Enhancing your news experience: A first step

We know there are a lot of information and media sources that compete for your time. It seems like this number grows exponentially every year, and with the move to everything digital, we know it is important to factor in the experience of reading the news along with the quality of the news itself.

Our team at the Austin Monitor has been producing quality, in-depth reporting for nearly a decade. As many of you have observed, our digital experience has not kept apace. A strong digital news experience is easy to use and intuitive, informative but not overbearing. Most of all, it never veers from its primary objective: creating meaningful and lasting value to its readers.

We have taken our first step forward in improving our digital news experience by launching the new visual design of our website. In addition to some stylistic updates that create a more warm and inviting look, we have added more news stories onto our home page. We’ve created a collapsible three-line menu and search feature to help with clutter and elevate your experience when you read on your mobile phone. The popular Whispers section is now in our top menu bar.

True to our history and our word, we now turn it over to you to help guide us and continue to improve your news experience with the Monitor. We know there are areas that will need to be tweaked and looked at. You can let us know by going to our Contact Us page.

We’re excited to share the new website design with you. Thank you for allowing us to always focus fully on the quality of the news and for advising us as we turn our focus to improving the digital experience. And stay tuned: Next week, we have even more exciting news that will further improve your experience with the Monitor.

Joel Gross is the CEO of the Austin Monitor.

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here.