The Spanish-language online media lag well behind their English counterparts as far as software development and innovation in the presentation of information goes. Money is not the issue, since the likes of El País and El Mundo in Spain, Clarín in Argentina, El Tiempo in Colombia and El Comercio in Peru could surely set up in-house labs if they wished to do so.
The leading online papers have their share of good multimedia content and production: Clarín, El País and El Comercio, for example, all have good, even great, interactive presentations. But nobody seems eager to break new ground in other aspects of online production, let alone go up against world-class trendsetters. The concept of Labs and APIs like those of the BBC, The Telegraph, The New York Times, NPR, MTV.com and Reuters are non-existent among Spanish-world media.
Lately, La Nación, Argentina’s second most read paper both on paper and online, seems willing to change this. A few weeks ago the paper made public its “Labs” – although they don’t have a domain – and presented the first product, a neat visualisation of related stories (actually it’s a “People who read this, also read this” feature).
As a Flash-based swarm that interlinks stories, the feature may not be as complex as the South African Mail & Guardian’s Newsswarm, but still deserves a close look.
This is how it works. La Nación puts a static image of the swarm at the foot of all stories published originally in the print edition (online only content does not have swarms).
The image in turn serves as a link to the actual “People who read this….” visualisation, which is formed by several interlinked bubbles (here’s an example).
The visualisation is simple. For starters it does not even have its own URL. But it does have several other interesting features: each bubble is a story and includes the name of the story, a link to the story, the number of comments on the story and a “+” sign. Click on the plus-sign and you see what articles were read by whoever read the “bubble” in question, thereby linking to a new set of bubbles and extending the network.
The visualisation is little more than a treat for the eye, but indicates a willingness by La Nación to try out new features, to look for new ways to present information. Kudos to them, given the shortage of innovation the Spanish-speaking online press. What remains to be seen is if “La Nación Labs” will grow into something bigger and public, something outsiders can interact with. If it does, it would bring much needed freshness to the online press in Spanish, and may even move others to raise their game.