5 Digital Journalism trends to follow in 2016

In this article you will find the trends we identified as “must follow” for Digital Newspapers in 2016.

Don’t miss out!

Check out the list below and let us know if you need more information about any of them.

1) Charts: they combine perfectly images and data, it is what people look for.

We do not have much time in our daily life to process all information we would like to. However we want to know what is going on, and we know images say more 1000 words. So that’s it! This is the solution: create graphics! Graphics show complex concepts in the easiest way. They are reliable because they can only be obtained from data and data usually are objective.

Example of graphics are charts and most common charts are:

    • Pie Chart: great to show percentages when the variale is 1.
    • Line Chart: great to show growth or decrease over time. Also useful to compare growth/decrease of multiple variable in time.
    • Bar Chart: Great comparative tool if we have from 2 to 5 elements we are tracking. Can also include percentages and proportions.

In Opennemas we use charts with our Polls Module. So that if you are collecting your readers opinions you can display results in real time through an image.

Opennemas_Polls

 

2) Live Feed: users like to be able to follow events in real time. They also would like to have a time line they can consult to see the evolution of an event and real time updates. It is even better if the updates come from different sources and in different ways. An example could be to create a live update of a sport match and give different comments and updates every 10 minutes. They could be short title accompanied by twits, videos, audios, hyperlinks, images, charts, etc.

In Opennemas we have a module we call “Blog” that is perfect to publish live feeds. It is a section where content is automatically published in chronological order.

 

3) Videos: Indubitably a growing trend. We love videos. The way they manage to communicate in so short time is addictive. Videos can combine so many levels of communication that is not surprising they are taking more and more attention and investments. Our advise? Let your readers submit their own videos to your video channel (i.e. YouTube or Vimeo), testimonials are so powerful and will help you out, because let’s admit it, it is not that easy to make good videos.

In Opennemas we allow newspapers to connect their Video Channel to be able to publish on their newspaper their video in the easiest way possible and not affecting the newspaper storage size with our Media Module.

 

4) Social: another addicting bunch of tools, no matter which one is your style, your newspaper needs to be there! It is not uncommon that people open their mobiles first thing in the morning and check out news on their Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. It is also a fact that the most commented, shared and well known news on the planet are shared virally through social networks.

In Opennemas by default every newspaper can add redirection to its own social pages and every article automatically gets published with a share/comment button.

 

5) Mobile: it took over tablet and desktop and it will continue to grow! Just looking at our Opennemas newspapers we can see that Mobile counts for more than 70% of visits (data source Opennemas Network Analytics Jan’16).

If there is still someone thinking that a web page is enough, you are almost already too late! Go Responsive!

Nobody will pay any attention to your digital newspaper if the article font is too small to read.

We recently posted our news about all Responsive Themes available for immediate activation and will never get tired of advising to read out our short and easy Guide Style that will help you understanding the value of giving your news the Design it deserves.

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