The new SABC news website was launched last month after a much needed Web2.0 facelift and consumer generated media injection (…or kind of).

Excited by the idea of existing in the same decade as the SABC and enticed by their remarkably bland TV campaign, I thought it’d be interesting to take a brief look at the new site and see what they’ve been up to.

Apart from the fact that there is no Mahendra Raghunath fan club, here’s what I noticed about the site (while honestly trying not to play devil’s advocate):

• The homepage is unranked in terms of Google PageRank and contextual interlinking doesn't seem to be a priority (which is kind of understandable for a live news site).
• There are no header tags or other obvious meta data, optimised images or customised error pages, while Canonicalisation and logical URL structures are also nowhere to be found.

The SABC Design

Curious as to what others had to think, I asked Grant M to take a look and give me his opinion from a design point of view. His opinion was:

• Content is very cramped - making it difficult to scan.
• It’s not terribly, terribly good looking (must be read in Zoolander’s voice).  
• Bloated and outdated code.
• 323 validation errors on the home page.
• CSS doesn't validate.
• Renders differently in different browsers.

But it's not all doom and gloom. The new SABC News website features some useful resources to help you find the content you want - which is what a news site should do, right?
Podcasts, journalist blogs, RSS Feeds, discussion forums and personalised home pages are some of the new features available for users to get the latest news and to connect with others.
The ‘Caught on Camera’ section invites users to submit their own newsworthy pictures, videos and audio clips, however, only the top few will go up on the site.

I guess only time will tell what direction the SABC news site will take. Although the site is not horrendous, it certainly isn’t great – but if the discussion and opinions shared between users turns out to be just as valuable as the news itself, I’d consider that a success.