Within the next month, I’m planning to start an ambitious project called the “New Media Index of College Newspapers.” Basically, I’m creating a database where I will index the new media content of a college newspaper’s web site. This will include interactive, multimedia, and blogging content. The presence of each item will add 1 point to the total index for a web site. The higher the index, the more “new media-ish” the web presence of the newspaper. I hope to add radio and tv sites later, but the index will be different, and I think it will be easier to start with newspapers. #

So, I need some help. I’ll show you the list of index items I have so far, and you tell me what I’m missing in the comments. #

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Index items: #

• Web site (everyone gets one point if they have a presence on the web)
• Hyperlinks in stories (either in text or at the bottom of a story)
• PDF download of printed version
• Staff-written weblogs
• Community-written weblogs
• Map mashup
• Comments on stories
• Forums
• RSS feeds
• Social Bookmarking Buttons (digg, del.icio.us, etc.)
• Podcasts/staff-generated audio clips
• User-submitted photos
• User-submitted videos
• Audio Slideshows
• Photo slideshows
• Staff-generated video
• Flash Multimedia packages

That’s 17 items so far. Obviously, I’m not planning to dig through every page on a web site, so if the multimedia/interactive content isn’t at least moderately easy to find, it’s not really an important component of the web site, is it? #

The index will be linked from the ICM blog and website, and I’m hoping to recruit another couple of folks to help me do the indexing. #

Anyway, am I missing anything? And if you have any other thoughts on how to make this a more useful index, please put them in the comments. #

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