Probably the most striking feature of the Huffington Post website is the extent to which hyperlinking is used.  The site uses hyperlinks on the homepage in such a way as to guide the user to other stories on their website.  It seems that from top to bottom, almost everything on the page is hyperlinked.  The task of getting through all of them would be momentous!   

In fact, when scrolling over the top of the page, the only thing the mouse doesn’t want to link to is the date!  It must be said that this website succeeds in keeping the user occupied, following all these links.  It gives the impression that there is so much to see and do on this website that there’s only room for one little word on the homepage to describe it and lead the reader away to another place where there is room to tell the story. 

Another eye-catching feature of this website is the amount of pictures on the homepage.  This keeps the reader entertained and allows them to link into a story if they like the look of the picture or recognise the person in it and want to know more.   

This visually focused method appears to work for the readers
of this website as one of the most popular stories at the moment relates to topless pictures of Miss California making their way on to the web. 

Overall, it seems that the success of this news site could be down to its busy layout.  It is colourful, eye-catching and light, a combination many people are happy to buy into!

Wikinews

It appears that this news site is just another branch of  Wiki and is used to promote the other Wiki sites.  This is clear from the following which is found at the bottom of the homepage

Sister projects[ - ]

Wikinews is run by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which operates several other multilingual and free-content projects.
Meta-Wiki – Coordination	Wikipedia – Encyclopedia	Wiktionary – Dictionary
Wikibooks – Textbooks	Wikisource – Sources	Wikiquote – Quotations
Wikispecies – Species	Commons – Media repository	Wikiversity – Learning tools

The most irritating feature of this news site is the high level of repetition.  The headline of the main story, “Congressional computers continue to be used to vandalise Wikipedia”, is repeated five times on the homepage.  This is pointless and can be very frustrating for the reader.

Although this site promotes citizen journalism, its layout and content certainly does not evoke a desire to use it as a source of news.

The Real News Network is a global online video news network which relies solely on supporter donations.  The fact that it does not accept funding from advertising, government or corporations means that people  can expect an unbiased approach to the news.  

The network has also proven successful as it features experienced professional journalists from all over the world.  In their Mission Statement, they promise to “investigate, report and debate stories on the critical issues of our times.”  The idea of presenting the news primarily through video is very important for some people.  It gives the user a much greater insight into a story than when reading about it. 

There is also an audio feature available so that people can just listen to the news as they like: mp3latestrealnews.php.

People can now immediately inform others online of their situation from wherever they may be using their mobile phone or laptop.  
Stephen explores how this has been a huge advancement in the quickly developing world of 24 hour news.  He says that stories such as the plane crash in the Hudson river, the Turkish airlines crash and the terror attacks in Lahore were actually broken on Twitter. 

Stephen reveals that while people who witnessed these events were quickly uploading images and information, “eager hacks” were standing by searching for stories.  He adds that CNN reporter Errol Barnett discovered the Turkish airlines crash on Twitter. 

And so the concept of the “free foreign correspondent” was born.  The use of this form of news-gathering has rapidly become more widespread as Stephen reveals that SKY News even devoted one of their journalists to the role of “Twitter correspondent”.   

Stephens blog illustrates that developments on the web affect the way online journalism is conducted.  With the Internet constantly updating, there is no end to the possibilities regarding the future of online journalism.

Samuel bases his information on two completely different news sites.  A real one, The New York Times, and a fake one, The Onion.  The fact that the latter is not widely known as a false news site could mean that some people take what it says to be true.  

Samuel observes that the layout of its website even resembles that of the New York Times despite it all being completely false.  He says that not everyone may understand that it is meant as a “piece of satire, a light-hearted joke”.  Users of the site could be forgiven for falling into the trap given its  unashamedly boastful yet untrue tagline “America’s Finest News Source”. 

The reality of the situation is that the site is very misleading and could give the user the completely wrong idea.  Even its video content, as Samuel mentioned is completely false.  He uses the following video to demonstrate how it could lead to people believing that this man was outsourcing his job to India.

Although it seems completely ridiculous it must be recognised that not everyone will understand the concept.  Not everyone is as Internet savvy as is necessary to view this site with humour.

The transfer of newspapers to websites was examined in a blog by Cliodhna Russell entitled “The Transfer”.  In this blog, Cliodhna tackles the ever-looming issue of the collapse of the newspaper industry.  She faces up to the reality that many newspapers are closing up shop on their printing and turning to online journalism as a means of keeping their organisation afloat.  

The reason for this is most often a decline in sales of the print edition.  Cliodhna recognises that the newspaper industry already finds itself in hot water with daily newspaper circulation in the US down by 19% since 1990.

The Christian Science Monitor is an example Cliodhna uses to demonstrate the transfer from print to online journalism.  

