PUTTING NEWSPAPER SITES TO THE TEST

By: Randy Dotinga E&P Tests Five Sites On Common Online Tasks



Want to know the latest sports scores? Curious about who's playing at
the bar down the street on Saturday night? Wondering what your local
movie critic thinks of the new flick playing at the multiplex?



You may not be able to rely on your local newspaper's Web site for fast
answers.



To test the user-friendliness of newspapers in cyberspace, E&P
invented six common chores that readers might want to accomplish online.
A reporter then visited the Web sites of five randomly selected midsize
newspapers.



The results show that most of these sites have a ways to go before their
online efforts are as handy as their print editions. Even the simplest
of tasks, such as finding a weather forecast, often proved challenging.



The newspapers surveyed were the Omaha (Neb.) World-

Herald, the Tulsa (Okla.) World, The Knoxville (Tenn.)
News-Sentinel, the Press-Telegram in Long Beach, Calif.,
and the Daily Press in Newport News, Va. Only the Web site of the
smallest of the five papers surveyed -; the Daily Press, with
just under 100,000 subscribers - quickly and easily provided most
of the information sought.



Here are the tasks and how the newspapers stacked up:



The forecast for tomorrow in the newspaper's home city:



Newspaper readers love the weather, and one might expect a newspaper's
Web site to make it a breeze to read the local forecast. But the weather
isn't always simple to find.



The local forecast was easiest to locate at the Newport News Web site
(http://www.dailypress.com) where it is prominently placed on the home
page along with the current weather and temperature. Visitors to the
Omaha newspaper Web site (http://www.omaha.com/OWH) have to click once
to find the local forecast. The Knoxville (http://www.knoxnews.com) and
Long Beach (http://www.ptconnect.com) online newspapers feature
forecasted highs and lows on their home pages, but it's not immediately
clear if they're for the current day or the next day. And no other
weather information could be quickly located at the Long Beach site.



At the Tulsa site (http://www.tulsaworld.com), visitors have to work for
their weather. The forecast, along with the site's menu and much of its
content, is off-limits to visitors who haven't got a software 'plug-in'
called Macromedia Flash. With Flash installed, however, the local
weather is a couple clicks away.



Bands performing at local bars and nightclubs this Friday:



All the newspapers surveyed are based in cities large enough to have
significant nightlife. But only the Web sites of the largest and
smallest newspapers surveyed, in Omaha and Newport News, respectively,
offered extensive lists of who's playing and where.



The Tulsa Web site did offer some event listings, but they were mainly
of symphony and museum events. The Knoxville site has a page devoted to
'nightlife,' but it included only a single feature story. The Press-

Telegram site offers movie and TV show listings, but nothing about
the local music scene.



Newspaper's movie critic on the recently released teen film:



Large and midsize daily newspapers almost always have on-staff movie
critics. But finding their reviews online proved to be a challenge.



The Newport News site made the task a breeze. Just a few clicks brought
up a review of 'Final Destination' by Barbara Shulgasser, who was not
impressed and gave the film only one-and-a-half stars. At the Omaha
site, a visitor had to go into the free archives to find a review by Jim
Delmont, who called 'Final Destination' a 'small movie' that 'will find
its niche modestly, then go to video.' Movie fans were out of luck at
the other three sites. Although the Tulsa critic did review 'Final
Destination,' the full review was not to be found at the newspaper's Web
site. Only a paragraph and the movies rating (three of four stars) were
included. The Knoxville online newspaper included a review of the movie,
but it was only a paragraph long and came from something called
CinemaSource. A check of Long Beach's online newspaper including the
easy-to-use archives did not return any review of the movie.



What's on TV tonight?



The newspapers scored well on this count. The Daily Press, Press-

Telegram, and News-Sentinel use national TV schedule services
that require users to type in their ZIP codes to get local listings. The
Omaha World-Herald is a little more user-friendly, featuring
cable system listings for Omaha, eastern Nebraska, western Iowa, and
Missouri. The Tulsa World doesn't have TV listings.



Who won the Boston Celtics game last night?



Almost all daily newspapers devote lots of space to national sports
scores.



But online newspaper sites are a different ballgame. Quick checks of the
Omaha and Long Beach sites didn't reveal any sign of pro basketball
scores, although the Omaha site did feature dog racing results. The
Tulsa site did have national basketball scores, but they were two days
old. The Knoxville site featured links to Scripps Howard and Associated
Press sports Web sites, but it took a while to sniff out the latest
Boston Celtics score.



Only the Newport News site was truly user-friendly: It took only three
clicks from the home page to find the score of the previous night's
Celtics game.



How easy is it to send letters to the editor right from the Web?



All the sites surveyed offered quick ways to zip off letters to the
editor. Some offered e-mail addresses; others made readers fill out
online forms. But denizens of cyberspace sometimes like to send letters
the old-fashioned way, with stamps and handwritten signatures plastered
with their own headlines, such as: 'If you saw this potato eating alone,
would you ask it to join you?' A quick inspection of the online opinion
sections did not turn up any street addresses.



How long does it take to enter Web site and find the next day's
forecasted high and low temperatures?



The Daily Press: 22 seconds
Omaha World-Herald: 25 seconds

The Knoxville News-Sentinel: 34 seconds

Tulsa World: 2 minutes, 23 seconds (use of home page requires
download of Macromedia Flash 4 plug-in)

Press-Telegram: N/A (unclear if forecast on home page is for
today or tomorrow; no other information available)



(Note: Times were calculated using a cable modem.)