The newspaper industry is struggling for its life.

Of course, that’s not news, but what they’re doing by way searching for life rafts is indeed important and worthy of attention.

Not only is their financial survival important, but also a significant part of our civil society fabric is at stake in their future. If they win, we win. Same with lose/lose.

So, if you want to keep up with their struggle –and their impressive investment in testing and figuring out the future—I recommend you subscribe (free) to the Neiman Journalism Lab .

These are some impressive folks. They don’t pretend to have all the answers, but they sure ask good questions.

We can all learn from the questions they ask and answer.

For example, those who operate or design websites (of course I’m assuming you can find your webmaster before she/he heads off to wherever webmasters go for the weekend to share this) will be particularly interested in these findings about website design from Niemen.

First a test.   Which web homepage design gets 90% more unique page views than traditional sites?

(A) This?

(B) Or this?

The answer, according the NiemanLab study,  is “A”.

“Modern, modular homepages received at least 90% more unique page views than traditional sites.”

This finding is based on studies involving 2,671 participants and found that demography—age, education level, political knowledge didn’t make a dime’s worth of difference.   The more modern site (A) was more “enjoyable, informative, credible and trustworthy, interesting, clear and easy to navigate.”

Further, the study found that it was the look of the layout, not the technical features, that made the difference.

I realize that fundraising isn’t journalism (except, of course, in the case of The Agitator) and some are already saying, “this doesn’t apply to us.” But please remember, that nearly 95% of our donors are avid consumers of newspapers and current events. Even more, this design comparison also took into account recent experiences along the same line by The New York Times, The Guardian and The Daily Beast.

You might ask your webmaster and communications folks to tear themselves away from Gawker and read this piece from NiemanLab.

Roger

P.S.  Reminder:  DMA’s 2015 Nonprofit New York Conference opens next Tuesday, the 4th of August.

As noted yesterday, I’m particularly interested in an August 5th report by the American Cancer Society on the impact of  their decision three years ago to suspend direct mail acquisition…stop the use of direct mail for non-dm acquired donors…and remove the ACS list of donors from all exchange universes.  That move created lots of eyeball-rolling and naysaying back then.

You can get a front row seat on the update by ACS staff and consultants at 11:15 on August 5th.  Reserve your place here.