MinnPost.com (not to be confused with parked site mnpost.com or news aggregate site minnesotapost.com), a Web only, not-for-profit news organization run by a bunch of laid-off or otherwise out-of-work Minnesota reporters has launched (sort of):

“MinnPost.com is for Minnesotans who are intensely interested in the world around them and want more insight and analysis than they’re getting from their media choices today,” said Joel Kramer, editor and CEO of the new not-for-profit enterprise, who served as editor of the Star Tribune in the 1980s and as publisher and president in the 1990s. “It will combine the best of traditional journalism with new forms of newsgathering and story-telling made possible by the Internet.”

But will it work?

My first impression of the site is this: Where’s the news? It seems like a horrible idea to pretty much launch a site–a news site–and the only news is a list of reporters and a news release declaring the upcoming launch of the site.

My second impression with the site is this: It looks like a blog, but it is not a blog as we know them today. The design flat out sucks. It might not be fair to say that, considering the lack of stuff to fill the page.

My third impression: What is the Web strategy? It is to be an online news source, after all. There’s no RSS, there’s no images (yet), there’s no video, there’s nothing but text and a few links. And they expect to compete with the Strib or the Pioneer Press? This whole site feels old. It’s certainly no Politico or Voice of San Diego right now.

My understanding is that they’re trying to tap into the news junkie market, to MPR listeners and to readers with a political slant, but I don’t know if launching a bare bones site with no features– a site geared towards news junkies–was the way to do it. At best this looks like a soft launch site with the marketing of a hard launch. Not good.

However, looking at the list of reporters, it should be interesting to see what they do. And to see if they can keep afloat as a non-profit, which has been a big talking point this year for many media bloggers. But right now: Yuck.

Here’s a few suggestions:

• Open yourself up to suggestions about your launch, build a community around your product. Start a blog (a real blog). Let people know what’s going on behind the scenes and let people have input.
• Seriously consider re-branding, too. The URL is confusing as it stands and it’s in a cluttered field of similarly named sites.
• Build a community! If this is just another top down news organization, what’s the point? What differentiates you from Pioneer Press, the Star Tribune and, heck, even Minnesota Daily? I want to see a site where I can be as close to the news process as paid reporters and editors. I want to see a site where Little League baseball matters and is reported . Think about Wikis, think about tiered news gathering.
• Read this
• And then read this

Update More on MinnPost.com:

Editor & Publisher
New York Times
Minnesota Public Radio
The Rake
Minnesota Monitor
Bob Stepno
Eyeteeth interview with Joel Kramer
The Deets

Save and share links have cropped up all over on news sites this past year, especially from web services del.icio.us, digg and Facebook. Examples here, here and here.Some newspaper sites are displaying track backs from blogs. And you’d be hard pressed to find a news site that doesn’t offer XML syndication, even if it’s truncated to headlines only.

I’ve even heard rumblings from some news organizations planning to offer headline widgets for bloggers, in the hopes news sites can tap new audiences.

That’s all fine and good, but what invariably happens when someone follows a link to a web page is that they immediately leave it once they’re finished with it, especially when they come from digg, del.icio.us or Facebook.

So what’s a Web site to do once they attract an audience through these referrals? There’s always been talk about providing interactive news for online reader, through slide shows, video and Flash whatnots. Related content is nice, but who decides what’s related? Robots and producers, that’s who.

Jeff Jarvis got a look at the new USA Today where the site begins using machine generated tags. Jarvis ponders, “given the biorhythm of news, I wonder whether a folksonomy can take hold in time.” But that “biorhythm of news” is mostly a byproduct of traditional news media: TV and Newspapers, one with limited time, the other with limited space.

The Web has neither restraint. Articles and photo and video can sit on a server indefinitely. News becomes evergreen. Old news may be new news to someone and even if it’s not, that content may still be relevant to someone else.

So why not make the news itself interactive by letting users decide where it should go? Why not break free of the traditional categories (news, sports, business, features, etc.) and let readers create their own categories?

And then set your Web team loose on building XML feeds and headline widgets based around those categories, or blocks of categories, thus making those tools relevant to people looking to syndicate and share specific types of information.