As noted in my earlier blog post, The Miami Herald needs to update its website. This time I’ll be giving suggestions on how to improve the local section’s website, The Miami Herald Neighbors Online.
As of now, the Neighbors section is on the main website, but you have to scroll down a ways to get to it. The section is broken up into the two counties and myriad cities by two sets of tabs–two top tabs and many, many side tabs.
When you click on a city, say… Miami Shores, and select “more news from this area” this is the screen you get:
I think the Neighbors section needs its own website that the main page would link to. Here’s my ideal Neighbors website:
Now picture that both the “Broward County” and “Miami-Dade County” tabs would link to individual pages of news found in that area. Also, pretend that each city on that map would link to a page of news about their city and surrounding cities. It would be up to the editor to say which regions overlapped, but for the sake of an example let’s say there was a story about a new school in Miami Beach. The Miami Beach, Surfside, and Bal Harbour websites would be updated with the story. The stories with the most hits in the entire local section would be displayed on the front page with the map, along with the day posted (or perhaps the number of hits). The actual county/city websites could look much the same as the website now, with headlines and short story blurbs, but I’d suggest they be condensed to a square form instead of the spread-out layout. Condensing the page with more photos and fewer strings of sentences would make the page more appealing, and more interactive features could be included, like videos.
As I said before, I think The Miami Herald is an excellent newspaper, especially the Neighbors section. It has some amazing writers and editors, but the website certainly needs work. Local coverage of news is very important to the people in that community, and every step should be taken to improve such an important section. Plus, if the website looks prettier and is easier to get around, then more people will read it (including local advertisers).
