The Telegraph and web 2.0

The national newspaper website I chose to analyse was The Telegraph.
The Telegraph also known as the Tory graph because of its favour in supporting the Tory party, was the first national paper to launch a website. The editor of the newspaper and those working on the site claim it to be the best national newspaper website online with the most to offer their target readership. For this reason I decided to analyse the website and its use of web 2.0 to see if this was true.

Web 2.0 is all about user control, but just as importantly it is about interactivity. Web 2.0 allows for viewers to feel more involved and in control, it allows for a community. It acknowledges that users don’t just simply read news on sites they use it in various ways, many of them being social.

Most of the articles and content featured on The Telegraph’s website has been taken from the newspaper and repurposed for its use online. However, it is clear that some of the content has specifically been included for the website only.
The website uses a variety of multimedia as a way of showcasing some of the repurposed content from either the newspaper or other media platforms. For example they provide viewers with news via audio, still pictures, animation or video. Of course by including such a variety of multimedia, gives the website a lot more variation, it allows different stories repurposed for the site to be presented to the best of both the stories and the webs potential. If all content were simply put on screen using text, it would be extremely dull and less interesting.

One particular form of multimedia that I feel The Telegraph website makes great use of is videos. The website has a section titled Telegraph TV, which allows viewers to watch a number of different news stories in the form of a video. The videos included have been specifically put together for the use of the Telegraphs website. Once again viewers are able to email the video footage, as well as get the link/code, which allows the viewer to share news, again forming a community, as well as allowing more interactivity for the viewer.

Here is a list of web 2.0 ideas and tools used on The Telegraph website.

Rss feeds (really simple syndication,)available in the Rss 2.0 format: The feeds contain article headlines, links and description. It is updated as the website is updated. The feeds can be viewed using specialist news, readers either on the desktop or online. This allows for readers to be constantly updated on specific news from The Telegraph, in turn constantly connecting them to news. The telegrph offers 24 different news and feature Rss feeds. The tool is found in the top right hand corner of the top bar, it is not easily noticeable, however, it has the standard orange Rss logo, that is easily identifiable. When displayed in a browser the Rss feeds have a style sheet attached to them, which informs users of how to use the feed in a News reader.

Customised alerts: Similar to RSS feeds customer alerts sends news alerts of the viewers choice straight to their desktop. The use of such alerts allows for more interactivity and user control, which is of course the idea behind web 2.0. Also this tool allows for community.

Flash: This tool is mainly used for advertising but is often also used for some news story headlines that flash along the top or bottom of the page. Using this specific web 2.0 tool, helps grab the reader’s attention, as your eyes are immediately drawn to the flashing text or imagery. Using flash helps highlight the importance of the news, but also it is also a fun way to present news, rather them simply have bog standard text, using flash adds more character and fun to the page.

Comment and Feedback: Both are found at the end of every article. Allowing viewers to add their own comment allows for them to feel more involved, which of course increases interactivity. By allowing viewers to leave their own comments, helps encourage discussion, in turn allowing the formation of a community, which is born from web 2.0.

Links: Links are not included within the main text. By choosing to do this The Telegraph website is able to ensure that they are not sending traffic away from their site to another. However, at the bottom of each article is a related stories links, which allows readers to read other related stories on the website, viewers navigate around the site.

Blogs and User Comment: By clicking onto a button viewers are quickly allocated to the newspapers blog page, which is separate from the papers website. The blog page allows viewers to read different journalists comments. The blogs also include social book marking, as well as RSS feeds. They are laid with a separate navigation bar to the rest of the website, allowing users to easily navigate to other blogs on offer.
Viewers are also given the opportunity to leave their own personal comments as well as include the same links to social book marking and social news as regular stories. Again they allow their readers to submit the content to the five social book marking sites on offer.
The website includes a ‘Welcome to my-telegraph’, which allows readers to start their own blog, join debates and bookmark articles. This adds to the interactivity and community side of the website, by including this, the website provides the reader with more control and involvement.
Similar to the blogs, which allows for more interactivity, involvement and user control The Telegraph website also includes a section called ‘Speakers corner’, which is where viewers can join a forum to air views on topics in the news. To share opinions readers can simply type a message directly into a comment box.

