I have been examining the New York Times Online all semester now, and while researching the varying elements of this website, I also learned quite a bit about its general usability.

In short, with each factor I researched, I was slowly learning the answer to this very question.

The first time I visited the website in this capacity, I was examining its use of video. I immediately noticed the way a seemingly endless amount of content was effectively organized into a manageable hierarchy.

When I examined the blogging aspect of the publication, I noted how organized and easily accessible content was made to be.

Organization was something I recognized consistently. When examining the site’s use of photography, I was impressed by the unique way this element was used in a storytelling capacity. Whether readers are looking for poignant documentation of the day, the week, the year, or even the decade, content is organized in a way that they can always get what they want.

While examining the site’s unique web features, I learned of several new ways they have been sharing the news, such as TimesPeople and Times Skimmer. These, in addition to other applications like TimesReader and NYT Editor’s Choice, which I discovered while examining the use of distribution channels, illustrate one of this publication’s greatest assets. This lies in the variety of ways content can be consumed. Because of this, there is no one design for this publication. Rather, users are free to choose whichever one they like.

This was continually reinforced, each time I visited the publication’s website, whether I was doing research for the rest of my blogging, or simply catching up on the news.

My conclusion? There is a reason the New York Times is so successful.

“All the News that’s Fit to Print.” That’s what they promise.

And they deliver. In any way we want.

Perhaps the most notable of these is the inherent blurring of the barrier separating reporters and their audience.

The Internet has provided an endless outlet, in which anyone can be a reporter, in some way, shape, or form.

Beyond this, the practice of crowdsourcing, or “collaborative publishing” shows us that audience engagement has become an essential aspect of the news industry. Even at a top publication like the New York Times, readers now have the ability to shape  the news, and even the way in which is reported to them.

One way that this is being done, in the case of the NYT, comes in the form of a man named Clark Hoyt.

He serves as The Times’s public editor; the readers’ representative. His job is to address readers’ feedback, both positive and negative, regarding the NYT, its varying content, and its journalistic practices.

According to Byron Calame, a former public editor, the job involves being “an outsider dedicated to representing readers and serving as a watchdog over the paper’s journalistic integrity.”

In introducing himself to his readers, Calame explains, “Greater transparency, I believe, can help you as readers better understand the news judgements that shape each day’s paper- and hold The Times’s news staff more accountable.”

But in this day and age, transparency is not enough, and so, it is the public editor’s job to make sure the readers are heard and their feedback heeded.

In that, we can see just how the Internet has changed journalism…for the better.

There are 592,785 fans, 753 photo albums, and 355 videos. The page also links to affiliate Facebook pages, like those of T Magazine, Frugal Traveler, and City Room. Wall posts vary, from simple greetings, like the most recent “saludos y buen día para todos,” from Quique Quiroz, a fan, to some not so friendly feedback, like “THIS PAPER SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” posted yesterday by Facebook user, Ingrid Dasilva.

NYT reporters’ personal Facebook pages are accessible via “Favorite Pages” of which there are 33.

Finally, to increase its social media following, the NYT uses its Facebook, to advertise Twitter.

The general NYT Twitter offers home page stories, usually updated at least every hour. So far, there have been 45,345 tweets with a following of 2,423,621. While these tweets are kept fairly general, pages for specific topics and reporters are easily found on the list of 189 Twitter accounts that the NYT follows.

A major following via Facebook and Twitter proves that the NYT knows what it’s doing when it comes to social media. But for them, that wasn’t enough.

And then, there was TimesPeople.

The NYT describes TimesPeople as, “a social network for Times readers. But it’s not a social network like Facebook or MySpace — you won’t have Times friends, and it won’t get you Times dates. Instead, you’ll assemble a network of Times readers. Then you’ll be able to share interesting things on NYTimes.com with others in the network.”

Users have the ability to use Twitter with the NYT online, but to do so, they must link their Twitter account to their TimesPeople account. Once this is done, users need only click the “Twitter” link accompanying most articles, blog posts, and multimedia features, to tweet about the content.

If you thought it stopped there, you’re mistaken.

TimesPeople can also be linked to a user’s Facebook profile, via the TimesPeople Facebook application.

They’ve just thought of everything…haven’t they?

According to the Online Journalism Review, the best way to write for the web is to “distinguish yourself by writing in a clean, active, conversational style that will make your readers feel as comfortable reading your words as they feel when talking with a close friend.”

Writing for the web well is not that simple.

Because of this, the the criteria for doing so can be greatly expanded. This can then be applied to a news organization, like the NYT, and the various writing styles they employ.

