Endemic

User interfaces matter, and that’s something most newspapers don’t get.

But it’s something that the Mustang Daily thoroughly understands. Their site has a striking, elegant and simply beautiful design. That’s why the Mustang Daily gets this weeks College High Five.

The design is even more striking when one considers that MustangDaily.net is powered by College Publisher. Yes, you read that correctly. The Mustang Daily proves that you can use a preexisting CMS like College Publisher and still highly customize your site.

Collegiate publications using College Publisher, or considering it, should take a long look at what the Mustang Daily has proven is possible. Not only is it a very striking design for a college newspaper, but is also better looking than most professional journalism Web sites. The site, however, is more than just a pretty face.

The Mustang Daily has a great feature set complete with multimedia, podcasts, blogs and interactive Flash packages. But it’s the great design that allows this content to shine. The site is so clean, elegant and easy to navigate that it’s easy to find everything. Plus, a design like this makes it easy to discover new content or content that a user wasn’t even thinking about.

That’s what a great design should strive to do.

The Center for Innovation in College Media named the Mustang Daily the best overall design. The judges had this to say:

They take number one because of their overall organization and abundance of visual elements on the homepage. It has simple navigation below the masthead; well-designed secondary buttons for multimedia, blogs, etc.; dominant, clickable, rotating art; a concise “online features” section highlighted by a subtle background color; well organized section previews complete with the main story of each section containing thumbnails; a unique “yousubmit” button; not to mention a well-placed AP viewer and poll. All of this is found on a homepage that is one of the smallest in length in the competition. The masthead type is a little lacking in proportion, but other than that it’s pretty flawless. Beautiful. Useable. Winner.

The one negative I see on this site is that main story content sends users to a new page. This is an issue because most people use pop-up blockers. I had to tweak my blocker to view the main story content.

It’s strange because all the other content on the site does not behave in this manner. But this is something that should be very easy to fix.

If you’re looking to do redo your Web site, you would be hard pressed to find a better inspiration than the Mustang Daily.

The concept behind the Tennessee Journalist is exactly why new media companies have an enormous advantage over their legacy brethren on the Web:

Part of the thinking behind the creation of the Tennessee Journalist is that it does not have a legacy; that is, it is free to explore the developing and expanding world of web journalism without any traditions – except for the tradition of the practice of good journalism. The web is a different medium, different from print and broadcasting just as those two media are different from each other. The audience expectations for news web sites are different than those of print or broadcast audiences; the relationship of the audience to the medium is also different. Consequently, the journalism found on this web site may also be different in content and form from that found on other media.

There is no institutional memory at the Tennessee Journalist. It’s a Web-centric publication dedicated to exploring and developing new ways of story telling. That’s why the Tennessee Journalist gets this week’s College High Five.

Too many college publications use the Web as digital archive of their print product. One would think that college media would be edgier, more modern and less risk averse than their MSM cousins. That’s fundamentally false. College media is often far more risk averse and even further stuck in a bygone era.

Most college media sites are even closer to their print counterparts than the typical newspaper Web site. It really makes no sense for a bunch of 18-22 year olds to be making a print-centric publication when all of their peers overwhelming consume content on the Web.

That’s a shame. College is a time for experimentation, pushing the boundaries, discovering new things and not being afraid of failure (it’s a lot less costly to fail in college than it is after graduation). If there was ever a place for journalists to take risks and try things that may not work, it should be in college media. College is the perfect time for failure.

That’s why I love the idea of a Web-centric college media publication. Not everything the Tennessee Journalist creates will be a hit. Some of it will surely fail, but at least they are trying something new.

I guarantee that a publication without an institutional memory will have a better chance of getting things right on the Web and creating some real gems. And a publication like the Tennessee Journalist (founded in 2006) will prepare students much better for the reality of 21st-century journalism.

One only has to compare the differences between the Tennessee Journalist’s Web site (built using Django, so you know the site has a modern CMS that rocks) to the archaic after thought known as the The Daily Beacon’s Web site (the independent student newspaper at the University of Tennessee).

This is a new weekly feature debuting today at the JI. Every week I’ll take a look at a student newspaper Web site, feature on that site, story or other content that I like.

The inaugural College High Five of the Week goes to The Independent Florida Alligator for its Best Photos of the Week in News feature. Here is why I like this feature: it’s an easy way to get more life out of content, while also serving users better. Does it get any better then that?

Basically, Alligator staffers select the best staff photos of the week, put them in a slide show and boom they have new content. First, people love photos. Whenever you can get mileage out of photos, do it.

Second, this feature is a showcase for a newspaper’s best work. By showcasing its best photos, newspapers can use them as a launching pad to get people to consume more content. Like that photo? Maybe you’ll like the story that goes with it.

Finally, this is an easy, Web-only feature that people enjoy. People enjoy looking at photos, especially good photos. I guarantee you that even your regular users will probably miss a few of your best photos each week.

It happens. Users will appreciate that you are highlighting your best work for them.

Now, there are a few ways to improve this feature. First, it would be much cooler if instead of putting the photos into Soundslides, the Alligator put each photo into a database. I’m pretty sure the Alligator does it the way they do because of CMS limitations.

This would allow the Alligator to track the page views for each photo. Also, each photo could have a rating from 1-5 stars. This would allow users to see what their peers thought was cool.

Let’s take this concept a step further. What if every photo on the Alligator’s site was rateable and tracked page views? Then the Web site could automatically create a most popular photo gallery every week by either page views or by rating. Those galleries could then be compared to what the Alligator staff thought were the best photos.

I think this would be a huge way of getting more life out of existing content. I don’t believe any newspaper does the concept I have discussed here, mostly due to CMS limitations. It would take a very Web-first CMS to make this happen (most newspaper CMSes are very print-content centric). But just because you don’t have a great CMS (and who does?) doesn’t mean you can’t make cool features.

That’s what the Alligator has done here. Instead of worrying about what they can’t do, they have figured out what they can.

If you would like to nominate a collegiate newspaper Web site, story or feature send an e-mail to connect (at) patthorntonfiles (dot) com.