Ok so I left for lunch on Friday promising to post back looking at some current student newspaper websites that are currently online. Well it’s now two days later, and I guess you could say that I took a pretty long lunch break. In reality, work combined with watching my United boys embarrass themselves at Old Trafford, today of all days, is the real excuse.
After analysing some mainstream newspaper sites, I decided to focus in on how other students are doing it. If my class are to produce a successful incarnation of Canvas then it would be wise to look at the competition. Googling ’student newspaper websites’ proved very fruitful (good ol’ google). Funnily enough, it took me to a post on another student journo’s blog, Dave Lee’s jBlog. Turns out he’s the editor of his university newspaper ‘The Linc’, and back in August he decided to attempt to put it online via a website. The post is great, as it links to various other student websites and discusses what he thinks are ‘must-haves’ for a newspaper website. Definitely worth a look!
His post directs you to a number of sites. The first, and in my view the best, is Oxford Uni’s Cherwell 24. I agree with Dave that the content may not be entirely suitable in places, but hey – we got the content sorted. The layout and design is spot on. The main navigation bar is suitably incorporated with the top banner, with the main content highlighted in the centre. An automatic/manual multi-headline mechanism at the very top of the page is a great way for a site to focus on a number of main stories, whilst the site and blogs seem to be kept very up-to-date, with new stories and post appearing nearly on a daily basis. Multimedia videos, polls and a print archive are all great features that our site should attempt to re-create.
Dave goes on to look at Cardiff’s Gair Rhydd and UClan’s Pluto. There is also his own newspaper’s site, theLinc, which since his post now seems to be well established. All three, unlike the Cherwell site, uses the left hand column to hold the main navigation. The Giar Rydd is the more modern looking of all the sites, with plenty of white space, and a content area that seems a lot less cluttered than others. Larger text and pictures highlight the main stories at the top, with smaller text and accompanying pictures used to display the smaller stories on the main homepage. This type of layout that reflects editorial choices on the site is something that we could draw inspiration from for our site.
UClan’s Pluto and the Linc are very similar sites, in that they are relatively small scale, and are focused strongly on text. Although this approach would be easier for us to adopt at first, I feel we should attempt to have a strong visual presence with our site, so as to reflect our status as a cutting edge, up-and-coming art university.
Keeping our original Canvas masthead from the paper is essential in order to build on our brand, whilst this could be aided by keeping a running appropriate colour scheme throughout the site. If we kept our original headings from the paper, News, Sport, Lifestyle, Entertainment etc. then this could form the basis of our nav bar, and enable us to create a multi-page site. Recent leads within each section could be highlighted on our main hompage, with our big lead splash at the top. I agree with Dave that blogs and multimedia are essential to have on the site, and it may be an idea to talk to some of the radio students to arrange the publication of some of their popular podcasts. I like the idea of .pdf of our current Canvas issue to be accessible on the site, so that’s another thing to try and attempt.
More research is clearly needed, but for now I feel I have a rough idea of where we should be heading. Students like Dave Lee have set the benchmark by which we can measure how successful our site can become. I’ll let you know how we progress.
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