In an attempt to reconnect with its readers, German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) introduced a thematic and participatory website a few weeks ago.

The translation of The Kindly Ones, a blockbuster book wherever it’s been released, landed in German bookstores last Saturday, February 23. Its controversial content (sex, Nazis and sadism) makes it a favorite conversation topic among the quality-newspaper-reading population. FAZ decided to organize this conversation.

Lately, what many consider the most boring newspaper of the known universe has seen its readership figures decline steeply. Such a move, reinforcing reader involvement, could be a good idea if this venerable institution wants to compete online. Currently, FAZ.net lies at the bottom the German web and its growth is flatter than Niedersachsen, says Comscore.

The first 120 pages of the book were published as a feuilleton in the paper version. Online, the Reading Room (sic) was introduced, a minisite aiming at transferring the paper’s offline literary reputation on the web.

There, local superstar and Oscar Nominee Christian Berkel reads several chapters, available in streaming video and downloadable mp3.

More daringly, FAZ built a debate around the book, despite its poor track-record when it comes to user participation. Every day, FAZ journalists choose a topic related to the book, which is then discussed by ‘experts’ and readers, in two distinct forums.

This oh-so-old-media-like two-tier structure notwithstanding, the conversation seems very qualitative. Elegant design and crystal-clear Ajax help readability and fosters interaction.

So far, so good. The Reading Room boasts 850,000 pageviews in February and the concept was implemented on Martin Walser’s Ein Liebender Mann on Monday.

This article was written by Nicolas Kayser-Bril, one of the Online Journalism Blog’s Virtual Interns.

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The Telegraph is starting to make a habit of combining Flash and databases to impressive effect. Their latest project brings in mapping too, to produce a political map of the UK which has real depth behind its Flashy appearance.

It’s done this with some nifty database connectivity. A click on a particular constituency brings up info about the last election results. So far so-so. But a tab to the right (see detail below: surely this should be the default?) offers a ‘Public services profile’ of how health, education and crime have changed, along with (currently empty) spaces for related articles and links. If and when this works it promises the sort of connectivity that has been lacking from so much online journalism. But will they be brave enough to link to reports on other sites?

Other features include the Swingometer (see how different swings affect the results), previous results, and lists of vulnerable seats – all of which are now expected, having been done before by the BBC among others (as I reported in the mists of 2005) – while the links to the latest polls add something extra.

Meanwhile, usability is smooth with postcode search, drop-down, and zoom feature, plus the ability to ‘mark’ an area.

Telegraph.co.uk’s Editor Marcus Warren says the tool was prepared for last autumn’s “General Election that wasn’t. It would have been ready for the closing weeks of the campaign but in the end the Prime Minister thought better of going to the country so we pursued the project at a slightly less breakneck speed and launched in the political “new year”.

“It’s also part of a more general drive, both by us and elsewhere, to drill down to the local level and exploit data relevant to our audience’s lives. We also wanted to the tool to be “fun”. (Originally, for example, the images of the party leaders were caricatures.)”

While acknowledging the influence of the likes of “Start Swinging” with Peter Snow, Warren says there has been no one model “that made us exclaim: “we want one of them too”. Like everyone else, we’ve been keeping an eye on the digital election campaigns in Australia and the US, both Google’s approach and that of others. World Archipelago have done a great job in building the thing, as have the people here who worked on it.”

The most frustrating thing at the moment about the map is simply the fact that there is no election on yet, which gives the Telegraph team plenty of time to respond to feedback, iron out problems, try new ideas, find out about others through the blogosphere (Warren admits to not being aware of Electoral Calculus until Simon Dickson’s post) and be all mysterious about their plans. As Warren says:
“There are lots of clues in there which hint at what else we plan to do with it. And we have other surprises up our sleeve as well.”

For my part I’d like to see some individual RSS feeds/mobile alerts for constituencies and some tapping into the power of tagging – perhaps automated grabs of delicious bookmarks with clusters of key words in them (or indeed which key words become popular), or getting Telegraph journalists to tag their sources with a particular phrase that is picked up by the engine. But I’m being fussy. What do you think?

