The Fargo Forum Gets a Facelift

Online that is.  Even though I no longer live in Fargo, I still like to keep up on the news and events taking place in my home town.  I primarily used the Fargo Forum’s website www.in-forum.com to keep up to date.  But that site was sorely out dated and clunky which made me look for alternatives.  Recently I have been relying more on the StarTribune.com site out of the Twin Cities because of its superior online format.  The obvious trade off was the North Dakota local news that I was looking for, and while I will continue to read the Strib because of my links to that area [I lived in the cities for a short while and my fiancee graduated from the University of Minnesota], I sorely missed a good source for online North Dakota news.

Luckily, late Monday night, Chris Welle, whom I follow on Twitter, brought my attention to the Forum’s brand spanking new website: www.inforum.com.  Lets take a quick look to compare the sites.

First the old site:

And now the new site:

It is somewhat difficult to see the differences in the screen grabs above, but the new site has a number of improvements:

1. A new wider format.  The old site was very narrow with the sidebars talking up about 65% of the screen.  The new site gives the actual news stories much more real estate than the previous site;
2. Revamped RSS feeds which offer greater choice in the type of stories syndicated along with fewer of the annoying ads that the old feed had;
3. A better story tagging feature which will help ad targeting among other things;
4. Better navigation and search features;
5. Finally, the new appearance of the site should not be overlooked.  I simply think the new format and templates of inform.com are a vast improvement over the old site.

It is great to see more local paper’s update their look to conform to modern web standards, and I think Inforum.com certainly went about the change the right way.  I am excited be a regular visitor of the new and improved site.

Are there more examples of smaller media/communications companies [Forum Communications isn't small, but the area/region it serves doesn't qualify as a top market] improving their content online, or are most smaller news outlets in need of face lifts?