The other newspaper in town, the Centre Daily Times is our competitor so it’s probably not fair for me to comment on them either.

Which leaves my “hometown” newspaper — The Washington Post. I prefer the paper’s design to that of the New York Times which I think sometimes has too many one column stories on the front.

Online, the Post does an equally, if not even greater, job of presenting the news and providing plenty of multimedia content. The front site is amazingly easy to navigate with a photo in the left hand corner to draw the reader in and then a one column view of the top news with small text and links to stories near the bottom of the page.

It also appears that the Post is now twittering live sports but has somehow added the feed directly to their Web site thereby eliminating the need for readers to navigate away from washingtonpost.com to view the feed. This is great because it eliminates the view of some editors that using Twitter during live events could direct traffic away from the main site. As an editor, I would continue to push the use of Twitter, expanding it to other events, such as White House press conferences, Supreme Court hearings among other news events.

The Post has been great about adding video and audio content online and its easy to find stories with such content from the front of the site because of the icons that lead the way. A video and photo gallery bar is located near the end of the page — perhaps that could be moved up for made vertical so that it could fit in the large amount of white space the Post has to the right of the page.

Another great thing about the Post is that it frequently sets up Q & A’s between the reporters and readers, especially with more interesting or investigative stories.

One thing that has to go is the multiple pages for articles. With the Internet, this is no longer necessary as text can virtually go on forever. It’s annoying to have to click to go to the next page and sometimes I don’t read the story past the first part because of that.

For some stories, the Post will prompt you to login or sign up but the site is so good that taking a few minutes to sign up is well worth the time. I’ve been using the site this way for years and only occasionally have to sign in when I’m on a different computer.

Overall, the Post should be what local papers strive to imitate, albeit with a much smaller staff.

Katharine Lackey is a Penn State student, Daily Collegian copy editor and Northern Virginia native who blogs at “Beyond Print: Into the Prism“

Lisbon, Portugal 
From: 21/09/2008 - until: 30/09/2008
For the first time ever the Youth Press PORTUGAL, together with the European Youth Press and its associations, is organising a Summer Media Course. 
This academy will be a unique opportunity for 40 young journalists from all around Europe to experience journalism and media on an international environment with a totally new approach: the Summer Media Course is run by young people for young people. 
During the course the participants will attend one of the four workshops available: 
1. TV: will be chosen on the first working day which kind of TV product the participants want to produce (documentary, talk show, daily information, cultural and educational show, etc.) 
2. Radio: the participants will work on a one-day-schedule of a radio station: information, entertainment, interviews, music, agenda, curiosities, etc. It will be a life radio programme for 1½ hours on the last day of the workshop. 
3. Press: a newspaper or a magazine will be created. General or specialised that will be what the participants will decide. The layout and the number of pages and publicity are already defined. The participants just need to agree on a main common subject to work on. As all printed magazines and newspapers there are space and words limits. 
4. Photography: to be defined on the first day one or more subjects to shoot about. The idea is to build up one or various photo-reportages and publish them on a photo book. The topic to shoot on is up to be fixed on the day one. The idea is to have Media School photo reportage as well. 
On the last four days of the Media School, the participants will be mixed up in some other four groups, but this time they will all work on the same: the building up of a website. 
If you’re between 18 and 25 years and are active in the field of media, come and join us!
For more information email gina_davies1@hotmail.com

If anyone takes up Gina’s offer, be sure to let us know how it all goes.

“Bergens Tidende, our local paper, has a shining example today of how a local newspaper can gather and report local news simultaneously by coordinating reader participation in a very easy-to-contribute mashup focusing on an issue of huge importance to Bergeners right now, though it’s of absolutely no wider interest”, writes Jill Walker Rettberg, an associate professor at the University of Bergen, on her blog.

That issue is traffic: Bergen, a city on the west coast of Norway, is currently building a light rail system through Bergen, and the road works and constantly changing detours are causing major traffic problems.

“We decided to do something different to report on the exasperating traffic situation in the city, ” Jan Stian Vold of Bt.no told me.

