Following Up on USA Today Site Critique

By Maggie Biunno
Student Reporter

Eighteen multimedia journalism students and one student editor put their minds together to take on one task -- to conduct online a constructive review of the revamp of the USATODAY.com Website. It was an assignment to test the students’ understanding of the evolving world of online journalism. The stories, covering different aspects of the changes to one of the top online newspaper sites, were published on this blog on Monday. The class decided to send an e-mail to Ken Paulson, editor of USA Today, to see if he would be interested in what this class of potential journalists and professional communicators had blogged under deadline pressure.

Less than 24 hours later, the class received a personal e-mail from Paulson. It was also cc’d to the executive editors of USA Today, Kinsey Wilson and John Hillkirk.

Additionally, the class received an e-mail response from Wendy Matney of the newspaper's marketing department that provided an update on the revamp, and changes made in response to reader feedback.

To read this response, click on the image to the right =========>

While many of the journalism students found the new features frustrating, matching the opinions of commenting readers on the USATODAY.com site, it seemed that contacting the editors directly was a better idea than using the drop-down options within the site itself, as noted in the previous coverage on the students' blog site.

[With all of these new features -- and one specifically designed to make it easier to contact the editoral staff -- it took a quick Google search to yield an e-mail address that produced a much quicker -- and more personal -- reply.]