Richard MacManus reports that news.com.au have launched a newsblog… and they certainly have.
While I’m not too sure about their claim to be:
a new project in online journalism for Australia.
there are some interesting interpretations of the medium here. As Richard notes, it’s anonymous – much like *some* aspects of the Guardian’s newsblog and in the vein of The Age’s ‘Your Say’… added to that I think comments are moderated (although I haven’t tested :-) and they’ve gone down the path of extracts on the front page linked through to by titles.
To be honest it’s that last bit, and the stuff that surrounds it that’s so disappointing… surely anyone who had the faintest idea of the dynamics of these sort of things wouldn’t have put up the horrible calendar and while I figured out that the titles lead to the full posts I don’t think the average reader will get that straight away… add that to some painful technical hitches (i.e. the comments on this post from another post) and you get a pretty unimpressive user experience.
Having said all that with the readership news.com.au enjoys there’s lots of potential there and at least they’ve started. But I can’t help feeling that a little consideration to the thematics, purpose, design and contextual application of the technology could have dramatically improved the initial outing.