Out & About Newspaper adds weather, traffic and other features to Web site

Out & About Newspaper, Tennessee’s largest monthly GLBT newspaper, has added new features to its Web site, including weather from NewsChannel 5 and up-to-the-minute traffic reports.

The weather feature provided by NewsChannel 5 appears on the right side of the front page and includes current conditions, a seven day forecast, current radar and a skycam view.

The additions round out a new Web site designed by SBResults of Hermitage.

Other new features include an interactive calendar (which features upcoming events on the front page); a “most read” story section; the ability for readers to post comments to stories, email stories, and send a “Letters to the Editor” reply to a story; an interactive reader poll along with other rich interactive reader features, such as an enhanced keyword search and search by author.

The site also allows for O&AN reporters to post breaking news stories and have those stories available to readers almost instantly.

“We’re very proud that would could partner with NewsChannel 5 to provide the weather feature which rounds out our new reader interactive site,” said Jerry Jones, O&AN publisher. “SBResults has been working on our new Web site for almost a year. We now have the most reader interactive and informative GLBT Web site in Tennessee.”

Lane Scoggin with SBResults said the site was designed with the reader’s needs at the top of the list.

“I think I’m most proud of the process changes that we were able to incorporate with the new design,” Scoggin said. “Jerry (Jones) and Brent (Meredith) helped us identify the bottle-necks, and together we streamlined the time-consuming manual processes. This allows the OA&N staff to get the news online much faster, and concentrate on the stories, not the mechanics.”

Readers are noticing the difference. Last month hits to the Web site jumped to more than one million, with more than 26,000 unique readers. According to Alexa.com, O&AN is Tennessee’s highest ranking GLBT news site.

Alexa Internet is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com. Its Web site is best known for providing information on the Web traffic to sites in its index and is considered to be a leading traffic-measurement company.

“Readership on our Web site is quickly outpacing our printed product as our sophisticated readers want up-to-the minute news and know they can quickly turn to O&AN to find it,” Jones said.

In addition to its media partnership with NewsChannel 5, O&AN has a partnership with Inside Out Nashville and displays the weekly GLBT issue on its front Web page.

O&AN Editor and Creative Director Brent Meredith said the newspaper wanted to make the site a “one-stop” shop for news and information for the GLBT community.

“We’ve seen an exponential increase over the last year in our on line readership,” Meredith said. “We wanted to provide those readers with more options to make our Web site a one-stop shop for news and information. Our partnership with NewsChannel 5 has certainly aided that process. I encourage everyone to check out the new site, sign up for our email reader alerts, send us your thoughts on the changes, and check back often for more new features and breaking news.”

Out & About Newspaper is Tennessee s largest monthly GLBT newspaper, providing the Tennessee GLBT community with up-to-the-minute local news and information. The newspaper’s goal is to provide its readership with news, features, diversity of opinion and thoughtful analysis.