CNN Redesigns Website

CNN’s new website launches today Monday, 26th October, harnessing the full power of the brand and delivering web users a stunning, visually charged online experience, it was announced by KC Estenson, senior vice president and general manager of CNN.com.

Through a full-scale, breakthrough design, the new CNN.com is uncluttered, visually bold and dramatically improves the consumer experience. In addition to showcasing CNN’s in-depth reporting, the site includes the launch of new features that make the site easier to browse and navigate, more integrated video and stunning photography. Adding new voices and a range of perspectives to CNN.com, the site will also feature deep content partnerships with TED, and U.S. entertainment publications, People and EW magazines.

“This is a total re-imagining of CNN.com, and we are extremely excited about unveiling it to the world,” said Estenson. “CNN.com has always been a destination for breaking news but the breadth and depth of the new site will give users a fresh new way to experience CNN’s content.”

Visually Driven Design and Personalisation:
The new CNN.com showcases CNN Worldwide’s extensive video capabilities by featuring video and photography as the centerpiece of the homepage. The new visually captivating homepage offers all of the best stories, video, interactive features above the fold – complemented by the ability for users to customise their news settings. CNN.com’s new personalisation functionality enables users to customise their personal CNN.com homepage with weather and local headlines, stock quote lookup and sports scores. The site’s search ability was rebuilt, allowing users to more quickly and easily find relevant regional articles and videos from around the world across the CNN.com network.

Sections and Voices:
New section fronts: The international edition of CNN.com gives more depth to stories in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America alongside existing sections for Europe, Asia and North America. Sections dedicated to the Middle East and Latin America dedicated sections will also be incorporating local language feeds in Spanish and Arabic.

CNN Entertainment: Applying the same philosophy to entertainment news as CNN has employed in covering politics and business news, CNN.com is now aligning all of its entertainment resources – a reporting unit, journalists in the field, CNN’s Los Angeles and New York bureaus and CNN.com’s entertainment reporting team – to make it the premiere entertainment news destination online. CNN’s signature lifestyle shows like Talk Asia, The Screening Room, Revealed and My City_My Life will be presented in a new visually impactful and stimulating environment. CNN.com is also partnering with U.S. entertainment publications People and EW magazines to provide more of their sweeping coverage of entertainment news right within CNN.com.

Content Collaborations:
TED Talk Tuesdays: CNN.com is launching a new video commentary feature through a partnership with TED. TED is a small nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference 25 years ago, TED has grown to support world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. Two annual TED Conferences invite the world's leading thinkers and doers to give the talk of their lives for 18 minutes. Talks from TED and partners are available, free, to the world on TED.com, and now, on CNN.com. Past TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and Gordon Brown. CNN.com will bring these inspirational conversations to our mainstream audience through TED Talk Tuesdays, where CNN.com will feature a talk on the home page each week. The site also will produce additional editorial content, including follow-up interviews with TED speakers, commentaries or original reporting around the Talk’s subject to provide users with a wide range of points of view.

Oprah.com: CNN.com’s partnership with Oprah becomes more robust, leveraging their content and contributors more across the Entertainment sections of the site. Additionally, CNN.com is joining forces with Oprah.com and Facebook to present a live Oprah's Book Club interactive web event on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. (HKT). The webcast will be a 90-minute worldwide event, during which readers can submit their questions for the author and potentially be featured during the live discussion. The special online event will be streamed live simultaneously from CNN.com’s video player on CNN.com and Oprah.com and will utilize Facebook Connect, enabling users to comment and pose questions through their Facebook profiles without ever leaving the live webcast.

Oprah's Book Club is a reading club featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and the club’s sixty-third selection is "Say You're One of Them," the fiction book by Uwem Akpan. The book covers the plight of children in Africa through five short stories that are each told from a child's perspective.

CNN iReport:
Since CNN launched iReport three years ago, the iReport community has grown into an integral part of newsgathering and storytelling at CNN. To reflect the growth and maturity of the community, as well as CNN’s commitment to collaborating with its audience to deliver the richest, most complete global news coverage available, iReport is being fully integrated into the new CNN.com.

The CNN iReport section of the new CNN.com will share the site’s breakthrough design, folding the social media features of iReport.com into CNN to create a seamless user experience across CNN’s online news and user-generated platforms. CNN iReport will feature a curated section front, programmed by CNN producers to ensure that the best, most interesting iReport content is easy to find and share. The CNN iReport section front also features direct quotes from iReporters who are in the middle of unfolding stories across the world.

iReport submissions will be clearly labeled when vetted and cleared for reporting on CNN. Vetted iReports now feature comments from CNN producers, who add context to the iReporter’s first-person view. Unverified submissions will be designated as such to provide the most complete context for users.

CNN Challenge:
CNN.com also launches the CNN Challenge, an online news trivia game guided by CNN anchors. Larry King, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Robin Meade and others guide users through the quiz about top stories of the week.