Knoxville’s only real newspaper, the Knoxville News Sentinel, has one of the worst websites of any newspaper I have ever visited. The website is difficult to navigate and finding news anywhere on it is almost impossible.
On the other hand, visiting a TV STATION website appears to be the best way to find local and national news. Although this makes absolutely no sense, I am thankful that stations such as WATE and WBIR have such great websites.
When visiting the News Sentinel site, I almost always get frustrated. If I am lucky, I can eventually find what I am looking for, such as the classifieds. Rarely is the site beneficial for news unless I feel like digging.
The sites of the two TV stations mentioned above, by contrast, are easy to navigate, and news is always very easy to find. My personal favorite is the WATE site. Using their email alerts I always hear about breaking news long before anyone else I know does, and 24 hours or more before it appears on the News Sentinel site.
To get an idea of what a newspaper website SHOULD look like, visit Nashville’s Tennessean. Chattanooga’s Times Free Press site has way too much animation, to the point of distraction, and the site is slow, but at least they are innovative enough to offer a VERY cool interactive online newspaper in their enhanced site. Even Maryville’s The Daily Times site is more informative and useful than the News Sentinel website.
Hopefully one of the many benefits of the move to a new facility will include a redesigned website for the KNS. We shall see.