Moving Offline News Online

There are several major headspace changes needed for broadcasters or print publishers trying to expand onto the Internet. The two most important changes follow:

1. Each member of your online audience controls the order in which he or she views your site. It is better to think of a Web site as an information index built on the principle of information layering than as an online version of what you are already doing in print or on the air.

2. A local publication or broadcaster competes only with other local publishers or broadcasters. This is not true on the Internet, where readers are only one click away from NBC, The New York Times, Financial Times, and every other online information source in the whole world. You had better have something unique to bring to the online table or no one is going to be interested in your Web site when he or she can just as easily get the news from a world class source as from yours.

Okay, so you're producing a local TV news show. Assuming you're a network affiliate, you might as well get your Web site's national and international content from your network. The cost of duplicating their coverage would be insane. But what you can do on your site, that your network and CNN and The New York Times can't do, is provide background for local stories you report, essentially information layering, with your over-the air story being the first layer. Try this:

1. Run a 30-second on-air story about a zoning controversy on the west side of downtown, with a standup report from the City Council chamber. Subtitle: "more at" ournewssite.com and a voice announcement, "Learn more about today's zoning dispute at ournewssite.com" at the close of the story segment.

2. Place a headline and summary paragraph on the front page of ournewssite.com that approximates or is the on-air story script, with a "read more" link attached to it.

3. On a separate page on your Web site, supply deeper background information. This information should include links to City Council transcripts and public zoning records if they're available.

4. The online version of the story should contain a photo or two (video capture is okay) of City Council members and other parties involved in the zoning dispute. Put thumbnails (very small photos) on the main page of the site in order to keep loading time reasonable, and larger versions on the page for that particular story. If budget permits, make a streaming video clip or two available in RealPlayer format, because RealPlayer is the only online streaming media software that is available for almost every popular operating system in use today.

What we've done is use the on-air story as the first information layer, with that layer essentially duplicated in text on the station Web site's front page. Readers who aren't terribly interested in this story can glance past those few brief words and go on to other stories, while those who want to know more about zoning can click on a link and get either a deeper, more complete story (the one you'd have aired if you had more time available for it) and links to public records that go into great and tedious detail. Plus assuming you have the budget to produce and deliver streaming video you offer video clips that both include and go beyond the on-air story.

Following this pattern gives your viewers a number of choices, depending on their level of interest in this story. You have provided not just news, but a fully-layered information resource about a story that The New York Times is unlikely to cover (unless you're in New York, of course), and you have created unique Web content that gives your audience a reason to use your Web site.

Follow this same procedure over and over, day after day, and your site will develop a following that will make it worth your ad sales force's time to market your Web site to local advertisers, either on its own or along with on air sponsorships.

A newspaper site can do the same thing, perhaps replacing a TV station's streaming video clips with links to stories the paper has previously published about the subject of today's story. Some newspapers charge to retrieve older content and some don't, but it is probably good practice to make links to older stories that are directly relevant to today's story free for site viewers who get to them by following links from your most recent headliners.

Besides linking to your own material, link freely to relevant material published elsewhere. Some Web publishers worry about sending site visitors away. Don't fall into this trap. If your content is viable and even-handed, your site users will come back. Comprehensive lists of links to outside sources, especially public records, academic studies, and other in-depth information produced by non-journalistic entities, will accentuate your publication's reputation for honest and all-encompassing news delivery.