Social book marking: At the end of every article on the site, are hyperlinks, which allow the users to use social book marking and social news links including, del.ioio.us, Dig, Newsvine, NowPublic, Reddit or Fark. These social book marking links allow for viewers to look further into a particular story they may find of interest, as well as share the information.

Including a great deal of web 2.0 helps the Telegraphs website target a more varied readership. Different people want different things from a website so including a varied amount of web 2.0 tools to repurpose content is important.
However, as I have already stated above, The Telegraph website believe themselves to be the best national paper website, which explains why they have invested in many tools and ideas along side those like web 2.0.

Other tools The Telegraph website use include:

e.power: This tool is powered by Newspaperdirect inc. It allows viewers to read the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph at anytime. It is available to users of the website at home or at work and is the same edition as the printed edition of the newspaper. Such a device is extremely useful and successful because once again it gives the reader more control providing them with the chance to read articles they may have missed from previous papers.

Looking at the print version of The Daily Telegraph it is clear that it is a very traditional paper. However, the newspaper is keen for its website to target a more varied age group with particular interest in appealing to more younger viewers.
The newspapers website in my opinion attempts to do this by including much more content to the site then what is offered in the paper. For example they include, fantasy football (to target young boys), fashion, (perhaps for young girls) and also other sections including, ‘Family’, digital life, education and a variety of different games.
Overall, I think that the Telegraph website makes good use of web 2.0. The site covers a wide range of topics, which help in engaging a more varied audience, but also they show their willingness to get readers involved by offering a number of Rss feeds as well as social book marking. It is clear that The Telegraph have invested heavily to compete online.

Web 2.0 strategies for Canvas site

Including web 2.0 tools to the Canvas website I feel will be extremely important to the site. Web 2.0 encourages interactivity and community, which I feel is important for any website and in particular a student website.
Our aim as a group was to create a website that would both engage and involve its users, but most importantly our aim was to create a site that was student focused and able to provide students with what they want. Alongside many other attributes that we will include to the site, including a variety of web 2.0 tools will in my opinion help us in fulfilling our aims for the site.

Here is a list of web 2.0 tools I think would be beneficial for the Canvas online site.

Flash: I think we can use this particular tool to add a sense of character to our page. Flash images or words grab readers attention, it is a more fun and entertaining way of presenting something. Although if we do use it, it is important that we do not over do it, too much flash can become distracting and rather annoying.

Comment boxes: This is a good tool to use because it allows for interactivity, which is important for a student site, as it is important to get students involved. The print publication of Canvas can of course not offer that much interactivity because it is not as fast, expedient or as instant as the web, which is why it is so important that we take full advantage of the opportunity to get readers involved. However, we will have to be extra cautious, as there is the possibility of people posting things of an offensive nature. To overcome this problem I think it is important that we make people fill in a form detailing their name and age and email address etc to before they are able to leave comments. Also we should include a word limit of around 1000 words per comment. All this will help in preventing people posting things that are unacceptable. However, we will still most likely need to have someone that frequently checks the comments.

RSS feeds: Again this would be a useful tool because it allows for viewers to be particular about what news that want. RSS feeds keep readers regularly updated with new news headlines and news stories, ensuring that they are always well informed. Therefore people will always be linked to with our site.
However, because our site is most likely to be updated weekly this tool may not be as much an essential as the others because of there will not enough new information being provided as there would have been had it been updated daily. If we do include them however, it is important that we ensure that the RSS feed icons are easily identifiable and easily accessible.

Search engines: This would be a good tool as it could help in navigating people around the site and to related articles. However, installing this tool could prove difficult and it is important that it doesn’t steer traffic from our site to another.

