Gone are the days when newspapers just dictated the news to an expectant public. In the digital age they have to offer a lot more.
Newspapers have cottoned onto the fact that involving readers in a story and giving them a chance to air their opinions is mutually beneficial.
The UAE is no different, and if you want some kind of indication as to how far we've come in this country in terms of online news and reader interaction, then you need to look no further than the Gulf News poll and the recently launched Have Your Say section.
The poll is only just over one-year old, but people now vote in their thousands, bloggers comment on the results and it has even been deemed so important that people have tried to manipulate it.
Letting Gulf News know just how you feel about an issue [simply fill in a form online and press send] has also never been easier and we get hundreds of messages sent to us in a day.
Feedback
Newspapers now know that public opinion and reader feedback create stories, whether you get an interesting or unexpected poll result, get a huge response to an appeal for comments or a fresh angle or new story from a reader e-mail.
gulfnews.com also has a few other arguably more passive but equally important functions.
The internet has made the planet smaller, and our newspaper can now be read in far flung places we have readers who hail from the USA, India, Kenya and Australia to name but a few. Our site gives them access to the newspaper that they would never have had otherwise.
The internet has also taken over from libraries as the key source of information. It is accessible and instant, and it is important for Gulf News via our online archive to be able to expose older stories to the world at large.
This opens up a whole new world to readers, who can now look for that story they read last week, or even in 2004, and e-mail it to their friends.
Special sections
We also package stories in special sections [such as our coverage of the Lebanon war or the traffic problems in the UAE] so members of the public can follow the latest developments, and quickly find the history of a big event.
Finally, gulfnews.com also helps to break news stories which in an age of 24 hour news channels would be old news the time they hit the stands.
The passing of Shaikh Maktoum Bin Rashid Al Maktoum at the beginning of this year demonstrated perfectly how newspaper websites can complement and enhance the print edition's coverage of a big story.
The news was broken on gulfnews.com and this was followed up by a joint effort between the web desk and the newspaper's reporters, who kept the site continually updated.
Messages of condolence came in from around the world, and a biography and picture gallery were quickly online.
The next morning, the print edition took precedence covering the story in great detail, but not just with their own material. The newspaper also used some of the many touching and sincere comments which had been sent in by readers on the website.
