'The news show': Lessons in digital journalism design with RGB Media

It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder - and when it comes to digital journalism, there are a number of steps news outlets can take to help to ensure content catches and holds the eye of its users.

At the News World Summit in Paris we heard from Grig Davidovitz, co-founder of RGB Media, who spoke about responsive design and urged news outlets to give editors more control and ability to showcase the content being produced.

The key, he added, is to focus on the experience of consuming the content at an article level, which RGB Media's own product Salamandra aims to help journalists do when publishing online.

We spoke to Davidovitz more about the importance of editorial freedom within web publishing to quickly change the way content is displayed, and low information density to help build beautiful news websites which clearly communicate the level of drama behind each story.

Editorial freedom

"The idea is that editors should have the freedom of playing with the content that they are displaying, so they are not forced into a pre-designed template, or pre-designed two, three, or four templates", he said.

This would enable editors to change the presentation of content on a number of levels, such as if there is a need to communicate a certain level of drama, or to distinguish the type of media being presented, e.g. just text, image gallery or video.

Davidovitz also believes design templates should enable the editor to maintain the individual identity of the content, for example to distinguish between a feature piece and a news story, "no matter where the editor decides to place the article".

He told Journalism.co.uk that RGB's recently launched websites Times of Israel, which runs on Salamandra, is showing the popularity of this sort of news design.

"There are tens of thousands of people on the site every day, in news peaks we have a few hundred thousand. The average stay on the homepage is like 10 minutes, so people are really enjoying this different experience of content that you are able to get out of the screen and into your eyes."

He also advised publishers to move templates to the article level, instead of modular level, to allow maximum flexibility.

Low information density

And when it comes to arranging these articles on homepages, "less is more".

"It's interesting because you can see what is happening now on the web and it's pretty similar to what happened in the newspapers in the past. A hundred years ago most of the newspapers were just a lot of articles, one near another, like 20 or 30 articles on the front page.

"They were saying, 'well the front page is the most important page so the conclusion is let's take all our material and just put it on the front page', which is basically what happens on the homepages today.

"They are saying 'the first screen and maybe the second screen are the most important screens, let's put everything there'."

But he said in time newspapers came to understand that "less is more", with many front pages containing just five to seven articles. And homepages seem to be following the same evolutionary pattern.

"This is something that is happening on the web, if you look over the years you're seeing the density going lower and lower but it should happen even more.

"These two things - combining the enabling of a presentation that is not dense and enabling the editors to play with information - results in a different experience, that is much more effective in the way people consume."

He added: "One thing homepages of websites can have is the only place you come to get a real journalistic, edited experience and that is why it's very important."

And once the news experience has been moulded for the web, it can be recreated with different platform experiences in mind, such as mobile and tablet.

The impact of the iPad

The launch of the iPad "shocked many people" in the newspaper industry, because "it was the first time that digital content looked beautiful", Davidovitz added.

"Most of the websites today are ugly, they are just a bunch of links stuck together with a lot of noise, a lot of pictures, a lot of information that is put together.

"Suddenly on the iPad digital content looked beautiful and I think websites have to move in that direction, understanding that to have engaging content sites you have to display the content to let it show that it's beautiful and when you have all these links stuck together it's not beautiful, it's just annoying."

Industry examples

Davidovitz shared two examples from the Huffington Post of what he considered to follow this form of clear yet "beautiful" storytelling, shown in the "upper part" of the site in the coverage of the late Steve Jobs leaving Apple under the headline 'iQuit', and a 9/11 anniversary story with no headline.

"I thought this is a moment of silence that you see. It's not a new picture, you just have one moment of silence and that's a very effective journalistic product.

"It's more effective in my opinion than having a headline and having a small picture of something connected.

"That is what is missing today in websites, understanding that journalism is not only about information it's about what you do with the information, the experience you're creating."

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