A usability expert's 12 lessons on news web design

What makes for good news website design? Jesse James Garrett of the user experience firm Adaptive Path, who has worked with CNN and other news sites and who comes from a news background, offers these lessons.
1) Know who you are. Don’t try to be all things to all people, know what your users your audience comes to you for. Example: NPR thought it was in the breaking news business online. But research on their audience showed that NPR readers did not come to the site for breaking news but instead wanted depth, background and analysis.
2) Be IN the web, not on the Web. Your site is not a delivery channel for your product but should be something that that is intrinsic to the value of the web. It needs to be interlinked with the web, just just a place on it.
3) The web is not the world. Lots of sites view their site as the only source that people use for the web. People actually turn to different sites for different reasons and tasks. You need to know why people come to your site
4) What people do with news a) absorb it b) want to apply it, put int into practice c) want to share it – social engagement, connections with others 5) consume it because it gives them enjoyment, because they have an emotional connection to it.
5) Support different modes of engagement. Some people snack, some people dine. You need to accommodate all of them on your site. Example: the story highlights box atop every news page on CNN enables the snackers who just want a short summary.
6) EVERY page is the home page. People don't go: Home page to section page to story page. They come in from all different paths and all different angles.
7) Navigation is dead, long live navigation People rarely use global navigation elements. They do when they are explicitly task switching. Otherwise don’t get used much. Contextually relevant, related to the task at hand in that moment.
8) Put the multi in multimedia – think about diversity of ways to tell stories. Don't just do multimedia to do it.
9) Headlines should tempt not tease. Tempt is to make someone want to know what’s on the other side of the link. Tease is it makes them wonder. Online head writing is an art that is rarely understood and has yet to be mastered
10) Think out side the blob. It's way more than disgorging blocks of text. Structure data in a way that allows readers to move through it.
11) It's an application, not a publication. People use it, not just read it. Make it usable, and fun to use.
12) Try things out and throw things out. Test and evaluate and constantly evolve.