Wheres the “Breaking News” page?
Here’s something that every newspaper site should have, yet too many don’t: a Breaking News page that includes local information. Think about the last time something relatively big happened in your community — say, a bad auto accident that seriously tied up traffic, or a spectacular building fire. It’s likely that the only way to find out about an event like that is to wait for the 5 o’clock TV news, wait for the next day’s newspaper, or if you’re lucky wait until the local newspaper Web site posts a story. Here’s the better way: The local newspaper site has a Breaking News page (or area on its home page) where notice of the bad accident is posted as soon as editors learn of it. It doesn’t have to be a full story, just a brief alert to readers who perhaps got stuck in the traffic jam and want to know what happened. This is a service that’s ideal for the Web, because it has the potential to hook people on a site. Thanks for this idea to usability expert Steve Krug, who says, “The thing
