Until now, NTV News lagged behind every other media outlet in its web presence.
That’s been a shame because NTV News has consistently delivered what you could call industrial strength news: it’s straight-up and dependable. Unfortunately you’d have to get the live broadcast to actually see or hear any of it.
Not any more.
NTV News’ new website is bright, clean and professional. The layout gives all the features you’d expect on a current web space and the presentation is such that it should work well on a variety of browsers and platforms. Stories are categorized by different topics so they can be searched a couple of different ways.
Major problem: all the material is at least a day old. After 10:00 PM on April 28 and the major stories are all datelined the 27th. That’s not a killer issue and NTV can fix it pretty quickly.
Peeve: Comments are closed but the comments space opens up when you click on a video story. That may reflect a staffing decision – comments will need a full-time moderator around these parts.
Major bonus: NTV is not reinventing the wheel by giving new web content. They are posting the news stories already filed and broadcast. That means they can do more with the existing staff.
That can be a good thing. Aside from some of the other relatively easy changes they could make, NTV is a very short technical and organizational step away from being able to post new video content to the web in near real time.
And that gentle readers would be revolutionary around these parts. The Indy went down in part because it tried to push a 19th century concept on a 21st century audience rather than take maximum advantage of the technology available and the skills of employees to beat the competition every time.
NTV’s makeover looks like they are headed in the right direction.
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