The cool thing about the new USA Today education page, is, well, that there is one (Education). Now Greg Toppo’s friends and family don’t have to set up a Google alert to find his stuff. But more than that, there are all sorts of interactive and Web 2.0 features -- you can bump stories if you like them, or comment, of course. The postings all tell you how old they are (“2d 8h ago”). And -- my favorite part -- there’s blog content from outside the paper in a section called “Other Voices From The Web.” That ranks up there with the Post’s “Who’s Blogged About This Story” feature, and is almost -- almost -- as good as if USAT gave Toppo a blog.
The whole paper is being redesigned to be more interactive and include outside content, and you can read about it from Jeff Jarvis here in a post called USA Tomorrow or what the paper says here. Or, if you want to geek out on the whole “future of journalism” thing, check out the Frontline series that’s been running, News War, which claims among other things that there are four national papers (WSJ, Post, USAT, and NYT), that what readers may really want is “info snacking,” and that the others big papers -- LAT, Tribune, etc. -- are going to have to go “hyperlocal” to compete in the craigslist world rather than compete with the big boys and go for in depth coverage on national topics (ie, try and win Pulitzers).