July 15, 2002, 10:48 PM ET
NAA awards announced
The Newspaper Association of America has presented this year's Digital Edge Awards. The big winners this year were CJOnline, SavannahNOW.com and washingtonpost.com. My favorite is Hannibal.net's Mark Twain site, complete with videos of Mark Twain impersonators.
There's some great journalism here. I just wish there were an award for accessibility -- a reward for site creators who take the time to make their content easily accessible to all users, regardless of browser type. We're a long way from such an award, but introducing something along these lines might incent sites to do better.
July 15, 2002, 12:10 PM ET
Online credibility survey
DallasNews.com and affiliates are conducting an online credibility survey that asks, "How credible are online news sources?" It claims to be "the largest online news survey ever undertaken on the credibility of online news sources." Evidently the study's results "will be used by journalists across the country to improve online news services."
I spent some time looking over the questions and was disheartened to find there was no attempt to determine a corrolation between credibility and good Web design; instead, most questions focused on content and usage patterns.
The lack of design questions is disappointing because past studies have shown that Web design can communicate trustworthiness, and credibility can be increased by the use of high-quality graphics. Clearly there's some kind of corrolation there, and it'd be interesting to see whether it extends to news sites.
A question like "Do you find well-designed news sites to be more credible than poorly designed sites?" would have made this survey more credible.
