I went to look at a story in the Deseret News today and found that their site was rather unresponsive. I cam back after a couple of hours to look again and found that the site had been completely redesigned since I last looked. From a features and layout perspective it looks similar to the new York Times, although the style is still quite different (less polished). As I looked around the new site I found that they now offer RSS feeds.
I think that every news site should be offering RSS feeds. There’s no reason that people should be required to come to the site to find out if there is new content, or what that content is. The day’s of “bookmark this” and “make us your home page” are ancient history on the internet because anybody who really wants to be informed is going to be looking at multiple sources of news and information these days. If I have to visit your site to find out what you’ve got you can expect me to look elsewhere for my news.
This is not really a plug for the Deseret News. Mostly I am just excited by this because I remember looking at a variety of newspaper sites a while back for my RSS reader and there were hardly any local (read state of Utah) news organizations that had RSS feeds available. I’d still like to find something with news centered in Lehi, but at least I have one more option than before in the state.
I’ve been relatively impressed with how our local newspapers have been modernizing in the age of Web 2.0. RSS, comments, forums… oh my! Now if we just need them to realize that opening up the archives is a Good Thing(TM), we’ll be set. Why charge someone to see old ZCMI ads when advertisers will gladly pay to subsidize open access to the archived articles?
I must admit that I have been happy to see comments and forums sprouting at various sites. And I think you are right – we need the sites to take it a step further and open the archives – why should we have to pay to see news from last year?
Wow! I’ve been wishing they’d do this for a while! I’m most impressed that they’ve added the ability to comment.
Wow … that is an ugly website.
In Firefox, it looks all empty and clunky.
In Internet Explorer, it’s all full of pop-ups and banner ads and clunky.
I will admit that it cycles the pages faster but that powder blue color? I dunno…
JM,
I agree that they need to be talking to a graphic designer right now so they will once again look like a professional site (the old site looked much more professional) but at least they added some good new features instead of merely downgrading their old site. On the other hand, the beauty of RSS is that I don’t have to go to the site most of the time. I get to see the content with my stylesheets and I only go if there’s something worth reading – then I grit my teeth as I endure the powder blue (who came up with that?)
I’ve been noticing that many times when I try to go to a Deseret News article from their RSS feed I get an “Unknown Reason an error has occurred.” When I refresh the page things usually turn up. Has anyone else noticed this?