This blog thinks it’s essential for online news sites to rediscover importance and relevance (a recurring topic here). And wouldn’t you think that was one of the main points of editor Per Lundsjö’s presentation of Swedish business news website Näringsliv24 in Oslo this afternoon. The site launched in October last year, as an online-only operation owned by Schibsted through newspapers Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet (Lundsjö was flown in as an appetizer to Schibsted’s annual result presentation).
A news site has to solve the conflict between chronology and relevance, Lundsjö observed. The urge to publish ever more news stories must be balanced with the classic journalistic task of choosing what’s most important. Näringsliv24 gives the priority to relevance (business people do not follow the news minute by minute, Lundsjö noted, they check in on the site maybe twice a day, before lunch and before leaving the office). This means that the site will concentrate on presenting the most important news stories of the day on the upper part of the start page. That choice has a necessary consequence: More effort has to be put into editing than is normally the case at Scandinavian news sites – packaging, headlines, graphics, commentary.
Placing more emphasis on analysis and commentary means you need experienced journalists, so Lundsjö has recruited seniors and used their names and faces in ad campaigns.
It’s around ten years since internet journalism started to get interesting, so let’s close with Lundsjö’s five steps in the evolution of online news:
1. Stories from the printed newspaper are published on the web
2. News sites publish news directly
3. News sites offer analysis and commentary, become important in opinion formation
4. Sound and video is integrated into news sites
5. The printed newspaper becomes a supplement to the website
(So what does Undercurrent think of N24.se? Promising. I don’t like it when external links are missing though, for example from this otherwise interesting story about the pharmaceutical industry using websites as marketing tools. The site gives the impression of being too closed in on itself. The calendar presentation of stories on section pages (scroll down) is a brilliant idea.)
Nytt norsk nettfilter
Jeg har tidligere snakket endel om behovet for filtrering av webinnhold. Depesjer er et nytt initiativ som søker å gjøre med den norske mediavirkeligheten som N24 gjør med Nettavisen – “støy” om sport, krim og kjendiser skrelles vek…