According to the OJR online writing should be simple, but direct. News should be written in the active voice, using strong verbs. A perusal of the NYT homepage indicates that the leads of almost every top story have been written this way.

When it comes to the specifics, the NYT seems to be on the ball. Take, for example, their continuing coverage of the Times Square Bomb Scare. The most recent article on the subject was written with sources attributed and many contextual hyperlinks throughout. The links were always accessible via relevant proper names, keywords, and phrases, as the OJR says they should be. These varied from specifics, such as Faisal Shahzad to much more general terms, like Pakistan.

The OJR argues that for online writing to be easy to read, text blocks should not have more than five lines. In this article, of approximately 30 text blocks, there were eight that broke this rule. However, many of these only did so because they were made narrower by the plethora of multimedia elements and widgets included with the story.

It is the use of elements like these that makes the NYT really shine. Stories come complete with links to related content, videos, photos, timelines, discussions, and just about everything else.

Could they improve?

Yes. No one’s perfect. The OJR lists many formatting devices that can be used to break up a story, including bold headers, block quotes, and lists.

Improvements can always be made, but when it comes to writing style, it seems like the NYT has the right idea.

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, the implications are only now being realized.

An article appeared in the print edition of today’s New York Times: “A Russian Orphanage Offers Love and Care, but Few Ways Out.” Finding this same on the NYT website indicates that the staff of the publication recognized that changes had to be made, when it came to the online version’s headline.

How do we know? Because they’ve changed it.

“Russian Orphanage Offers Love, But Not Families.”

Each word comprising an online story’s headline must have a real reason for being chosen. In this case, the simple trade of the generic “few ways out” for “families” specifies the headline and in turn the article. It is these specifics that will make the article stand out, even with the endless amount of traffic passing through a site like Google, each day.

 For another example, take the recent Times Square Bomb scare. The NYT online has published a plethora of stories noting each development. The vast majority of these articles have headlines that are concise; specific enough to be searched, but general enough to be found. Even now, a few days after the event, simply searching the term “bomb” in Google News leads us right to the New York Times.

And that’s exactly what they want.

However the NYT, like most publications, still has work to do. For example among the well-written headlines of the bomb scare, there is “Auto Businessmen Briefly at Bomb Inquiry’s Focus.” In the end, what are the chances of these being chosen as the keywords to this story? Unlikely.

In actuality, this headline fails to even sum up the point of the story. Something like, “Bomb Investigation: The Search for Suspects” could have done this much better.

Beyond the basic obligation of using a headline to sum up a story, writers must keep their medium in mind. For example, the headline “Free Speech Through the Foggy Lens of Election Law” provides little in the way of words leading to this story. A more effective headline, comprised of specific keywords could be something like “Campaigns: Corruption through Contribution?”

In the end, news headlines and SEO reinforce that same lesson: what worked in the past may not, in the present. What was best for print may not be best online. Journalism is changing, and we must change with it.

The contribution that the Internet has made to the distribution of news is not limited to websites. Rather, it has created a seemingly endless amount of outlets when it comes to how people consume news. This gives Internet users the ability to take their publication of choice, and receive their news from it, in a countless number of ways.

Take, for example, the New York Times. One of the most widely read news publications in the country, the NYT owes at least some of its success to the sheer number of distribution channels it offers.

The publication’s website is constantly updated to offer the bulk of the content of each day’s National paper. Like many other publications, the NYT is also available via RSS feed, Podcasts, Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. But this is only the beginning.

The rise of email is just one example. The NYT online offers a mailing list, in which users receive emails with “Today’s Headlines” each morning. The content of these is made available in either a text only or graphics (HTML) format.

With smart phones all the rage, the NYT has responded with the NYTimes mobile Web site, which can be accessed through a smart phone’s Web browser. In addition, programs have been developed for certain specific devices, like the Blackberry, Android, and Palm Pre. These are advertised to optimize content viewing, even more so than the mobile site.

Times Reader 2.0

About a year ago, the NYT introduced Times Reader 2.0, which they describe as “a downloadable software application offering a digital experience of The Times that’s very much like reading the printed newspaper.” The software, powered by Adobe AIR, is available to those using Windows, Mac OS, or even Linux and “…gives you everything you’d expect from the New York Times in print, delivered to your computer in less than a minute.”

Another application, specially made for newspaper lovers, is Times Skimmer. Unlike Times Reader, this is browser based, and “provides the experience of spreading out a newspaper and paging through it.”

Times Skimmer

Most recently, they have come out with the NYTimes Editors’ Choice application, specifically designed for Apple’s new Ipad.

