After our last posts on the future of news we have been asked again and again to illustrate:

1. What does a newspaper as a wiki look like?
2. How can newspapers bring their online and offline identity together?
3. What is appropriate advertisement?
4. What is an easy to read newspaper website?

Of course we are still not allowed to show the work we did for our client. So instead we made a sketch this afternoon of how the Washington Post might look as a wiki made by iA:

Left: Newspaper
Right: iA Sketch

In the meantime it still looks like this:

Left: Newspaper
Right: Actual website

Here is the direct comparison:

Left: Actual Design
Right: iA Sketch

Now of course you want to look at it from close, don’t you? Click on the image to see a 1:1 version:

Please note that:

1. this is an just a sketch that illustrates the possibilities as we’ve discussed.
2. what you see is a .jpg made from this design. The actual HTML dummy with the original design looks much nicer, as it scales and displays the fonts clearer (only screen fonts used, of course).
3. iA is actually working on a project that looks very similar to this, meaning: a) You are not allowed to copy this in any way, and b) we cannot show you the detail of the wiki interface just yet.
4. No: Wiki doesn’t mean that users cannot do whatever they like, the wiki is a publishing tool for editors, first of all.
5. No: Users will not need to use wikicode. Believe it or not: We found an elegant solution for that.
6. Yes, users will be able to see the history of an article.
7. We are going to post a flowchart on how a newspaper wiki works very soon.
8. Before critizising (not enough ads, not enough stuff, too much like the paper, Oliver is an idiot, etc) please read this, or, if you’re in a hurry, this.

I usually don’t do the Digg hustling, but as the idea of this entry was mainly to get a lot of feedback in order to improve, please: Digg it, bookmark it, reddit, but most of all: Please leave a comment.