Feb 28, 2007
I love MEN (for purely journalistic reasons)
Sorry, I couldn’t resist that headline. The Manchester Evening News (MEN) has been relaunched and – forgive me for not knowing which bits are new and which are not, but this really does look very good. Aside from the lovely clean navigation there’s clearly some attention been paid to the strengths of the web:
- Have Your Say is one of the top boxes
- There’s a ‘most read/commented’ box as well;
- ‘your pictures’ and ‘your comments’ are prominent links,
- there’s a raft of blogs.
- There’s a ‘community’ section,
- and audio and video (yes, they’re under ‘interactivity’ which isn’t really that true, but where else would they put it?). At the moment this is still ‘journalist reads headlines over still images’ but at least they’re plugging the forums (not that I could find them). The audio shows promise – an interview with Michael Ball includes a link to the full 12 minute audio.
MediaWeek reports the site has also dumped pop-ups:
“As part of the revamp, which has been a year in development, the site will also introduce more user- generated content and simplify its navigation after complaints it was too cluttered.
“The MEN’s head of online editorial, Sarah Hartley, said the dumping of pop-up and pop-under ads was a big move for the site.”
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