOGIES HELP SITES INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY
Some Web Site Redesigns Send Page Views Soaring

Online news executives are using technology to chart their courses through the untamed wildernesses of efficiency, productivity, and profitability. In fact, technology is helping some sites increase staff efficiency and page views at the same time. Seven online news experts relayed their stories in a marathon four-hour preconference track at the Interactive Newspapers Conference today (Feb. 17) on how technology is defining how news Web sites are maturing.

The New York Daily News site recently underwent a redesign, after which they reported that staff efficiency rose 25%, page views jumped 50% to 6.3 million per month, and users are reporting positive feedback about the features that are more applicable to their lives and are easier to use, says Zasha Weinberg, manager of engineering at Nicholson/NY agency, which implemented the Web site changes. The agency developed a plan to provide the Daily News return on their investment by saving editors' time through the use of Microsoft FrontPage templates and the implementation of dynamically generated pages, as well as improving functionality and efficiency on the site with customized workflow.

Other speakers also reported an emphasis on efficiency and profitability, and the technologies that will help them achieve their goals. Dale Peskin, vice president for interactive media at A.H. Belo Corp., Dallas, says that while banner advertisements clearly aren't going to pave the way to profitability, it has been incumbent upon him and his staff to find ideas that will lead to a healthier bottom line.

Instead of relying on banner advertising campaigns, Peskin's staff is pitching integrated Web sites to advertisers like "ClubYou.com," a multimedia site that would provide personalized news, tips, planning guides, e-mail notification, product sampling, polls, and quick mail — in short, it would create a relationship with each person who visited the site. The information gathered about visitors could be used to target advertising to users.

"In a one-to-one relationship, each person can use the site and get specific messages," Peskin says. "We think it will be a major way to produce revenue for the site."

Media General, which has several TV, cable, and newspaper properties in the South, has learned a lesson in the importance of understanding each of its properties' technological cultures to succeed in the marketplace. Media General is in the throes of planning a common language for database technology for classifieds, archives, products, and features online among print, cable, and TV properties. "This means a change in the culture within Media General to overcome print, cable, and broadcast conflicts ... and to develop a synergy among divisions," says Mike Steele, director of new media for Media General.

Howard Finberg, director of technology and information strategies for Central Newspapers Inc., Phoenix, says CNI is developing "sticky" Web site technology and content to retain users longer. "We want sticky applications," Finberg says. He counts among those sites that capture longer spans of the users' time CNI's policescanner.com with Real Audio capability to listen to scanners, and its virtual job fair site (vjf.com) and indianasgame.com, a destination site for Indiana basketball fans.

In planning for the future, Finberg sees CNI's motto of "Author once, publish many" to become a reality. He sees CNI's partnership with FutureTense to allow them to create stories for print and Web, but also other emerging technologies, such as Palm Pilots and pagers.

"We want to leverage technology — to take advantage of our digital assets, and to move away from a single-purpose solution," Finberg says. The ability to streamline production of text, pictures, and graphics throughout the process of publishing to many platforms was a predominant theme for the session.

On the horizon is the implementation of a standard news markup language, that is under development by a number of businesses and organizations. The markup language will enable versatility and efficiency by using the same information across different platforms without duplicating production time.

"The goal is to expand in new markets and utilize new forms of distribution. To create these new products, information producers must better integrate their cross-media publishing systems," says John Freed, principal of Integrita, a consulting firm. The cross-media products will reduce operating costs because the production process will take less time.

The next generation of news markup will be based on the open architecture of XML, which will allow editors to mark up copy to identify the headline, byline, nut paragraph, quoted sources, and more. When tags are used to identify each element of the story, the stories can be easily transported from print to Web to fax to Palm Pilot formats, without editors having to mark up the copy at each checkpoint. Also, the markup allows efficiencies for archiving and searchability. If a user searches for bylines, or for book titles, for example, the tasks would turn up results quickly because each of those attributes would have already been segmented in databases.

While XML still is not supported universally on the Web, its time will come, says John Bennett, development manager for Cahners Business Information entertainment group. Editors will use the open standard through the use of cascading stylesheets (CSS). "The more you can think of ways to convince your editors to think in those terms, the better off you'll be. We're a long way away from this being optimal, but it is where we need to be to reuse our information in other ways."

Martha L. Stone (martstone@aol.com) is a new media professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago and a frequent contributor to Editor & Publisher Interactive.