Be ruthless for your own good

If there is any doubt that the idea of a corporate news site can work for almost any type of business, consider the ISC Newsroom: It's a sugar company.

Not just any sugar company, but "an authoritative voice in the sugar industry--U.S., Mexico, and elsewhere ... a one-stop shop for the best thinking and views on sugar and all of the issues/market forces that surround it," according to David E. Henderson of The News Group Net, the Washington-based consultancy that built the newsroom for the Imperial Sugar Company with veteran journalists.

The goal is admirable, and the concept is sound. In fact, it sounds a lot like the corporate newsroom we recommend here at Newsvetter. There is one crucial difference, however: In our view, the ISC Newsroom needs a lot more vetting.

It's true that the site is dynamic and features content that is decidedly unlike typical press release copy--which is to say that it's relatively free of jargon and is actually of some interest to people other than those inside the company. But it's also an example of having too much of a good thing.

Upon visiting the newsroom, the reader is bombarded with content, which includes not one but two slide shows, at the top and the right side of the page. The "stories" are fine--a mix of features and brief blog-type summaries that link to external articles and items.

Dozens of headlines fall under categories with such labels as "News," "Customers," "Company," "Latest Sugar Industry News," and "Sugar Industry Related News and Resources." Then we have a nav bar that lists "Communities," "Company," "Customers," "Featured" (?), "Industry," "New Products" (finally!), "News" (again), "Partners," and "Photos."

It's enough to make us diabetic. Even if there really is such a voracious appetite for sugar-related information to warrant this kind of coverage, we would argue that it can be edited and packaged in a way that doesn't overwhelm the senses.

For one thing, a red flag should immediately be raised any time you have a subject mentioned in several categories on the same page, as "news" is here. Second, when you get beyond four or five, it's time to ask whether you truly need all of them or you're just piling on instead of honing and reorganizing.

Case in point: The "Customers" category in the ISC Newsroom has only one entry, which argues for it being consolidated with others. And is there really a need for a section called "Featured"? This, by definition, would seem to argue for its content to be displayed front and center on the main page.

In fairness, such specific elements may have been demanded by the client; we all know how that goes. Nevertheless, it's worth reinforcing the need for reader accessibility, which businesses must accept if they are to have a successful newsroom.

This is why Newsvetter's mantra is "less is more," whether it's a sentence or an entire site. Vetting is tough work but, in the end, pays off for the reader and the consumer--and, in turn, for your business.

In explaining Amazon's extraordinarily lengthy beta-testing period, Jeff Bezos told me in 1995, "Anyone can come up with 20 great ideas. It's choosing the top 3 and executing that's the hard part."

Amen.