What the news site came up with, in addition to their normal coverage, was a Google Map where readers could plot in where they encountered traffic problems.

It asked its readers: ‘Where are the bottlenecks in the Bergen-traffic? How does the construction of the light rail system effect you?’

Rettberg is also rather impressed by the anti-spam measures: “You enter your mobile phone number and instantly receive an SMS with a code that you then type into the website to confirm that you’re an actual person and that you’re a different person to all the other people who’ve entered their comments,” she writes.

This works as an efficient way of identifying people as all mobile phone numbers are registered by law in Norway.

Requiring users to register does raise the threshold for participation, but this has not deterred Bergeners, as around 400 people reporting their traffic problems so far, according to Vold.

The calendar merges events published in the Times Agenda covering world affairs, business, arts and sport - all colour-coded.

Data from other news sections will be added and if you’ve already got a personal Google calendar you can add dates from the agenda to your own.

The service was featured as a daily recommendation from Yahoo for new apps to add to the homepage.

Islam said it was not part of a deal between the two companies, just a pleasant surprise.

No, it was in the Guardian. One end of the mini-magazine is men’s content, turn it the other way and the other end is women’s, with a feature on ‘Ten looks from the old and wiser’ that tells us ‘all of these handsome folk are 100 years old or more. There are some nice great-grandmas and lovely great-grandpas. With age comes wisdom…’

Is this a new promotion from the Guardian or has it been done before?

Apparently, there have been 15 issues of the men’s and 28 issues of the women’s mag that have been purchased by consumers at £4.95 a pop. We’d like to hear from people who have read it in full.

The magazine’s website is minimalist, but you can subscribe over at the magazine cafe.

Journalism.co.uk is putting an early birthday request in for a single copy: online, the women’s magazine is priced £10.96, and the men’s is £8.86. Type ‘Ten’ in the search box, under the category men’s and women’s interest to find it.

That figure represents a 124 percent increase on their previous highest day - February 21 - when it streamed the debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

In other news, another release announced the appointment of CNN’s first vice president of international digital services: Nick Wrenn, current managing editor for Europe, Middle East & Africa. Although based in Atlanta, Wrenn will manage all of the digital content outside of the US in his new role, bringing together CNN.com/international and mobile with its broadband services.

Wrenn will report to Tony Maddox, executive vice president and managing director of CNN International.

“Our digital services are playing an increasingly important part in the growth of CNN International and this new position ensures that they will be leveraged and incorporated into our current business appropriately,” said Maddox in the statement.

As for me, I blog at bydanielvictor.com when I’m not working as a reporter at The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News.)

Though I’ve only been to the Journal and Courier site when linked there by Watling, the design is already known to me. Since it’s a Gannett paper, it looks just like other Gannett news sites I’ve recently visited such as The Des Moines Register, Cherry Hill Courier-Post or the Wilmington News-Journal.

– First things first: I really like the front page design. A lot. It crams an impressive amount of headlines on the front page, even “above the fold,” without feeling overwhelming. It simultaneously promotes the staff’s breaking news online and their work for the print edition. It doesn’t take a lot of hunting to get all the headlines I would need.

My favorite feature is the scrollable “Breaking News” box. A bit misnamed, yes, but effective in that you can scroll down at 11 p.m. and see headlines all the way back to early that morning. That works around the problem many other news sites have of listing only five or so headlines on the front page, which means the reporter who hustled to get an important story online at 10 a.m. might have her work buried by noon. No such problem here.

– Now, to an annoyance. After I clicked on a few stories, I got this dreaded screen that I mistakenly thought was left in the yesteryear of news sites:

Had I not been on a quest, I likely would have A) indignantly closed out the window, or B) Made up a bunch of stuff. But I work for a newspaper company, so I would never do such a thing. Everyone else, though, would just be highly annoyed by this extra gateway. I’m very skeptical that it would provide any significant, reliable information, anyway. That’s what analytics are for.

Also, an interesting wording in that description you probably skipped over: “To help us keep jconline.com available to all users free of charge, please answer the following questions.” Really? Gannett is openly suggesting charging for content is an option? And “free of charge” is redundant. It’s just “free.”

