Ben Harrow, a student in my undergraduate online journalism classes, has written a blog post about the environmental news RSS feeds of some of the national newspapers.

It appears that the Telegraph ‘recycling’ RSS feed hasn’t been updated in 3 months (even during the Copenhagen talks), while

“The Daily Mail has upwards of 30 RSS feeds, each updating you on a celebrity of your choice. But no environment feed. Nothing.”

So what does a newspaper’s RSS feeds say about its priorities? Any other examples?

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Earlier this year, Yale Environment 360 launched as an environmental, online-only publication with an international audience in mind. The articles cover global and national environmental issues and concerns.  Allison White spoke to Editor Roger Cohn about the publication’s online goals for the magazine and its audience.

Why did you choose to go solely online? What are the benefits and draw backs?

We chose to go solely online for two reasons: the first is that we saw it as a way to reach a wider and truly international audience.  We are covering global environmental issues, and we are looking to have readers internationally. 

Also, we are published at Yale University, and Yale has made a priority of being a global university.

The second reason we didn’t also do a print magazine in addition to the online magazine, is that there would have been significantly more costs involved.

As for the benefits of this approach, it enables us to reach an international audience.

The drawbacks? Maybe that we don’t have a print version to promote our brand, but I don’t really think that’s a significant problem.

What kind of user community do you plan on building with the site?

We are looking to build a user community of informed, but not expert, readers who follow environmental issues – environmentalists, scientists, policy makers, academics, “green” businesspeople, and people who simply have a strong interest in these issues.

We look to bridge the gap between academic online journals on the environment and more popular, green lifestyle sites.

How will people interact with your content?

We have a comment area at the end of each article, and it’s turning into a place where users can engage in some fairly robust comment.  So far, in our first four months of operation, we’ve had over 350 comments posted, with numerous highly spirited and informed discussions.

We are planning to expand the interaction on the site, with authors of articles engaging in discussions with readers and with experts debating each other on the site.

Who is your audience and how do you think that affects how users interact with your site?

Our audience, as I noted above, are informed, but not expert, readers who follow environmental issues – environmentalists, scientists, policy makers, academics, “green” businesspeople, and people who have a strong interest in these issues.

I think our audience feels passionately about many of the issues we cover, and so I think we have the opportunity to engage readers more in interacting with the site.

What are your plans for the online publication, especially considering involving readers (if at all)?

We intend to include more multimedia – video, slideshows, and audio.  The subject we cover, the environment, lends itself well to visual approaches.

We also will seek to expand the opportunities for discussion and comment on the site, particularly with making authors available to discuss issues with users.

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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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