Here’s a look at the Citizen’s website on Sunday night.

The results are impressive. Of course, the old site was so ugly and so unfriendly to users that even a small touch up would have been welcome. This is much more than that. As the online tour of the new ottawacitizen.com site explains the pages are wider, the navigation is clearer, the layout is cleaner and the opportunites for readers to comment on stories and blogs and contribute photos are much greater. What’s more, there’s finally a prominent showcase for the photos, videos and multimedia features that used to be so hard, if not impossible, to find. On his blog, the managing editor of the Vancouver Sun, Kirk Lapointe, described that as a major goal of the redesign.

“We were creating a lot of content but didn’t have the platform to exhibit it. Our journalists operate in a Web-first culture and wanted a site of their own making. Now we have one.”

As with anything new online, some of the links still bring you to blank pages. There’s a video player on the page about Ottawa Senators that plays no video. Other prominent links to features from the front page bring you to pages on the old site, which serve as a reminder of how unattractive and clunky the old site was. There also seems to be no way to subscribe to RSS feeds from the main page. I assume those are temporary glitches that will be fixed over time.

The search tool, which was next to useless on the old site, seems quite effective now. Thankfully, you can sort search results by date and relevance to find the most recent stories on a subject easily.

These days news organizations are judged by the look and content of their websites and Canwest journalists were embarrassed by how dated and dowdy their look was. Now they can stop apologizing. They have an attractive new look and a useful new vehicle for news and multimedia content.

The new look deserves more than just a passing grade.

That’s what the new day editor of The Globe and Mail, Jim Sheppard, told students and faculty at Carleton University’s School of Journalism on a recent visit. Sheppard says when The Globe has jobs to fill, it wants to find the best journalists out there. But, he said, if candidates have multimedia journalism skills, they will have an edge over candidates who don’t. He compared it to being bilingual. It will never be the primary reason someone gets a job, he said, but it will give journalists an advantage over those without such skills.

Jim Sheppard’s advice to journalism students:
[Click through to post to listen to audio]

As for the skills students might want to develop, he listed ones that some Globe journalists now use:

• Taking and editing photographs using Photoshop
• Recording and editing audio using Audition
• Producing narrated slideshows using Soundslides
• And, possibly, shooting and editing video using Final Cut Pro

Students asked him whether the paper’s long-time reporters and editors were excited about the move to multimedia journalism at the paper. His answer was essentially – no, not all of them. At any newspaper in North America, he said, there are people who want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend change is not happening. Others welcome it. He estimates at the Globe, about 10 per cent of the staff are resisting change, another 30 per cent are excited about it and the rest are taking a wait and see approach. At this point, he said, reporters are told that working on stories for the web is voluntary. But, at the same time, he said the message is clear that co-operation is essential to the new integrated approach to the web and print operations at the paper.

He described it as a more light-handed approach than the one taken at the washingtonpost.com where he worked before joining the Globe three years ago.

Sheppard compares the approaches at The Globe and Mail and the Washington Post:[Click through to post to listen to audio]

Sheppard’s advice to students confirms the advice other online journalists and journalism educators have been offering online and in classrooms recently.

Sheppard told the faculty at Carleton University’s School of Journalism recently that the Globe’s web audience has grown by 50-75 per cent this year. Some of the growth may be attributed to Canada’s recent federal election and the economic meltdown, as the Globe is known best for its coverage of both politics and business news. But weeks after the election, he says, the audience is holding.

And, he says while the majority of visitors to the site still come for the text stories, the numbers show more and more people are going to the multimedia and interactive packages.  Few, however, are bothering to watch the videos. That’s unfortunate as some of the Globe’s video documentaries, such as Boy in the Moon and The Art of Leonard Cohen are compelling and often included as examples on sites that showcase great newspaper videos. They are also featured prominently on the Globe’s website.

Sheppard says the Globe sees multimedia journalism as a high growth area. So, it has moved to integrate its web and print operations to better co-ordinate the way stories are covered for the web and later in print. Starting this week, the Globe will no longer have web only reporters. Instead when assignments are made, they will include web assignments. And, he says, editors will start earlier in the day to consider what elements beyond just text may be included in the full package that will be offered to readers and viewers online. 

As the Globe and other news organizations change their ways to attract and develop these new online audiences, he says, reporters and editors will have to adjust to thinking about themselves not as traditional journalists, but as storytellers.

Jim Sheppard, executive editor of globeandmail.com talks about the new realities at the Globe
[Click through to post to listen to audio]

More later on his advice for aspiring journalists and journalism educators.