The NYT gets it right
It probably goes without saying that nytimes.com is one of the most innovate of mainstream media websites. I’m not sure how long it took them to get up to speed, but out of all the big newspapers, the Times knows how to draw readers in – mostly because they devote so many resources into doing just that.
They have impressive, interactive flash presentations centered around photos, public opinion and features. There’s almost always some way for users to interact with the site as well, like this user-submitted feature on the Berlin Wall.
This is the direction all media should go. It may not have to be so over the top, but online users need some reason to go to a news site to read the content, and that reason is the perks. For the NY Times, users get a voice on the Internet, and stunning displays of what the news organization is capable of.
(I feel like a spokesperson for The New York Times.)
Either way… for newspapers to be successful online – and it’s shouted time and time again – they need to adapt and understand the Internet. And that really means understanding the Internet is a community where everyone wants something to say, something to see, something to do. Rather than read a block of text, people want to interact with what that text is talking about.
