Great Lakes Echo launches redesign

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We want this Echo redesign to stand the Great Lakes basin on its ear. And we plan to shake up journalism while we’re at it.

Through this transition we’re sticking with a core Echo principle: A news community can transcend state and national borders to be defined by a natural resource — in this case nearly 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water. We’ll continue to provide regional environmental news, a fairly radical departure from many current journalism experiments that tend to be either hyper-local or national.

But we also invite greater participation from readers while we experiment with new ways to deliver news. Perhaps the greatest difference you’ll discover with Echo 2.0 is the Catch of the Day. Here Echo reporters tell you of things that they can’t express in a traditional news format:

  • Sometimes that’s frustration over an inability to get a story. Check out what Echo reporter Andrew Norman is up against trying to report on a federal administration that boasts of its openness. Weigh in on what that means. Better yet, give him some advice on a work around.
  • Sometimes we’ll let you know what we’re working on. Our hope is to tap your knowledge, skill and sources to help us craft stories and other features. Today read mashup maven Rachael Gleason’s plea for help finding Great Lakes data maps.
  • Sometimes reporters will tell you about the interesting odds and ends that may not make a story. This is the stuff typically left unreported in their notebooks or between their ears or confined to newsroom conversations — like Echo reporter Haley Walker’s take on bread bowls.
  • Sometimes you’ll find reporter reactions to what sources have to say outside of the context of a news story — like Echo reporter Sarah Coefield’s musings on how Echo can truly report on the Great Lakes when it is physically far from their shores. (My take: The Echo staff is more than happy to move lakeside if anyone wants to donate the real estate.)
  • And sometimes…well, we don’t know yet. Help us figure that out.

We also improved on some of the things you’ve come to expect from Echo. We’re still reporting environmental stories that other publications ignore. Not only will they be featured prominently in the top left of the home page, we’ll keep them on the page longer and more visible after initial publication.

We’re giving our special reports more prominent display. So if you missed them first time around, make sure to take a look at Cleaning Coal, Public Pools/Public Health, a bankrupt GM’s environmental legacy and other in-depth features.

You’ll still find Echo lynx hunter Karessa Weir’s Great Links pointers to environmental news reported by others. Karessa sees more Great Lakes news than anyone. We want to leverage that perspective by having her occasionally weigh in on Catch of the Day with her take on what others report.

Get to know us better. Reporter bylines are now linked to short biographies and an archive of their Echo stories. Want to reach them? Here you’ll find their e-mail addresses. But if you have a take on their stories, weigh in directly in the comments sections so that other readers benefit.

We’ll continue to experiment with nontraditional ways of engaging readers like this invasive species Facebook quiz.

And for those who are so bent out of shape over Echo polls — well, get over it.

Yes, we realize that unscientific online polls fail to accurately reflect the views of a defined demographic. Our readers know that. But such features offer another way to prompt and engage in a conversation about immensely complex environmental issues — if for no other reason than to gripe about the missing alternatives.

The map accompanying this column is a fresh way of looking at the Great Lakes region. In the coming days, we hope that kind of fresh perspective applies to the journalism you find elsewhere on the site — even while we strive for traditional values of fairness, accuracy, credibility.

We look forward to your help upending the Great Lakes basin and shaking it hard until the news drops out.

Echo Editor David Poulson is the associate director of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.

12 thoughts on “Great Lakes Echo launches redesign

  1. My favorite thing about the new format is that I can now see and read the comments from other readers. It drove me crazy not being able to see what the rest of the world was writing.

  2. Keep on keeping on. We need lake country news in multiple formats. And, keep whirling that map of the lakes around. It keeps our perspective fresh, and reminds us that the lakes are truly without borders.

  3. Pingback: Great Lakes Echo gets facelift | GreenBoard

  4. Dave–I like the look and feel of the redesign. I haven’t been a faithful visitor of late, but I will be. I am glad you are covering the carp issue. Sadly, the carp were introduced under the sanction of U.S. Fish and Wildlife. A lot of ponds around the country imported them. It is my understanding there have been several lawsuits at the state level around the country against property owners who imported the carp–and this was about a dozen years ago.

    The zebra mussels have made the water a lot clearer on my side of Lake Huron, but it’s hurt the sport and commercial fishing industry. Those walking carp scare the heck out of me.

  5. Hey Dave…

    …Gary Wilson here from Chicago and the Great Lakes Town Hall.

    We’re looking forward to the Echo’s relaunch and I’m anxious to see the interesting things that reporters have that don’t quite make the story.

    In my own experience I run across things that don’t fit in a story but
    also don’t necessarily justify a story. They do deserve to be published though.

    Tell your crew to keep up the good work.

    Gary

  6. This looks great. I think defining the audience by their shared environment makes a ton of sense and is potentially quite powerful. Good luck with this.

  7. I like the new design of the site, looks very clean and is easy to navigate. My only recommendation would be to change the background picture behind Great Lakes Echo every time the browser is refreshed.

    See this site for example
    http://www.abc.net.au/science/

    Thanks

  8. Bill,

    We’ve got some re-tagging and other clean-up work to do in the wake of the transition to the new site.
    You can see all of the Special Reports from the Special Reports link at the top of the page.
    The section in the sideline below Great Links. just pulls the five freshest. This is mostly a space issue and may be adjusted as the site matures.

  9. David,

    Thanks David for the suggestions – I did find the tabs at the precious screens. I think it is certainly beneficial that there are many more categories of tabs with which to find articles. Interestingly there is only one article under the energy tab when in fact there are probably 100 or more – that needs to be fixed. There are no tabs for coal when in fact you had the Special Report on coal with numerous articles. The Special Reports are really good – so keep those coming – but they need to be better indexed as I didn’t see some past Reports listed. Thanks, keep up the good work.

  10. Hi Bill,

    That’s good feedback and we’ll certainly take it into account as we cmove ahead. Meanwhile, you might want to click on “more Great Links” link at the bottom of the daily Great Links section. That will take you to a delicious screen where we’re tagging each story at a much finer screen. In the right column you’ll see a list of the top 10 tags and an opportunity to reveal all of the category tags. Delicious helps us shunt stories into finer and multiple categories. We think that’s an improvement, but we’re still refining the system. So the feedback is appreciated.

    Dave

  11. I really liked when articles were sorted into topics. I can’t find anything now and don’t have the time to wade through everything. Please sort by topic.

    thanks,

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