VN vs CN in america
by HERNANDO!!! • January 13, 2009 • too random • 10 Comments
For those of us who pedal wild on the interwebs, we know that there are two sources of real bike-geekery available ~ VeloNews and CyclingNews.
Yeah … there’s other sites like DailyPeloton, PEZ, and a crapload of forums out there … but, really ~ the breaking news, results, opinion pieces and water-cooler talk about our sport and the racing personalities therein come from either VN or CN.
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In the past year, both websites have gone through changes in how they present their paid advertisements. Both sites have attempted to streamline their content presentation and open up more “real estate” to advertisers. Both sites are moving their adverts to be what adverts should be … branding devices.
When we all began selling advertisements on the web – the first model that claimed hold of imagination was the ‘web-traffic’ model of getting visitors from one site to another site. We thought getting people to visit an advertiser’s own website was an indicator of an advertisement well done.
Wrong.
Advertising is about brand awareness. It’s about branding. And that’s what both CN and VN are starting to evolve towards … creating adspace on their sites that offer the chance for a business to plant their product in a potential consumer’s noggin.
Note the snapshots of VN and CN from today’s “issues” ~
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In both screen captures we can see that the advertisement graphics are significant in size and placed well for the noticin’. The sophistication of each advert graphic is … low ~ but, as our advertising agencies begin to evolve, those adverts will grow in their sophistication and efficacy.
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CN is web-centric, so has considerably more energies invested and contacts cultivated to present timely racing results and world stories. VN, on the otherhand, is still a print publication at heart and only recently has been moving towards marketing themselves as a legitimate web source. However, with VN, I believe we see a more elegant presentation of material ~ a result of their history and skill in print design, in my opinion.
To my mind, CN is more informational, while VN more presentational.
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But in the end, both are going to have to correctly value their advertising space. And both are going to have to push and partner with their advertisers to invest in more sophisticated use of that advertising space.
Consider the beauty, intelligence, and creativity of adspace used in print media. Open up any magazine today and I think you’ll find it hard to disagree that print media adverts are much more artful and … persuading than web versions.
Creativity, sophistication, elegance ~ these attributes have not been transferred to web marketing yet.
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And they need to be.
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Interesting that MBall sent a curt “press release” to VeloNewz regarding BadenCooke and the state of RockRacing.
While, today’s CN has an exclusive interview.
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youch. it always comes down to interpersonal communication, i reckon.
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gotta say, i hope the RR team comes back from this all. Their gonna be using caddy hybrids, after all! Now, if we could just talk them into those Kierin cut jeans…
Real women will buy real jeans, yo.
you left yourself open for that one …..
Send me your sked
While I agree that cn & vn do present their content quite differently, I find that it is often the same content unfortunately. A lot of North American races/teams are not covered nor talked about unless it is through manufactured PRs unfortunately.
Branding and community building is the name of the game and they both need to work on it.
hey, cheater – you got me writing on the FB …
i’ll repost here cuz this will be a good discussion ~
content-wise?
well, no site compares with CN’s results (timeliness and breadth) … but, as far as grabbing stories ~ they do cannibalize each other pretty often.
but, i’m biased in regards to content – i’ve suggested to Editor Ben at VN that local/regional web coverage would be an igniting force for web traffic ~ and would create rabidly loyal … Read Moreregional readers/viewers.
There are soooo many folks who would be willing to submit content for regional articles …
but again, that’s my bias. As far as what both sites produce right now, i do see a difference between the two. CN is far more web-centric and dives into stories that never get touched upon by VN. But, VN does more “feature” work than CN.
what are your thoughts?
I heard cyclingnews is changing their name to lancenews.
CN has a horrible UI. Reminds me of Yahoo back in the 90′s.
Did you see Jason Sumner’s interview on CN with Christian Vandevelde? (http://www.cyclingnews.com/riders/2009/interviews/?id=christian_vandevelde_jan09) He was most recently a web reporter for VN. (http://velonews.com/velosearch/result/sumner)
CN’s purchase by Future Publishing (Procycling) has definitely changed it. It was a really good site when Jeff Jones was running it. Did you read rec.bicycles.racing back when? Jeff was hella funny and informed.
ha ha yeah sorry to give you whiplash going from FB to here… it’s the web baby.
I think the next years are going to be very interesting to both cn and vn. One of c’s major strengths has been as an aggregator of content from races, teams and other news organizations. they take it, translate it if needed, massage it and publish it. But now, via the web, it is pretty easy for anyone to find the original content before cn gets its hands on it and before they massage it, and use online translator if needed, et voila the world is your oyster (que?) . The risk is that other aggregators may show up with a better interface to steal the readers away. Also, cn is starting to struggle with its brand since its acquisition, procycling, bikeradar & cn all show the same content, so what should cn do?
Personally, for me vn does not have a clear identity, what is it? sometimes, it does really good in-depth coverage of certain American teams or riders, but often it is just the same content as other English and non-English sites. As far as more feature work at vn than cn, well I don’t see it, at least on their web properties. I do agree with you that local content would be a great way to bring more readers to their site.
And I do think that currently both could be called lancenews.
There’s definitely content swapping between the two. Heh, that sounds a little kinky, actually.
CN’s strength is its completeness, natch. They cover a huge amount of ground. They still publish on Australian time, though, and as Lyne points out, many of the most important stories hit the European press a good dozen hours before CN updates. I have to agree with Steve, too, their look-feel makes my eyes bleed. They could use a good round of copyediting, too, while we’re wishing.
It’s been very interesting to watch VN shift to match the internet news cycle. That’s really only happened over the last six months to a year. In the past, they played it very conservative and stuck to the traditional newspaper mantra “no external links.” They only published stories they reported and confirmed themselves. The strength of that approach is that if they published it, it was almost certainly true. The downside, is that the legwork takes time, and they risked being left out of the conversation as an important story broke. One big challenge for them in reporting international news is that they don’t have in-house translators – I think they have a French speaker, as they did pick up a couple L’Equipe stories last Summer. Anyway, VN very often relies on the wire services for the European stories. AP is fine for straightforward stories, but they tend to make a mess of interviews. There was a Contador interview last Fall that the English language press really mangled, thanks to the AP.
VN seems spread really thin right now, between keeping the online content flowing and producing the paper edition. The online content has oodles of editing and spelling errors. Oodles. (Yes, my glass house is very comfortable, thank you.) That’s one thing they really need to improve. It pains me viscerally to see mis-spelled headlines on a “real” news site. Traditionally, VN’s big strength was coverage of North American racing, and your comments about regional news are right in line with that tradition, Hernando. The need for eyes and advertising money, though, point toward covering the big European races. That’s a big ask, as it demands language skills and resources to put feet on the ground in Europe. It will be interesting to see how they meet some of these challenges.
At the moment, I think both sites could do more to deliver quality stories and make the news interesting and engaging.
Before it was Jason Sumner (of VN) writing for CN, now it’s Anthony Tan (of CN) writing for VN:
http://velonews.com/article/86804/davis-doubles-up-down-under
Morgan