A few weeks ago, I did an analysis of some worldwide news source apps and websites, one of which was The Irish Times. Apparently many people had not seen The Irish Times’ iOS app and I received a lot of feedback from people on the blog, on Twitter and in person expressing disappointment and, in one instance, embarrassment, in local newspapers’ lack of tech savvy and design.
I wanted to know if The Irish Times were unique in their approach and who in the Irish newspaper scene was creating the most cutting-edge and user-friendly experiences. Today I’m looking at the other two big, daily Irish broadsheet newspapers, The Irish Independent and The Irish Examiner, and next time I’ll cover some of the newer, digital-only initiatives.
THE IRISH INDEPENDENT
The Irish Independent was formed in 1905 as the direct successor to the Daily Irish Independent. Today it is published daily by Independent News and Media (INM), an international newspaper and communications group. Independent Digital is the digital consumer division of INM and operates websites such as Independent.ie, and Herald.ie, with Independent.ie being the flagship brand.
Looking at The Irish Independent’s website, my first thought was, “Thank goodness they have an iPad app”(this turned out not to be as big of a relief, but more on that later). There is just so much content and so many ways to read it, and the site does not adjust well for an iPad-sized device. Trying to navigate to http://m.independent.ie gives you the following error.
On the bottom of the front page of the main site (and you do have to scroll for a while, there is a lot of content there!) you’ll see this:
which shows you that you do have some options to view using mobile devices. The RSS page has links to feeds for basically every category such as Personal Finance, Horse Racing, European News, etc. The Mobile page lists their various custom apps, including iPhone, Nokia, Samsung Wave (!) and iPad versions. I looked on the Windows Phone Marketplace as well but didn’t see any official or unofficial Independent apps (WP7 developers, take note!).
Unfortunately, the Irish Independent is using the same software The Irish Times are using for their iPad app. I really hope this isn’t setting the precedent for Irish news experiences, that would be so sad. The silver lining is that since both of these apps use external payment systems, it’s just a matter of time before they’re kicked out of the App Store for violating Apple terms and conditions. Whether they’ll adapt the software they use to work with Apple’s in-app subscription purchases or abandon it and try something else remains to be seen. I do hope that the numbers tell the right story for both newspapers and they try a different, more appropriate approach for the iPad rather than deciding that “people aren’t spending money on news apps”, as that is definitely not the case.
The sad thing about the iPad app is that the iPhone app is so much better. Containing the most popular sections of The Irish Independent’s website, the iPhone app has access to breaking news, business, sport, entertainment, travel, health and others. Users can customize the menu bar with their favourite sections, and the app can be synched so that the user can read offline later.
If you don’t have a compatible mobile device and you’re not an RSS user, The Irish Independent also offer e-mail updates and Facebook integration. The newsletter process is maybe a bit long with four separate screens, but the e-mails are nicely formatted and contain a large amount of news content from various categories.
There is such a wide variety of approaches by The Irish Independent that I have a lot of hope they’ll be the first ones in Ireland to get it right. While the varied attempts show potentially changing priorities or investments, there is certainly no doubt that they are very willing to try anything and everything. The picture above and below are examples of something you can find on the Independent’s website, something called the “Digital Edition.” It’s very much like the ePaper approach, where you have the full scan of the page and you have to zoom, pinch and pan around to read any stories. Definitely an odd take, but one way it might be useful would be if you could download it. As I have a long flight back to the US tomorrow, if I didn’t have an iPad, I might consider zipping up a paper in this format and saving it to my desktop to read the next day.
I mentioned above that for me, the real value here is not downloading a zip file of large image scans of news, but in seeing the work that The Irish Independent are investing in to finding the best strategy and executing it. I have high hopes for their future digital attempts and will keep a close eye on them.
THE IRISH EXAMINER
The Irish Examiner is a publication of Thomas Crosbie Holdings Limited. It was formerly The Cork Examiner and then The Examiner, and it has been around since 1841 when it was founded by John Francis Maguire. I couldn’t find any information on when they started their digital presence unfortunately, the Wikipedia entry is a bit thin.
At first glance, the front page of http://irishexaminer.com looks cleaner and less cluttered than other Irish news websites. There is a lot of white space and less “cramming” than many other front pages. The number of advertisements at the top of the page, though, is a bit distracting. Looking at the above image, the myhome advertisement on the right is outside of the width of the rest of the content, which makes it feel odd or misplaced, and the top NIB banner ad also feels like it’s in a frame outside of the page. The Office365 ad appears slightly more normal inside the page with the rest of the content.
The Irish Examiner does not have an iPhone or iPad app, but they do use the same “Digital Edition” system that The Irish Independent are using. Lets agree that we don’t need to cover that anymore.
Visiting http://m.irishexaminer.com results in a server not found error, however on their Mobile link, they mention http://m.examiner.ie which resolves to a very bare but usable page with an Irish Examiner logo at the top, three top news story links and some additional links to Breaking News, Ireland, World, Sport, etc. Not the most beautiful page but it is easier to use than trying to look at http://www.irishexaminer.com on your phone.
I see a little in The Irish Examiner that I do in The Irish Independent: an intent to build something useful, the acceptance that news is moving online and that they need to do something about it. But I also see some confusion, some budget constraints and some trepidation in investing too much time and money in an unsure area.
WHO ELSE?
Am I missing someone who is doing something really fantastic with digital news in Ireland? There are a lot of regional newspapers, so I’m going through them all, but if you have seen something great that you enjoy using or hope other news sources adopt, please leave a comment or let me know.