The Journalist doesn’t have a website as such. The editorship is up for grabs for the first time in 21 years.
I’m an NUJ member. As such, I get to vote for one (or more) of the eight candidates. Obviously, I’m interested in the candidates’ political credentials, and the degree to which they want to make The Journalist the union’s comms organ or a less political resource for journalists. But what is really making me think is the online future of the magazine.
On the face of it, designing The Journalist‘s website is a very, very good gig. It’d be a website for a collection of opinionated, engaged writers, many of whom have surely been blogging, tweeting etc. for years. It has no murky history or, in technical terms, a cludgy CMS, bodged solutions or crappy design to contend with. It’s tabula rasa.
For what it’s worth, here are some of the things I’d suggest:
- Offer a version of the magazine not in PDF format (as one of the candidates proposes) but as an ePub file
- Use the website and Twitter to publish stories immediately and gather feedback, opinion and analysis: the print version can publish finalised, “definitive” pieces. The online version should be more informal.
- Develop a more visual style: make images prominent, post pictures with one or two (or zero) sentence comments. Post things to Flickr, YouTube et al as a matter of course (yes, I’m aware of the risks of social media outsourcing)
- Develop a bank of user–contributed, editorialised resources and make them freely available to the public.
- Structure the site along print newspaper lines (e.g. limit the top level menu to a handful of easily identifiable categories). Make the design simple and welcoming: a rarity for news publications.
- Make one of these sections Comment and Analysis rather than setting up a separate Blog section
- Make sure all regular editorial staff are active bloggers and Tweeters. Sack them if they’re not. (I jest).
- Make sure all regular editorial staff become active online networkers. This will keep them on top of technological developments and latest thinking.
- Make all content available to the general public rather than just members
- Make it easy for members (and beyond) to submit articles
- Never, ever, simply republish a print article: train all journalists to write for the web
- Make sure the design is typographically and structurally designed for the web: The worst thing that could happen is the magazine becomes an online copy of the print version
- Allow some of the online design decisions to influence the print design: Recognise the value of the website
I think this is important. Without wanting to sound hackneyed, this is both a challenge (the magazine could trundle along with an apologetic web presence) and a real chance to take a lead and increase profile and influence.