The News Observer’s new website is up

The redesigned website for The News Observer is up and running. They had announced an April Fool’s Day launch but they apparently pulled the trigger early.

With the exception of the pop up windows and overdoing it a bit on the banner ads (real estate ad in the Obituaries?), it’s a definite improvement, though aside from the poll feature, they missed the Web 2.0 boat on user interaction. If it were me, I’d allow comments at the end of every story like many local news sites are doing now.

Unlike the old site, you can read an entire story instead of just a few headlines and a tease blurb with no “full story” link. They are now supplying RSS feeds for their main sections, and there’s also an archive search, but its use will be limited for a bit because the archive apparently starts now. All-in-all though, a crisp, user-friendly redesign with a lot more meat; I’ll definitely be spending more time there.