Social book marking: Although a very useful web 2.0 tool I don’t feel that it is essential that we provide it for our users. This is because the main users of our sites will be students who mainly just want to read the latest student news, features etc and leave comments. I don’t personally think they would find the time or even be bothered to post these articles to del.io.ous, Newsvine etc.

Multi-media: Including a vast amount of multi-media is a must. To help keep our audience engaged it is important that we present them with information in different ways, bog standard text can become very daunting. By adding a bit of variety to the way in which we present content will help in keeping our audience engaged.

Blogs: This is again another tool that I feel will be extremely beneficial but also successful on our Canvas website. Blogging allows for interactivity and the building of a community, which is what we want to be able to provide through our site.

An idea for a blog that I had in mind and think would be good to repurpose for the Canvas website would be the Chat back Jack column, which is a column written by a student journalist discussing issues related to society, politics and even art and culture.
Similar to the above idea I though we could also do an opinion blog that discusses recent issues featured on the website or in the paper from each different section. I believe that both these ideas would work successfully because people like to hear other people’s opinion. It sparks debates, which leads to more interactivity, if people read another persons opinion they are more likely to leave comments giving their opinion.
It would also be good if like many other newspaper websites we could allow for frequent subscribers to start their own blogs, where they could give their thoughts on topical events, although we would have to be extremely weary for any offensive activity.
There are many topics that we could have more specific blogs on which may not be one of the five sections we have included on our site such. For example we could do a blog on fashion, football, TV and show biz, the union etc. This would work because these are all topics that students would be interested in and also because there is always so much to discuss within these topics. It is important that we don’t choose to do a blog on a topic that will lack in content further down the line.
For our blogs I feel that it is important that we include Navigation is provided by author, category, and chronologically to our blogs as well as, enabling RSS feeds. I also think its important that all of Canvas’ blogging areas allow user comments.

My opinion on Student News websites

Ok, so we have just got back to uni, new term, new assesments.

This term we have two parts to our assement, the first part is to create a group website and the second to design our own websites, with whatever theme we chose.

Right now, we are working on our group assesment. We decided as a class to re-purpose our student paper, 'Canvas', into student paper website.
So, to help us with understanding how student paper sites work successfully,or perhaps unsuccessfully, Jim set us homework, which was to anaylse different University, student paper sites.

So, here I am doing my homework.

Cherwell 24, is the first sight I looked at. It is the web edition of Oxford Universities popular Cherwell rag. This website in my opinion looks very professional, it's clearly laid out and easy to navigate around.

The website has many different sections including, News, Features, Culture, Lifestyle, Sport and Science etc, giving viewers a larger variety of things to read and learn more about, as well as providing the team who puts the site together more to write about. The website takes full advantage of the webs potential by including video links and flash.

It is updated on a daily basis and features news within the University, as well as both local and national news. The site also includes a Podcast as well as more unique sections such as, 'User comment of the week' and 'Most emailed', which I feel makes the website more interesting for the viewer, as it allows them to feel more personally involved with the site, while it also gives other the chance to read about what other students think.


Gair Rhydd, Cardiff's student paper website, in my opinion looks extremely professional. Once again, as with Cherwell rag, the layout is both clear and simple. However, in comparison this website appears much tidier and clean cut, which in some senses takes away the feel of it being a student paper, as it looks more like a professional papers website.

Similar to Cherwell the website has a lot of content. The home page main content is posts of the most recent news that takes place during the week. It also includes information and work produced in subjects that are studied at the university, ie creative writing, media, politics and science & enviroment etc. As well as a website that showcases the student paper the website also has an 'about us' section and a 'contact us', which gives the impression that this website may also be the universities main website, which will of course lead to more people visiting the site.

On the home page at the top the website clearly invites students of the University to help improve the site, by giving the students the oppurtunity to post their comments regarding any issues they may have about the website, as well as a place to debate about issues raised at the university. This I feel is a good idea, as it allows the students to become more involved and gives them a chance to have their say, which will of course keep the student viewers coming back.

