I think the thing I love most about the local online news source is of course the content itself. Nowhere else on the web can you get true local content. And no source is a more trusted brand for local content than the hometown newspaper. Contrary to today’s major Yahoo announcement, I don’t forsee a future where i get my local information from a major portal. (unless of course, the newspapers completely self kill themselves off)

That being said, I do believe that online news resources often times fall short in being the #1 local information resource. For instance, there’s no reason I can think of why the newspaper.com’s Restaurant section isn’t the most complete, most useful local restaurant listing available. Same for local jobs. Same for local events.

Note however, that I think the single most important thing for newspaper.com’s to think about (and all websites for that matter), is how to be “usefull” to the user. How to provide value, instead of throwing half-assed attempts and “features” up in an uncohesive manor.

Too many newspaper.com’s seem to have forgotten about the user…

Since online is very different from a printed page, I don’t see the usefulness of trying to imitate the printed version. There’s so much more you can do with the newspaper’s information than that! Granted, not all the decisions us online folk make about what information belongs where are the most thought-out decisions — and we’re not harnessing all the interesting local information that we could be, either. There’s not really much of a model for online newspapers yet, which I think makes it easy to want to revert back to the old days of print-in-your hand organization. Until online newspapers get the context and new types of content that the online makes possible, well, we’re stuck with what we’ve got.

If the homepage was changed to mimic the front page of the daily paper at denverpost.com, perhaps the bottom main story teasers could have links to those sections, local, sports, style etc. Another feature I’d like to see is instead of just listing the blogs, there could be a small selection of blogs highlighted. The top five blogs for traffic or comments could have an emphasis. I think online news sources such as The DP needs to play up the blogging element as a service they provide. They should share with readers interesting topics being discussed to increase the flow of communication. If there is a specific subject that is getting a massive response, it should be focused on and will most likely receive even more input simply by being highlighted.

The feature that I enjoy most about the online Denver Post is being able to be linked directly to additional articles that give more insight into the story. With the electronic edition, I like highlighted subjects in the PDF having an external link. This allows me to find even more information if the topic strikes me and I want to learn more. With the standard online supplement, the related articles links works fine for finding specific articles that have been published in the past that apply to the subject at hand. Newsgroups should provide their audience with the most information and resources possible.