Maybe you're not very tech-savvy, or perhaps you live on the Web; either way the new Deseret Morning News Web site is sure to provide some features that you won't be able to pass up.
Up-to-the-minute stories, weather and local-traffic reports will not only keep you well-informed but also assist you in planning your busy day.
A new feature that allows readers to comment on stories gives you a voice in the community and also lets you know what your neighbors are thinking.
Improved movie listings, photo galleries and great local-news and sports coverage all are combined into a package that we hope will soon become an integral part of your daily life.
The diagrams below will take you through a few of the many options offered by the new Web design.
· · · · ·
For decades, thousands of Utahns have made a daily routine of turning through the pages of the Deseret Morning News to keep themselves informed and entertained.
Over the past decade, however, millions of readers around the world are making a daily habit of clicking their mouses on deseretnews.com for that same information and more.
Those online readers have been introduced to the first phase of an ongoing redesign of deseretnews.com, which provides more information, photos and features per page while staying true to the Web site's long-held standard of a clean, easy-to-navigate design.
The new design responds to deseretnews.com users' requests and to an Internet revolution in the newspaper industry, according to Deseret Morning News Editor Joe Cannon.
"A lot of readers — particularly those who live outside of Utah — want (deseretnews.com) to be more dynamic," Cannon said.
Allowing online and newspaper readers a chance to easily and quickly comment on daily stories and editorials is one of biggest changes in the redesign. And if other interactive Web sites are any indication, reader comments will be one of the most popular new features at deseretnews.com.
"It makes it so readers are not passive anymore. Many times you read something and it makes you want to react in some way," said Charlie Craine, the newspaper's New Media director, who spearheaded the redesign.
While reader reaction won't have the space limitations of a printed letter to the editor, online comments will be monitored, and those found to be abusive or profane or containing spam Internet addresses won't be published. "We will be looking for smart, on-topic comments," Craine said.
Another big change is improvements to the photo galleries, a popular feature since first launched in 2001. The photos are now larger, and the size is not limited by the image's dimension — a vertical photo can be enlarged as easily as a horizontal one.
Readers will be relieved to know the search function now uses a Google search engine. And searches will not only be easier, they will be free. All Deseret Morning News archives can be accessed without cost.
While this is just the first of several phases of improvements to deseretnews.com to be implemented in the coming months, Craine said, "this is the most radical in a decade."
Newspaper publishers throughout the world have had to change course in response to increasing numbers of readers getting their information via the Internet and wanting the immediacy and interactivity that the medium provides.
"People are spending less time with the newspaper," Cannon said. "So, we can no longer treat our Web site as an auxiliary to the newspaper."
While the printed page has space constraints that a Web site doesn't, the basic assets that produce a newspaper — people who gather news and information — are the same for a Web site.
"What is changing is delivery" of the news, Cannon said, "not the fundamental assets of reporters, photographers, editors, artists and critics."