Lastly, the website also includes a section that allows viewers to look at past editions of the student paper, which again is a successful idea because it gives people a chance to look back at issues or stories that they might have missed, as well as giving them the opportunity to identify the changes that the paper makes throughout each edition. Plus, if the website excludes anything, which is featured in the paper it gives viewers a chance to see it.

Why I like 'Welcome to Perez Hilton' website

I am particularly fond of this website not just because it is a celebrity gossip website but because I feel that this website is fun, eye catching and extremely easy to use.

'Welcome to Perez Hilton' website is set out similar to a blog page, each article has a heading, a humorous image and a short, snappy but also detailed and friendly written piece.

I believe that this particular website successfully uses all the potentials available to us via the web. Its extravagant use of theme colour, use of hyper links and especially its use of images all add to the visual excitement of the page.

The website also provides the viewer with the use of a search engine box, which similar to hyper links allows for easy navigation around the page. The viewer can simply type what celebrity it is that they would like to get gossip on and is then immediately navigated to the page. If that's not helpful then I'm not quite sure what is.

The entire website is extremely well laid out, the page setup ensures that the reader is able to identify exactly what it is that the website has on offer for them.

For example, on the left hand side of the page the viewer is given a list of things that they can do on the website with each section clearly labelled for the reader ie, 'send tips' and 'represent'.

Whilst the right hand side is where the adverts are positioned.

One interesting factor about the adverts on this website is that all the adverts included are ones that would appeal to the specific target audience that view this website. For example some of the adverts include; adverts about diets and adverts for gay websites etc.

This I believe can be said otherwise for many other websites, which tend to have a variety of adverts advertised on the page, rather then one's that would be of particular interest to their target audience.

Each of the adverts on the ‘Welcome to Perez Hilton’ website also have hyper links included in the short text alongside it, navigating people to other websites, which they may find of interest and which generally focuses on many of the issues that feature on ‘Welcome to Perez Hilton’ website. This again allows for easy navigation and usability for the viewer.

The website also takes advantage of other advantages provided by the web including the use of multi media. For example the website includes the use of videos via the use of you tube and it also includes flashers, which are images that flash or rollover every few seconds.

This I believe not only adds to the overall effect of the website page, but it also makes the page more appealing and in some cases interesting to the viewer.

Overall, I think that the entire website is extremely user friendly, its easy on the eye and easy to use. The entire layout and use of colours also successfully work alongside the entire theme of the website, which is witty and full of hot gossip.

Analysing: Is online news reaching it's potential? By Nora Paul

I found this article extremely interesting and rather educating. Through reading this article I was able to learn of the expectations people had for the web over 10 years ago in comparison to what the web has on offer now.

Nora has gathered much evidence supporting the many expectations we have lived up to and the many that we haven’t. Although I do feel that Nora may have been slightly to vague in her discussions as many of the examples she gave were American sites, whilst in comparison I believe that many English sites are very different and in some senses do exceed the expectations that were suggested all those years ago.

In Nora’s hyper-linking section she talks of a recent check of the New York Times online, showing no stories with external links-most of which required a payment of $2.95 in order to read. This is not the case for many English sites, which I think use hyper-linking to a great extent and in my eyes use it well, many of them do not have to be paid for my the reader as Nora suggests.

However, I do agree with the fact that communication between reporter and reader is not always a two-way communication as was once hoped. This is mainly due to the fact as Nora rightly states 'some reporters find it a potential time suck.'

Nora is right in saying that people now often result to becoming part of a forum to get the personal discussion and communication they long for. This of course shows a new idea that has been introduced that was not expected or thought of ten years ago and in some sense is better than the two way communication that was once expected.

Overall, I do agree to a certain extent with what Nora is suggesting within this article. She has brought to light the fact that although the web may not have reached its full potential regarding what was expected 10 years ago, it has acknowledged the expectations and that most of them do exist just not to the level that was expected.

