UNC’s student newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel, launched a new Web site over the weekend, and my initial reaction to it is that it is a huge improvement over the previous version. The site is only a couple days old, so obviously there are things that haven’t been fleshed out yet and sections that are still waiting for content, but here are some of the things I like from the first look, and some things that I’m waiting to see if it gets better.

What I like

• RSS feeds!! A year and a half ago, I spent probably an hour and a half poking around the DTH site trying to find an RSS feed to subscribe to, with no success. I remember being very surprised at that time that a college paper of this caliber was missing such a basic feature from its site. The fact that I couldn’t get the paper’s latest stories in my Google Reader is the main reason that I’ve still been picking up a copy of the printed edition on my way into work every morning. Now, when I pick up papers for people in the office, I think I’ll take one fewer copy.
• Tags: It looks like every story now has tags, making it very convenient to see all stories related to the same topic. I’m interested to see how specific the tagging will be (broad, like just general topics, or very specific, like people’s names).
• Twitter names: The staff directory not only lists e-mail addresses, but also Twitter accounts.
• What We’re Reading: I found this column on the “From the Pressbox” sports blog, and while there isn’t any content in it right now, it looks like it’ll be listing interesting articles that the sports staff discovers.
• And lots more. See this story for more information about what’s in store for the Web site.

Things I Would Like to See Improved/Added

• About those RSS feeds … I loaded up an iGoogle tab with feeds from the DTH site and noticed that all the feeds from the different sections have the same feed title — “dailytarheel.com, serving the university community since 1893″. As you can imagine, that’s not very helpful in differentiating one feed from the next.
• Where’s your main Twitter feed? Ok, I know it’s @dailytarheel and I’m already following it. But it certainly can’t hurt to have a prominent “Follow us on Twitter” link on your homepage to make it easy for those who may not know. I see the Facebook box there, and a Twitter link should be right above or below that.
• So what is this blog about? Some of the main sections house a blog in addition to the regular stream of stories. I think it would be beneficial to just have one sentence under each blog’s logo telling visitors what this particular blog is about. Some of it is pretty obvious, but others perhaps not so much. Each blog’s scope is explained in this story, but those short blurbs should be on the blogs themselves as well.
• Speaking of blogs … I would also like to be able to see the entries from the blog as part of the stream of news stories on the main section page. After all, the entries from The Orange Ballot blog are probably of interest to people who visit the City section, so why make them have to go to a separate page? It would be nice if, for instance, I can get both the City section stories and the Orange Ballot entries in one view and/or in the same RSS feed.
• Letting the public come to your editorial meetings is nice, but … it would be even nicer if the DTH brings its meetings to its public. For most staff and faculty, it’s impossible to take time out from work to go to the Student Union at 3:30 p.m. on a weekday. And if you’re a student, unless you happen to be near the Pit around that time, do you really want to make the trek just for this meeting? If you really want the public to take advantage of your open meetings, it’s not enough to just make them open; you have to make it easy for the public to attend them. As I mentioned to DTH editor Andrew Dunn on Twitter, I would really like to see the meetings livestreamed. All you need is a computer, an Internet connection, a Web cam, a decent mic, and Ustream or another similar, free livestreaming service. It’s easy to set up and it requires little time and almost no technical expertise to start a broadcast. It also allows for interactivity in the form of live chats (which we have been taking advantage of at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy by livestreaming our applicant information sessions and answering questions from people watching online in real time). I can’t really see myself physically attending these editorial meetings, but I can definitely see myself having the livestream play while I’m working on other stuff.
• One-click contact: Right now, if you click on a writer’s byline on a story, it takes you to a list of everything that reporter has written, which is fine, but if you want to contact that reporter, you would have to go to the staff directory to find the reporter’s e-mail or Twitter account. Why not have both of those things accompany the byline on a story?
• So how do I submit story ideas again? According to this story about the new site, the DTH is welcoming reader-submitted photos and story ideas. I would like to see a prominent “Submit Your Stuff” link on the homepage or as part of the site-wide navigation. I’m not going to submit stuff everyday, so it’s likely I’ll forget who or where to submit stuff. Don’t make me have to hunt for that information.

Disclosure: As a freshman and sophomore back in 1997-98, I spent about a year working for the Daily Tar Heel as a general assignment sports writer and the all-important third-string writer on the men’s lacrosse beat (I think you’d have to go dig up the microfilm to find my byline). I wrote stories about stadium renovations, “grilled” Carl Torbush at practice one day about the academic standards of football recruits, and at my first men’s lacrosse game, I asked then-coach Dave Klarman whether he regretted switching goalies at halftime after watching his lead vanish in the second half. That was followed by a long, silent, icy stare from him, during which I thought laser beams would dart out from his eyes and burn a hole in my chest, but I managed to survive that episode relatively unscathed.