– Now, as part of the media elite, I have a lot of dispensable income that I’d like to spend somewhere in Lafayette. If only I could find a business somewhere trying to grab my attention. I should be able to check the front page of the biggest online news source in town and find someone who wants my ridiculous amount of extra money, right?

Nope. No ads. “Hey, maybe we should have ads on the front page of the site” strikes me as the 2008 version of the “Hey, maybe we should have a blog or two on the site” insight of yesteryear.

– One feature of the site that I’m very impressed by: The user profile. Take Jack Lahrman, apparently an active user of the site. Through that one link, you can learn a bit about who he is, see all of his blog posts and comments or leave him messages.

Doesn’t look like the community has really caught on to its usefulness, but as I’ve written before, it’s important to develop these profile pages. They’re going to be a key part of the future.

– Unfortunately, a big demerit: The site doesn’t promote its blogging very well. At first, I didn’t see any blogs linked on the front page, but I eventually found them by hovering over a far-down, small icon that I guess looks like a pen over a sheet of paper. If I didn’t happen to be specifically searching for blogs, I would have never found them. I don’t even get a link to the Purdue football blog on the Sports front — I have to actually go to the Purdue page for that.

Once I find the Purdue football blog, I’m disappointed to see the design has made it very difficult to enjoy. I need to scroll past the author’s biography to get to his content, meaning I’ll notice one of his favorite movies before I notice his insight on the football program. That content is awkwardly teased by just two sentences, which often isn’t enough to draw readers into an entry. And once I click on his entry, I again have to scroll past his who-cares bio to get to the meat.

That’s a lot of work this Web site is expecting of me, especially when some of the blogs are updated just once per week. Or if it’s the publisher and editor’s blog, once a month. That’s a shame, because I love reading blogs from editors and I think the readers would enjoy reading it more often.

– Other quick-hits:

Once logged in, it’s nice and easy to leave comments at the bottom of articles, and even easier to read other comments.

I don’t really understand why the second and third graf of each story is slightly indented. Kinda distracting and confusing.

The mobile site, as accessed from my Blackberry Pearl is simple and quick.

I’m encouraged by a few podcasts that are evidently produced by the staff.

Like the blogs, videos are hard to find if you’re not looking for them. However, a video about a motorcycle was nicely attached to the story about it.

I can easily find a form to submit a story tip, or contact a specific person in the newsroom.

VERDICT: I give it a B-. If your priority is to quickly scan and access the news of the day, this site does it better than most out there.

What it lacks, though, is the kind of innovation that will push the newspaper’s brand forward. It has to better package its Web-only content and show why the site can become more than a place to stop for news.

In July, Journalism.co.uk reported that Guardian News & Media had bought ContentNext, behind paidcontent.org, paidContent:UK and the Indian news site contentSutra.com.

An early report by the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD column reported that according to sources it was a figure ‘north of $30 million.’

The deal marked a ’significant expansion’ of GNM’s US presence, a press statement said at the time.

In July, Journalism.co.uk reported that Guardian News & Media had bought ContentNext, behind paidcontent.org, paidContent:UK and the Indian news site contentSutra.com.

An early report by the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD column reported that according to sources it was a figure ‘north of $30 million.’

The deal marked a ’significant expansion’ of GNM’s US presence, a press statement said at the time.

Fitz & Jen Give You the Business, written by editor-at-large Mark Fitzgerald and associate editor Jennifer Saba; and The E&P Pub, which will take contributions from all staff, went fully live today.

Because E&P’s main site doesn’t allow article comments, selected articles will be republished on the blog, an announcement by E&P said.

Former LA Times staff writer T. Christian Miller joins the organisation as reporter, while Dan Nguyen, a reporter/web developer for the Sacramento Bee, becomes web producer.

Lisa Schwartz, previously an ABC News staffer and freelance researcher, has been named research director and completes the site’s aim to have 24 full-time reporters and editors.

Interns with the site Benjamin Protess and Sharona Coutts have also be named as fellows, a release from ProPublica said.