Frighteningly, more and more newspapers are switching exclusively to online journalism. 

An article by The Inquisitr reveals three newspapers announced their intention to quit print publishing in favour of online journalism over the Christmas/New Year period. 

Hoy Nueva York, a Spanish weekday paper made the transfer online on December 30th, cutting 16 of its staff. 

A San Francisco based publication, AsiaWeek ceased printing on January 9th after 30 years of publication due to “economic difficulties”. 

The biggest of the three to switch to online journalism was the

The Kansas City Kansan was previously a free daily, founded in 1921.  The website is said to “embrace community participation, including photo sharing and the ability to post press releases, in a format the paper describes as being “more like a blog””.

It seems therefore that switching to online journalism is becoming an increasingly popular choice for many news organisations.  In many cases it is the only option for some papers to avoid bankruptcy.  If this trend continues where is the future for the physical newspaper?

Taking The Daily Mirror as an example; the content is predominantly celebrity stories, sport and crime.  Today it leads with a story about a new development in a murder case.  The link to the story from the homepage is as seen below.

The bold headlines, pictures and videos aim to capture the audiences attention.  Whether it does or not is a matter of taste but the popularity of the print edition speaks for itself. 

The Sun website appears to be a bit more advanced in terms of the technology used.  A slideshow is used to show the main story in pictures.  The pictures at the bottom also show up when the mouse hovers over them.  There is even an update line which supplies the reader with the breaking news.  The websites most viewed stories is given below:    

Clearly celebrity journalism is favoured on this website as on most tabloid websites in Britain and in Ireland.  The success of these sites and the growing popularity of celebrity journalism is feeding the ordinary persons obsession with the rich and famous. 

The Fiancial Times website has a very attractive homepage.  Although it is a serious paper, its website appeals to all audiences. 

Its layout is fresh and clear and does not overwhelm the reader.  Although there is an endless amount of options available to the user on the website, it does not appear crowded.  Instead, the website uses links on the homepage to navigate the reader to different sections of the site.  It contains separate pages for blogs, podcasts, videos and much more.  The video page offers an extensive range of interviews like the one below, which allows the user to get a deeper insight into a story.

The layout of The Independent and The Times differ greatly from The Financial Times.  Their homepages are quite busy looking and contain more pictures and video than The FT.  The Independent even incorporates cartoons into its stories.

The content of  is also more focused on world news whereas the other two mentioned here deal primarily with Britain.  Both The Independent and The Times lead today with the budget whereas The Financial Times leads with developments on the economic situation in Brussels.

The FT also offers a very impressive range of interactive features.  These graphics allow the reader to build their knowledge and also mean that they won’t get bored by just reading the facts continuously.

Radio has always been a major source of news for people and is still thriving today.  The increase in the number of people using laptops means that there is also an increase in the number of people listening to the radio online as opposed to the traditional way.  With the use of earphones, people can connect to a station online and not bother anyone else on the bus or train etc.  Fortunately this shows that the internet did not harm the radio listenership as many had expected.  

Public service broadcasters such as RTE and the BBCallow users to access their radio programmes online as well as their other features.  Almost all radio stations are also now represented online, allowing listeners to catch up on shows they might have missed, read the news or enter competitions. 

 Newstalk 106-108fm is a very popular news station in Ireland which has also branched out on the web, gaining more listenership.  The homepage of the website is very similar to that of television and some newspaper sites as its main focus is news and current affairs.  As seen in the picture above, it puts the faces to the voices heard on the radio.  The most important feature for many people is that the programme can be listened to live on the site as seen here:  wmp32.html        

The expansion of the radio websites is a big step forward for online journalism as many prefer to listen to news rather than to read it themselves.  There is also of course the fact that many people are unable to read the news for any number of reasons and so the radio option is very important.  For the moment at least, radio news is safe thanks to the Internet.

The BBC website deals primarily with news whereas RTE gives a round-up of all the different aspects of  radio and television.  BBC News also deals more with global news rather than restricting the news to within its borders.  Today’s main story for example is in relation to combat in Sri Lanka.  As the BBC is more news oriented, there is less pictures than on RTE.  It’s layout has more in common with a newspaper site. 

An interesting feature of the site is that the user can move the columns around to whatever way they like excluding the top story.  This means that readers can choose the layout that suits them best.  It also offers readers a choice of different languages, 32 in fact!  RTE however only gives the user one option.  BBC even allows the users to listen to the news online in these languages.  Here is an example of one of the languages that can be listened to on this site:  News in Urdu!    

This of course means that they appeal to a much wider audience than RTE, who are just addressing their site to Irish users.  There is even a section of the site dedicated to helping people learn English. 

This all shows the lengths that the BBC have gone to in order to improve their website, gain more user-ship and interact with people from all over the world.