Users can choose to use any…or even all of these channels. Personally, I access the NYT from my Blackberry, on Twitter, via RSS, and by picking up a good, old fashioned paper. In the end, times change and preferences vary, but whether you choose a paper or an Ipad, the advancement of the internet, coupled with publications like the New York Times, will continue moving us forward into the future.

The website, like those of most online news publications, is constantly being updated, keeping readers aware of the very latest breaking news. Much of the site’s content is drawn from its printed publication. Each night, the national edition of the next morning’s newspaper is uploaded. This content will later be accessible online via article archives, which contain stories dating back to 1851 (those dating back to 1987 are free…older articles require fees). However, in a disclaimer, the NYT explains that they “cannot guarantee that every article from every edition will appear on the Web site. Features that are unavailable via the website include the auction sales and merchandise offerings from the Classified section and the business opportunities portion of the Sunday Business Section.

In addition to this content, the NYT boasts of many other “web exclusives.” These can be as simple as daily emails of major headlines, or as interactive as their newest feature, the publication’s own social network. Known as TimesPeople, it is described as “a great way to discover things on NYTimes.com that you might not otherwise have found and to share your discoveries with other NYTimes.com readers.” Essentially, the network is an outlet for users to exchange NYT content, ranging anywhere from articles to videos to blog posts to movie ratings.

Finally for those of us hoping to carry the newspaper format into the future, the NYT has introduced (in addition to its electronic edition) Times Skimmer, a browser based application that “provides the experience of spreading out a newspaper and paging through it.”

It is clear that in its “web exclusives” the NYT is ahead of the game…but what remains to be seen is whether this will be enough to keep users coming back, even when they have to pay to do so.

When navigating through the photo content of the NYT Online, it becomes clear that the creators of the website sought to remind viewers of this fact. The photographs are specifically organized among assorted slideshows and categories. These vary in size and specifics, from photo-essays, to slideshows of The Day in Photos. Beyond this, there are overall annual slideshows (like 2009: The Year in Pictures- a collection of the most gripping and poignant photographs of 2009, as selected by the editors of the New York Times) There is even an option to go further beyond this, through, Documenting the Decade in which, “readers submitted photos and their recollections of important moments from the last 10 years, documenting events including the Sept. 11 attacks, the space shuttle Columbia disaster, the war in Iraq, the Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 and 2008 elections and the recession.”

NYT photography is also available via Lens, the website’s photography blog. According to its description, the blog presents “…the finest and most interesting visual and multimedia reporting.” Users who have a particular interest in the subject can subscribe to Lens via RSS feed or even follow the blog on Facebook and Twitter. In its short time in existence, features like these have attracted a great deal of participation to the blog. Its founders thank readers for this, saying, “To say that we are gratefully astonished by your participation and your enthusiasm and your patience would be an understatement. Thank you.”

The presentation of photography in this way is not without its faults though, and readers work to make sure the people at the NYT are aware of that. Common complaints have included illegible photo comments, the animated gallery display, lack of a mailing list, and general navigating. However, perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the NYT is the speed at which they have responded to their feedback, both positive and negative. It is that, in itself, that reminds us why online journalism in general, has grown so much.

When visiting the New York Times Online, you might notice that amongst the seemingly endless amounts of information presented, there are six overarching tabs, which divide the site’s overall content in basic ways. Right in the middle of these is a tab that denotes video…just video. That, in itself is an initial indicator of how important the element of video has become to online journalism.

When it comes to the New York Times specifically, this becomes even clearer. Video content, much like the site’s general news content, is divided into more than 20 subject categories.  Viewers can also select from other options, like Most Viewed or Featured Videos. Their selection can specify other content, as the user is then invited to check out Other Videos They May Like.

 The videos themselves fulfill the element’s original purpose, which is to augment, not repeat the story. This can even be seen simply in the way that video content is linked to related print content, reminding users that while video is an essential aspect of the online journalism genre, the advantage here lies in it’s use when combined with the other multimedia elements available to online journalists.

 Within its blogs, the NYT takes advantage of many of those advantages that are innate within the blogosphere itself. Stories are reported almost as quickly as the news happens, with regular updates as more information becomes available. They are rich in media content, whether it is simply by linking to further information, or by using effective video, photos, or any other graphics. Bloggers take advantage of their ability to post “informed speculation” but also make sure to define it as such. Finally, the feedback that is so important to this free-flowing form is constantly encouraged, via links in every entry, inviting users to comment on, e-mail, print, or share.  With such a formidable legacy publication, the New York Times might not be what comes to mind when you think of blogging…but as the blogosphere continues to grow in size and importance, this could very well change.