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So the Independent has relaunched its website. At first glance there’s nothing spectacularly new or innovative, but a deeper look reveals some intelligent changes – particularly on the business side of things. Here are the headlines:

• A much more prominent place for RSS feeds, ‘Most popular’ (read/emailed/commented), videos, podcasts, blogs, (‘Just posted’ and ‘Catch up with our experts’), photo galleries, poll, etc. Which is as you’d expect.
• Likewise, there’s the now customary ‘Digg it/Stumbleupon/Facebook/delicious’ box on every article (plus change font size/print/email).
• ‘In the News’ navigation choice drops down to big stories of the moment. Not as striking as Sky and The Guardian, who are able to include those stories as a navigation choice in their own right.
• Editorial nous remains important as ‘Editor’s Choice’ becomes even more prominent (in comparison, ‘Most popular’ lies below the fold). The ‘Day in a page’ drop-down menu (presumably for people who missed the news that day and want to catch up) remains but drops to the bottom.
• Open House is described as an “online debating chamber where our diverse stable of columnists and commentators come together to discuss the issues of the day – and invite you to join in.” Looks like an attempt at cloning commentisfree.
• IndyBest micro-site brings together “The Independent’s ever-popular weekly 50 Best features and the daily 10 Best series”. Are they annoyed ShortList came up with the idea first?
• Weather is more customisable.
• But most noteworthy is the fact that the Independent are targeting new niche markets with new online-only sections including Art & Architecture, Fashion, Gadgets & Tech and Health & Wellbeing.
• Also notable: Offers gets its own page and navigation button, as does Student. And just as The Guardian prepares to invest in its own coverage in the area, Environment now makes it to the Inde’s top level of navigation.
• Finally, we see a commercial application of mapping in the Inde’s property service, and automated quotes from Xelector both integrated into editorial pages.

The final verdict? Clearly the Inde has its business head screwed on, while managing to tick all the boxes a newspaper should have been ticking last year in terms of technology. Editorially, however, it’s still trailing its broadsheet competitors in terms of making the most of the possibilities of the medium, with The Telegraph doing exciting things with databases and Flash, and The Guardian excelling on blogging and podcasting. Still, at least The Independent prints links to other sites in its newspaper, which is something its competitors have never done well.

And for the record, here’s what it looked like on January 4, before the revamp:

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Today sees the Guardian Unlimited finally getting the makeover it’s been desperately needing since the print product made ‘Berliner’ a polite topic of conversation. For the moment it’s only the front page – as creative editor Mark Porter explains, it “will be a facade concealing a busy building site, as work proceeds on an 18-month programme to redesign and rebuild every part of GU.”

And GU editor-in-chief Emily Bell adds: “an iterative approach is the best. The days when one design or set of functionality on a website lasted for several years is gone, and our aim, with the help of our users, is to constantly improve and update the network, from the story pages to the section and network fronts.”

The design itself is what you’d expect from contemporary newspaper website design – cleaner and clearer (I’d have put money on the Georgia font), with bigger images and more width. It’s not a major change from the old design in terms of content – although the biggest weakness in usability terms is a ridiculously long page you have to scroll down five times to see in its entirety (and that’s on a decent resolution monitor). Yes, multimedia content is more prominent with a box of its own, but still not on the first ‘page’ of content (it’s below the fold, in old parlance).

And was it a coincidence they relaunched on the day Tony Blair is expected to resign? A clever move, if not.

Clearly both Emily and Mark have had a long night – their posts are time-stamped at 1.05 and 1.06am – so hopefully they’ll be enjoying a hard-earned rest this weekend.

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That seems to be the subtext of Pearson chief executive Dame Marjorie Scardino’s statement,  as the Guardian reports that FT.com is likely to continue to rely on subscription revenues:

“As debate online has become more diffuse – hundreds of thousands or millions of voices on each topic – it has become less helpful in a way,” she said. “The trend now online seems to be some sort of mediation and we think we might have a role there.”

[...] “she said that the 90,000 subscribers to FT.com represent a “rarified audience” including senior figures in business and politics across the world and “We have found that to some extent with the quality of audience we have got we can provoke the discussion”.”

And to think some people used to dream that the internet would give a voice to those without power…

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