Having read this article I have come to the conclusion that many news companies do not take the web as seriously or see it as important as their print publication. I think that when or 'if ' these news companies do come to realise that the internet is an extremely powerful and everlasting way of providing depth and scope in many of their stories, and that many people do infact long for this informaion, then maybe all that was expected of the web would in fact come into action today.

Analysing an on-line feature

The on-line feature I choose to analyse is: An Observer magazine story about Grazia Magazine


When I first opened the page and saw the article I initially thought that this particular piece looked rather dull.
It has a basic layout with the feature piece in the centre and a variety of links on the left hand side.

There is no evidence of any form of multi-media such as engaging pictures or an enticing layout, filled with wonderful, bright colours. Instead everything just appears to be extremely basic. One could argue that this is because this is the conventional layout, (i.e.: colour scheme etc) that The Observer use, which is of course the site that this feature piece was written for.

This of course lends me to believe that neither this particular feature piece or web site in general do not use the FULL potentials provided by the web. Although, the page does take some advantage of the potential provided, such as the use of links, which allows for easy navigation around the page, taking you to ‘Recent articles’ found in the magazine (which I must say was a plus), the overall layout of the main page in which the piece was featured failed to provide a sense of excitement, which I feel is a major advantage that the web can provide and a print publication cant.

There was no use of rollovers, no use of images on the main page where the piece was featured or on any of the pages you were navigated to via the links. Although there was an advert, which was centred in the middle of the feature it had no relevance to the feature itself, which again I feel is a waste of a potential that could have been used to help add to the layout of the feature.

Focusing more on the feature piece itself I believe that it shows some evidence of the standard forms and practices of print and some unique standard and practices of its own (the web). The feature piece is detailed and lengthy, it is written in continuous prose, which I believe are the standard forms and practices of print. Similar to some print features, this feature takes on a conversational tone, successfully managing to engage the reader with writing techniques such as rhetorical questions, direct speech etc.
However, in comparison to these standard forms and practices of print, the feature piece carries the conversational tone throughout the entire feature, whereas I feel most print publications loose the conversational tone and
slowly adopt a more statistical and formal tone.

I do think that in some senses this particular feature piece adds something new that is not yet used in a print publication. Unlike a print feature which has to adopt a similar tone to the one carried throughout the particular magazine it is featured in, the feature I analysed along with other on-line features are able to adopt its very own tone and can continue this particular tone for as long as they like. By having links the feature piece is also able to set out its ideas in a systematic way without having to cram it all into the one feature piece, which is typical of a magazine feature.

I therefore again do not think that on-line features, (this on-line feature in particular) are reproducing what’s in print. On-line features can be much longer more detailed and less conventional, there is no essential word limit
and so therefore no information has to ever be sacrificed.

Overall, although I may have not found the layout chosen for this particular piece very mind stimulation, nor attractive I did find the feature extremely engaging along with the extended feature found in the links provided.

Bloggers and News gender

Having researched on Dilpazier Aslam I have been asked to consider wether or not bloggers have a positive or negative effect on news gender.

If I had been asked this question before researching Dilpaizer Aslam my answer would have probably been neither as I wouldn't have thought that bloggers would have any effect what-so-ever on news gender. However, having done my own research and learning that had it not been for bloggers and in the Dilpaizer Aslam issue one blogger in particular The Guardian probably would never found the truth about Dilpaizer Aslam. It is most likely that by the time The Guardian had found out about Dilpaier Aslam his work could have offended much more people than his first article did.

Overall, after attending an online lecture on bloggers and news gender, I have come to the conclusion that bloggers do in fact have a positive effect on news gender. Bloggers can provide information that some people and some authorities can not or did not even know existed.

In some cases bloggers can have a negative effect on news gender, but all in all I think that they have a positive effect. Just like other normal citizens bloggers are allowed to express their opinion on a certain matter within reason, if by any means this opinion has any effect on news gender then it can only enhance the news allowing people to look at it from another angle with different information that has been provided, that maybe was not.