The Telegraph, Alton, Ill., Dan Brannan Column: 02/18/2007
By Dan Brannan, The Telegraph, Alton, Ill.
Feb. 18–Newspapers around the country, including The Telegraph, slowly but surely are embracing the World Wide Web.
Each week, The Telegraph adds components to its Web site (www.thetelegraph.com) to supplement the daily news product. The goal for this year is to merge the two into products that work hand-in-hand, assisting each other. Newspapers throughout the country were slow to embrace the Internet. In fact, many others in the media moved ahead with their online presentations, while newspapers slowly trudged ahead.
The Internet is an important component of the future that each one of us in the media has to embrace.
Recently, The Telegraph has focused on placing breaking news online. On Friday, we published a short synopsis of stories about the Calhoun County water problems and a meeting at local Baptist Church about Ameren’s electric rate increases. The online reports provided a glimpse of the full-length stories to be published in the Saturday newspaper.
Putting breaking news online is a new concept for Telegraph editors and requires a different mindset. We still have a way to go in this regard, but we appear to be on the right track.
We also publish portions of Sound Off, Talk Back and letters to the editor online every day. We have added our local columnists and editorials after they are published. If someone misses an editorial and wants to see it, they are available online for a week.
We still leave certain things in the newspaper that aren’t available on the Internet. We want people to see the printed product each day.
On weekends, we will be adding business and finance stories on the Web site. Also, we will have added our Accent stories and art. Recipes with reader participation is another added feature. I hope people will view recipes we publish online, then respond with their own recipes for others to see.
We plan to continue to develop the sports portion of the site for the future with added features. Sports is an important part of the Internet’s reach, and we need to continue to work on that.
There has been some discussion about adding blogs to the Internet and more reader participation items. I am sure that will happen eventually.
Another component we are exploring is video on the Web. Video will provide something completely different for newspapers.
We are also placing our special sections online after they appear in print. The special sections provide another interesting avenue that we haven’t had for online readers previously.
This past week, we added a sports gallery of photos that haven’t been published in the newspaper. Earlier in the week, when the area was hit with the winter storm, we published a gallery of weather photos online. By publishing the galleries, people can see photos they otherwise would not see in print because of space constraints.
I encourage people to provide their viewpoints to me about the Web site and what they like to see at dan_brannan@thetelegraph.com. We don’t have all the answers in regard to Internet presentation, but I can guarantee you it is on our minds, and we are attempting to bolster our content and presentation.
I am not always impressed with television news, but I think the television stations have done a fairly good job promoting their Internet presentations on their newscasts. Newspapers nationwide are trying to work on blending the two products together so they work in unison.
The Internet is here for good, and we have to accept it and make the most of it. Used properly, the Web can be an invaluable tool for readers and also newspapers. There are many ways to promote the next day’s material with the right Web tools and get people thinking ahead of time about the next day’s in-depth news story.
If you have any other questions or comments about the Internet, call me at 463-2560. I am sincerely interested in people’s thoughts and hopes for the future.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Telegraph, Alton, Ill.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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