Knoxnews.com Structure

Homepage- The main components of the knoxnews.com homepage are three columns of information that run vertically across the main page.  The left column contains a 300 x 480 pixel photograph and a headline with summary below it.  The middle column contains more recent headlines with links.  The right column contains an advertisement, weather, and job searching information.  Below these three columns are more columns containing links and headlines to more news.  The homepage also contains the following:

•     Calendar- with RSS feed to local events
•     Recent videos section- flash slideshow of recent videos
•     Breaking news feed- videos from AP
•     Newsletters
•     Contest Zone
•     Marketplace- advertisements
•     Special sections

Navigation- The navigation is fairly simple but can be complicated at times depending on what the user is trying to do.  At the top of the home page there is a full navigation bar that allows the users to choose what type of news they want to read.  The homepage is full of links to all types of news.  Most of the links are fairly straight forward, but a few seem to be misleading.  One community news headline read "Earning respect " and the news article is about skateboarders.

Searching- The website search bar yielded great results when searching for particular news stories.  The search tool almost displayed too many results but was overall helpful.

Problems with homepage

Pictures- The knoxnews.com homepage is rather large news website for a city the size of Knoxville.  Nashville's main news site is about the same size as far as dimension, and Nashville has more than double population.  With all this room for news information, there were only around 10 news pictures on the main homepage, and over 58 links to different news stories.  Along with these links were even more links to comics, sudoku, tv listings, etc.  The majority of these pictures were less than 100 pixels wide.  This leaves the user with an overwhelming amount of text, and no pictures for guidelines.  MSNBC.com had more than twice the amount of pictures than knoxnews.com and most of these were bigger by dimension. 

Video- The knoxnews.com homepage contains a link to videos at the top.  If the user decided it wanted to watch the first video from the video and multimedia page, it would require them to navigate through three different pages before even having the option to click a play button.  This seems fairly time consuming.

Business- The knoxnews.com homepage lacks a stock ticker in which most major news website have.  Even after clicking the business link at the top of the page there is no visible stock market ticker anywhere to be found.

Important News- The homepage also lacks a technology section and didn't have anything that related to Tuesday's announcement from Toshiba.  Toshiba announced that it won't be producing HD components anymore which is important news for the technology world.  In order to find anything about the article the user has to click the "News" button at the top and scroll all the way to the bottom to find the article under "World News."  This particular article has accumulated nine comments in just over a day which should make it homepage worthy.

Main Photo- The advertisement on the homepage competes with main news photo that runs on the first column of the page.  Visually the advertisement is almost the same size in dimension and seems to be distracting.

 
Characteristics of the Web- knoxnews.com

Immediacy- Knoxnews.com had around five news stories that were published live to the homepage between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m.  The knoxnews.com staff provided news information in a timely fashion.

Flexibility- Over the past couple of years the knoxnews.com homepage has evolved.  The staff has improved on functionality, design, and navigation in particular. 

Interactivity- Knoxnews.com offers a variety of interactive tools.  All of the news stories published live to the site allow users to comment, e-mail, or upload to them to an ipod. 

Writing

Knoxnews.com's news stories are written efficiently and concisely.  All of the lead sentences in the stories are straight to the point and written efficiently.

Linking

Knoxnews.com is full of links.  Most of the links are straight forward, but some can be misleading.  The homepage contained an overwhelming amount of links.  The news stories didn't contain inline links or related links.  It's hard for the users to find out more information about a news story when there isn't related links or inline links. 

Reader Services

Knoxnews.com offers a variety of reader services.

• Alerts- Login with a user account to receive knoxnews.com alerts
• Text Alerts- Sign up for MyKnoxNews and get text alerts to your cell phone
• RSS- Knoxnews.com provides xml, rss feeds, and myyahoo.com feeds allowing users to stay updated with personally selected news categories

Improvements

The knoxnews.com website could possibly work on the following things to improve the functionality, look, and efficiency of their website.

Homepage Advertisement- the homepage ad competes with the main news story picture.  Possibly downsizing or moving this ad would visually make the homepage look better.

Links- Organization of links, and link names could be improved to help users find out more information quicker.  The news stories didn't contain inline links or related links.

Videos- Allowing users to access videos quicker would be beneficial.  In some cases the organization of the video page seemed confusing and could be improved.

Stocks- Placing a stock market ticker anywhere on the site would help users.

Overall the site has improved drastically over the past few years.  Keeping up with interactivity, alerts, and providing news in a timely fashion has helped make knoxnews.com a success.  There are still a number of things that could be done to fine tune the functionality of the site and make it more appealing to users.