In the words of the great Jeremy Piven in Grosse Pointe Blank: "Ten years, man! Ten … ten years! Ten years! Tennn! Tennnnn yearrrrs... TEN YEARS!"
OK, so maybe I haven't actually spent the last decade being a freelance hitman. Or an estate agent. But I do have the dubious honour of being the only member of the mediaguardian.co.uk editorial launch team still working on the website.
MediaGuardian.co.uk launched on 5 September 2000 – 10 years ago yesterday. Today, we are relaunching the front page as part of our continuing effort to adapt and improve the website and reflect the ever growing variety of news, comment, analysis – and, let's face it, funny videos – about the media industry on the web.
Ten years ago readers got most of their media news in weekly doses, from industry trade magazines or newspaper sections such as the Monday MediaGuardian section. MediaGuardian.co.uk was at the forefront of changing that, with daily breaking news, plus comment and analysis – and Media Monkey's diary. In many ways we were set up like a traditional print operation, with a staff structure – editor, three subs and six reporters – that mirrored media trade magazines such as Broadcast and Campaign. And our coverage was overwhelmingly text-based.
Over the years the web has changed dramatically. Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Delicious – all this and more besides have changed the nature of internet journalism. It is increasingly a two-way conversation between reporters and readers and we have attempted to move with the times.
Breaking news and in-depth coverage of big media stories remain at the heart of what we offer, along with blogs, audio and video.
There will be a "latest" column on the lefthand side of the relaunched site that will provide a constantly updated stream of every piece of content we and our colleagues at the Guardian News & Media-owned PaidContent:UK publish. In the middle of the new look site will be "top stories" which will showcase what we believe to be the best content, be it news, a blog comment, an interview or video.
The relaunch is designed to allow more interaction with our users. There will be more from Twitter and other micro-blogging sites. It will also give us greater flexibility to link to other websites, blogs and Twitter users writing newsworthy, insightful, or just plain funny things about the media industry.
This is an evolving process with more changes to come. But in the meantime, please tell us what you think.
