This new website will be better suited for so-called longreads – comprehensive background stories and interviews about education and research. There will also be ample room for video’s, liveblogs, daily news and interactive infographics. And, for our international readers, more articles in English.
The reason for all this is the ever-changing media landscape. Social media play an increasingly important role in attracting readers to our main webpage. To illustrate: the largest part of our readership visists our website, which averages about 5000 views a day, through Facebook.
Over the last couple of years, the interest in our paper product has waned; UT Nieuws Magazine gets picked up less and less. ‘It just doesn’t fit in my pocket’, we have been told, and have noticed that students would rather read UT Nieuws through Facebook, Twitter, the mobile website, and the UT Nieuws app.
New name
It is time for us to act on this change in our readership’s preferences, which we’ll be doing in a couple of ways. Besides a new, fit-for-the-future website we will also launch a tri-annual science magazine that exclusively deals with UT-research. The first issue will hit the shelves next March.
All this will happen under a new name. With this change, we aim to better service the growing group of international readers and to strengthen our independent position within the university. We plan to reveal our new name during the New Year’s reception in January. We will also showcase our new corporate identity, but at a later date.
