NPR Dials into Mid-Day News Diets with Site Redesign
The new NPR.org.
This is not your father’s NPR.
This morning NPR rolled out a redesigned NPR.org — a booming answer to anybody who thinks that NPR news content will never outgrow the morning and evening car radio commuter traffic.
The new design is spare — lots of white space and lowercase type throughout — but functional. A genius new feature on the homepage allows users to connect to their local stations while remaining plugged-in to the fresh crop of news content, largely in text, on the NPR national site. Increased mobile usability functions will be rolled out later this summer.
NPR News executive editor Dick Meyer and Kinsey Wilson, who leads the outfit’s digital media efforts, posted a ‘Note to the NPR Community’ about the changes:
[W]e didn’t change NPR.org lightly. We’ve listened to your suggestions – and a few complaints. And we’ve taken the first step to build a new NPR.org that is more, well, NPR-ish.
The site is exactly that: NPR-ish. Drawing traffic doesn’t have to mean splashy headlines and sexy photos (don’t expect to see NPR on Sex Watch anytime soon). Sometimes it can just mean National Georgraphic photoessays with narration (if you know what’s good for you).
The old NPR.org (credit: Society of Publication Designers).
Written articles will be featured more prominently as part of NPR’s rethinking of content for the web. Kinsey told the New York Times that mid-day news consumption is more “text-driven.” Even so, NPR won’t be looking to enter into direct competition with the more established likes of CNN. Instead, the site will focus on areas where NPR reporters are “particularly authoritative.”
The Web site will flip “from being a companion to radio to being a news destination in its own right,” Ms. Schiller said.
It will not be as comprehensive as some sites, like CNN’s, are, Mr. Wilson said, but will “concentrate on areas where we can be particularly authoritative.” He added, “We’re not in a battle for share with established players who’ve been doing this for 15 years.
Back in April, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller spoke to our own Glynnis MacNicol about her ambitions regarding NPR.org and she certainly sounded as though she was eager to take on the big boys:
As far as NPR.org — sure, I want the traffic to increase, but to me the ultimate goal is not just bringing people to this walled garden that is NPR.org. The idea is to create this network. And then once that is set up, I want to count traffic for the whole thing, and aggregate that into one number. And you know what, once we do that, we’re going to be right in there with the top five.
Certainly sounds like they want to compete with the “established players.” And anyway, how many people at CNN can boast 700,000-plus Twitter followers!
Just to give you a sense of what you can expect when you visit the site: So far today the death of choreographer Merce Cunningham has been the top story, complemented by a smart cut of international and U.S. political news.
Guided tour of the redesigned site with NPR Scott Simon here.
