Thoughts on the new CNN.com Beta

If you haven’t seen it already, you can check out CNN.com’s new Beta site here. It’s a new look for the news site, which looks like a “Cheap-ass blog” according to my friend Donavon. I kind of like what they are trying to do, but there is too much wasted space for my taste.

I like the tech page shown in this thumbnail; more specifically the usage of the photo going across the top. I don’t like that the header goes all the way across and the body doesn’t. It just doesn’t match with the rest of the site. It does have some more personalization features, like local news and weather integration. There’s also a hot topics string of links under the top navigation with the top keywords people have been looking for recently.

IMO, they should have went with a layout like FanNation.com or SI.com, which are very clean but use space wisely. Still, it’s not as bad as USAToday.com’s latest redesign, which many have labelled as a disaster.

State of the media report

As a member of the “media” (so to speak) I think we all need to understand what is going on in the news industy; where it is going, who is doing what and what we need to do to keep up with it. Here are a few articles I found this evening while doing some research:

Open Source Newsroom — http://zero.newassignment.net/ (interesting experiment)

Newspapers brought financial woes upon themselves, says Craigslist boss –
http://www.out-law.com/page-7800

The Great Media Industry Schism — (good read)
http://publishing2.com/2007/02/25/the-great-media-industry-schism/

Gannett’s New Lease On News –
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_09/b4023023.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

Indy Media Organizations and Their Web 2.0 Tools –
http://newassignment.net/blog/steve_anderson/feb2007/27/indy_media_organ

Advertising Age – Local TV Goes Mobile

Advertising Age – Digital – Local TV Goes Mobile
Internet Broadcasting, which creates websites and sells ads for 79 local TV stations, has forged a venture to get news and weather onto the so-called third screen. The Minneapolis-based company has signed a deal with Crisp Wireless to deliver content to phones and other wireless devices. Internet Broadcasting, itself owned by three major station group owners — Hearst-Argyll, Post Newsweek and McGraw Hill Cos. — will deliver local fare such as weather radar images and sports headlines and scores.

How are other companies, (like Media General for example), going to compete with this when their sites are so far behind already?  The Mobile frontier is the next great format, especially with the iPhone and devices like it on the horizon. Still, many media companies haven’t even embraced RSS, Blogging (done the right way) or even dynamic content across all affiliates.

Bravo to Internet Broadcasting for realizing what people actually want and doing something about it.