Daily EM

Make sure to check out this Global Reporting feature from the leading German business daily Handelsblatt. I don’t know when they launched, but I noticed it only recently (the footer bears the date 2005–so it may have been launched even back then!)

It’s not perfect, but definitely a small step towards enhancing their coverage of international affairs. What I particularly like about it is that most of their foreign correspondents all seem to have blogs (instead of having group or regional blogs) ==> better feedback from readers and greater responsibility on the reporter.

I believe that in most cases individual blogs for reporters are a best solution that a newspaper might come up with–they would ensure most effective feedback mechanisms, but also they might actually help the reporter write better stories in the future, not just recycle already known-facts…But why not go even one step further and allow readers to run their blogs as well, as long as they fit into the Global Reporting platform? This could definitely liven up their web-site.

They have put some thought into the visualization part of the page, but, of course, much more could be done (i.e. why not have that moving RSS feed dynamically changing for each city depending on the cursor’s position?). Tag clouds, comments, categories–all of that is still missing. It’s pretty much impossible to navigate through that page topic-by-topic…Contrast it with the excellent navigation and visualization that the Global Voices have unveiled in their new redesign–and you’ll see how much work people in Handelsblatt still have to do.

Overall, it’s a step in the right direction, but they definitely need some Web2.0 accessoires on the site to make it usable and pretty.