Te Waha Nui’s new website a step forward

AUT’s student journalism publication Te Waha Nui has a new website and those behind it say it’s a modernising step forward.

Not only is there a new URL, the site works fast, features a notably clean façade and is a better multimedia platform.

TIME FOR A CHANGE

Te Waha Nui’s previous site was a Wordpress blog created in 2009 by a visiting exchange student. Senior journalism lecturer Greg Treadwell says the site had outlived its lifespan.

“Websites have a pretty short life and we managed to get seven years out of that one,” says Mr Treadwell.

“In the commercial world it would have died a long time ago.”

Mr Treadwell says the old site was created to look like a newspaper front page – with everything on it, but that’s no longer necessary.

“Not many people come to your front page for news anymore,” he says.

“Increasingly readers are going to social media and they’ll see the stories that interest them there. It’s much more important that the new site is clean and fast to enable this.”

Despite adapting to suit the needs of social media, the new site doesn’t have the option of directly sharing a story on any social media.

Te Waha Nui’s new web editor Aditya Kundalkar says this is “one of the most interesting parts of the new site” and the reason behind it is simple.

“People don’t share directly from a website anymore, they tend to share directly from Facebook and Twitter,” he says.

One of the site’s developers Matt Cooney says he didn’t want to “make assumptions about how people share”.

“Most of us already know how to share and we don’t click the button down the bottom to do it,” says Mr Cooney.

“I’ve seen these options change an incredible amount during my time – who knows how we’ll be sharing five to ten years from now?”

THE JOURNALISM IS WHAT COUNTS

Mr Kundalkar says having the site clean and uncluttered means “there’s instantly a focus on the journalism.”

Mr Treadwell agrees. Despite being “thrilled” with the look of the new site, he says it’s “ultimately just a portal for our stories”.

“What matters is that we continue to write up good, fresh, original stories as that’s ultimately what’s going to bring us readers,” says Mr Treadwell.

“Once they’re reading, it’s just going to be a little bit more reader-friendly.”