D.C. Dispatch August 9, 2005

The BBC News Web site feels the way great newspapers have always felt—vital, intelligent, crisp, and lucid.

Alive in London

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In the hours and days after the London bombings, I spent a lot of time at British media Web sites that I don't usually see. Other American news junkies probably did the same.

Several weeks have passed now, and the London story is no longer at the top of the news. Yet, I've been returning again and again to one of those British outlets, the BBC News Web site. In fact, I've temporarily abandoned the general news site I habitually visit throughout the day, the machine-run Google News, to wander the online depths of the BBC.

And we're talking serious depths. The BBC is an enormous organization with an enormous budget, thanks to the roughly $5 billion it receives annually from British taxpayers. Every news consumer with a global bent already knows that that money supports a lot of high-quality journalism. Radio broadcasts from the BBC's World Service have long been a staple for Americans living and traveling around the world. Some U.S. public radio stations offer BBC news at certain hours of the day, and satellite radio subscribers can hear BBC channels on both XM and Sirius. Plus, BBC World television broadcasts are carried on more than 200 American public TV stations.

In short, a lot of the BBC is out there already, and you don't have to go online to partake of it. But the Web site is a different beast from the broadcast outlets—and, in some ways, a more interesting beast. A few columns back, I wrote a bit of a rant about the poor quality and low ambition of most American newspapers' Web sites. What's striking about the BBC site is that it feels the way great newspapers have always felt—vital, omnivorous, intelligent, crisp, and lucid.

Tuning in to a specific radio show or TV broadcast is what might be called a vertical media experience. That is, you can stay with that show or you can go off to some other news outlet. But a Web site, like a newspaper, is horizontal: If you don't like what's on the front page, you can venture inside and see what else is on offer in the various sections.

Most newspaper Web sites don't take full advantage of this horizontality, and one reason is money. Online journalism isn't a wildly profitable business so far, and it doesn't support the kind of budget you need to pack a Web site with rich, constantly changing substance.

The BBC site has the money and the talent, and it shows. Like an excellent newspaper, it has an orderly front page that makes a lot of sense the first time you see it. While it offers scads of options (including a language switch that lets you instantly view the site in, say, Somali or Uzbek), it's not cluttered and confusing, the way so many other newspaper sites are. Of course, when you don't have to run ads, clutter is less of a problem.

And the mix of news is truly catholic, with a small "c." One day last week, the front-page stories ranged from "Discovery Blasts Off From Florida" and "Mugabe Signs Aid Deal With China," to "Scientists Test Tuft of Hair Said to Have Been Left by Bigfoot" and "Cameron Diaz's Rise From Topless Model to Hollywood Superstar."

When you click on a story or another section, the page you arrive at also makes perfect sense, with reliably spare, to-the-point writing and visuals. Every story seems to have a photo, and many have video links.

"I think they do a fantastic job of combining the best elements of online journalism in a simple, straightforward way," says Mark Glaser, a columnist for Online Journalism Review. "They also cover the world better than perhaps any other source, rivaling or surpassing CNN."

The site offers plenty of extras, too, for those who wish to go deeper, including "citizen journalist" features—stories, comments, and photos sent in by the public. This material is handled deftly, neither given the spotlight nor relegated to some cutesy, patronizing sidebar for the young-uns, as many old-line media sites tend to do. After the recent bombings, the BBC solicited its audience for eyewitness accounts; it received thousands of written and photographic contributions, some of which made it on the site.

The banner at the top of the BBC News page says, "Updated Every Minute of Every Day." It's an attractive idea that evokes the constantly crackling personality of the Drudge Report and other frequently updated sites. It also draws a contrast with many newspaper sites, which give the impression that someone comes in at 7 a.m., throws a switch, and walks away.

I realize this isn't true. Most newspapers keep a close eye on their Web sites and update them throughout the day. But the sites sure don't read as if anyone's having fun at it. Somehow, Google News (where computers choose the content) has more verve than countless newspaper sites overseen by entire newsrooms of humans.

Now, an old-line broadcast outlet is effectively playing the newspaper game, and outclassing every newspaper Web site out there. No wonder The Economist recently noted, "The BBC's excellent Web sites may make it even harder for newspapers to survive."

I asked Pete Clifton, the editor of the BBC site, if the slogan was literally true—every minute of every day? He e-mailed back: "There is always something updating, even if it's just the finance data on our business pages.... On the story front, we probably publish 500 stories a day, and many of those get updated many, many times during the day, so it's a lot of stuff."

It sure is.

William Powers is a columnist for National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C.