The story of Pope Benedict XVI was one of the most influential stories last week. In the news industry, timeliness is the core of coverage. As the arrival of the big storm, our attentions haven been naturally grasped by other stories. Therefore, many news organizations have changed their strategies for this particular story. However, the Pope’s story is an ongoing event rather then a single one, many news websites still keep a special page for the story and update the page frequently.
For USA Today, a special topic page was created by the story. It is interesting that the page is functioned like a news aggregator, amassing different news source for this particular topic.
I Design
It is not hard to notice that the overall design of the page is, sort of plain, and quite different from many other coverage we have seen before. There is no big center photo for the story, rather they put a five bulletins under the photo section. The photo is small, and not centered, which kind of hard to capture our attentions. There is no thumb photo for each headlines, and no information graphics at all. A design like this can hardly to attract a busy reader who don’t pay attention to those headlines and look for visual appealing elements. However, I like the categories they design for the stories– latest news from USA Today, Photos, From the Web, Connections, Quotes–which I think is both concise and effective.
II User experience
When I looking through this page, I feel like I am in BBS section. I can find all the information about the particular story easily, which could even beyond USA Today itself. By reading those headlines, I am able to find out what are the latest information quickly. Moreover, the quotes section did a great job summarizing and aggregating information, which is also what many readers looking for. Meanwhile, as I mentioned in the design paragraph, a lack of visual elements may lead to less reader retainment. Nowadays, the web world is driven by visual design, a plain text story page is harder and harder to get readers’ attentions.
III Multimedia
At the first glance you may wonder if the page is made of text stories. After reading several stories of the this page, I still think this page is lack of multimedia components, which make this page is less appealing. One of the major multimedia part is the photo section. However, the photos are really small, and you have to read captions of the photos after clicking. Another interesting section is the “connection” section. If you click on one of the small pictures, you will enter another topic page, which is also lack visual component. Also, if you think you can get more information by clicking one of the quotes, you may be wrong, as you will go to another page of this quote. I think a news page like this are suitable for in-depth reporting, and some readers may find it special useful when they want to explore the whole picture of the topic.
IV Target Audience
What I think special for this page is the news aggregator function of this topic. If you want to know more of the Pope story, you can easily find this site after googling key words. Also, you can read various news story within this site, therefore, I think the target audience are curious web users who want to know more about the story. The stories in this page are not long, and many of them are not feature stories. It is useful for first-time readers who know nothing about the topic. However, if you are a quite familiar with religious topics, you may find this page is not enough for you. I think may religious people may go to religious organizations’ website for this particular information.
V Engagement
After exploring so many news website of this story, I don’t think this page is quite engaging. For one thing, the design may not attract readers to click upon those headlines. There are not any social media function buttons with those headlines as well, so it is harder for readers to share this page when scanning the page. For another, many readers may more familiar with the style of USA Today’s front page design, and this page is quite different from that. Some readers may find confusing when navigating in this page. I think it would be more effective to keep the style consist to train readers the way of reporting.
— Xinrui Zhu
Mizzou Multimedia Design 
Of course USA today does an excellent job of covering a story in a well designed way. What sticks out to me the most is the pull quote on the bottom right. I love it and it’s something you see more in print than online but I really think they made it work. I agree with you they are missing multimedia but the photos do add much needed art to the page. Overall the design is a bit plain but that is somewhat normal for this publication. They like simplicity.