Richard Gingras September 30, 2009 Design News Products from a Search-centric Perspective Salon Media Group Richard Gingras September 30, 2009

Traffic flows Inbound traffic: Home Page versus Rest-of-Site 50% 50%

Traffic flows Source of rest-of-site traffic Search Engines Referral Sites: aggregators, email, blogs, news-ranking sites (e.g. Digg, NewsTrust) Behaviors: query-driven as well as browsing 83% use search to access news; 53% frequently 15-35% of news site traffic comes from search/aggregation It’s not only a good traffic but it’s a great source of new “uniques” and an opportunity to drive product discovery

Rethink Content Architecture Necessary to work the “matrix” from every dimension Core of the matrix is the story Like music, the atomic unit of news has changed Need/opportunity to rethink form and function Don’t think editions; don’t think ephemeral streams of articles Is it an article? Is it real time? Is it a living resource? Ephemeral anthrax attack article Persistent anthrax attack resource

Topic Pages The new article page Salon Articles Topic Pages The new article page Aggregated Coverage Audience Engagement Real-time micro-sites on important issues, ongoing stories, hot topics Locus for engagement Editors as experts of their domains Widget structure supports variation by topic Twitter Stream Background Info Ownership Increase search rank Draw new users Drive product discovery Increased ad relevancy

Rethink Focus and Output “Every new medium begins as a container for the old” The article is not the end product of the reporting effort. It’s that topic page. The full representation of the coverage of a beat Rethink roles What is the day-to-day role of a reporter when creation and publication can be in the reporter’s hands? What is the day-to-day role of an editor in an edition-less environment? Editor, harvester, curator, leader of a crowd of trusted participants?

Richard Gingras September 30, 2009 Design News Products from a Search-centric Perspective Salon Media Group Richard Gingras September 30, 2009