Saturday 12 July 2008

Moving (slowly) towards web-first

We reached what felt like a huge milestone for me in our weekly news meeting yesterday. For the first time, we started discussing web coverage of some stories in depth - and more importantly, when they would be published. We're lucky in Croydon that there's usually enough breaking news around to keep the site moving through the week. But if you rely on just that, your readers end up with a fairly repetitive diet of court, council and calls.

Because the new site goes live on Tuesday night, I've managed to get the green light to break a really strong story we would usually hold on Wednesday morning. It involves two or three elements which really push our readers' buttons, so I'm predicting it will do really well.

But without wanting to seem ungrateful, it still really goes against the grain to be holding off until Wednesday a story we've pretty much got in the bag already. Ho hum.

P.S. For anyone coming to this from the link Ian Carter posted in his blog yesterday, be warned: I'm unlikely to discuss many Croydon issues here. But to make up for that, and as he did kind-of promise to post the link to the preview of our new site and then not do that before going off on holiday, here it is (ta-da!). Please bear in mind there's still quite a lot of work to do at the mo.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yay! Looks quite good actually and I'll have a read a bit later, but your link is wrong - it should be http://beta.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/