BreakingNews.ie relaunched

Thomas Crosbie Holdings' BreakingNews.ie was relaunched today, it's the first attempt by an Irish national newspaper company to use embedded video and audio in the main section of their website.   

Irish blog, jazzbiscuit.com, has it just about spot on here...

After several years of stoically refusing to budge, BreakingNews.ie gets a make over. The simplicity of the old site has been replaced with a far more modern, but less scannable site. That was my favourite thing about the old one, you could browse all the latest headlines in seconds. You can still do that, but it takes a little longer. It actually seems like you can still get the same old-school view, just by viewing the site’s archives by day.

Still no bylines on the site! What is it about Irish media companies and online news? Why are there no bylines?

The TCH's irishexaminer.com is also due to be relaunched later this year.

Comments

[Richard Delevan]

Bylines? But why would you want bylines when you can get an undifferentiated experience of a media brand?

Conspiracy theories aside, it's a brilliant advance in being clean and easy to navigate. And it edges out the ireland.com update in terms of navigation and functionality.

One example - the ireland.com version of the Pat Kenny settlement today doesn't have any multimedia. Breakingnews has the audio of Pat Kenny talking to reporters alongside the (unbylined) text. Ireland.com version (http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0415/breaking23.htm) has no media clip, though it does have Geneveive Carberry's byline (though the link leads to an email generator rather than an archive of stories with her byline, so even that's kind of non-standard).

Both have a learning curve to climb, though. When either site use rich media, they're still not good at it. Ireland.com gives you Colm Keena waffling about the DCC/Fyffes settlement and Breakingnews gives you PK waffling about his own settlement.

Much more valuable on the latter would have been the give-and-take of the Q&A, which is far more revealing than someone reading a statement.

Hopefully both will get there eventually.