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

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

3. Traffic flows Source of rest-of-site traffic
Search Engines
Referral Sites: aggregators, , 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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?

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