News Crawl on the Campaign Site?

The IPDI report on putting online influentials to work notes that most of these valuable site visitors are news junkies, and one way that campaigns can attract them is by feeding this need:

One of the ways you can engage Influentials in your campaign is by feeding them information through your Web site. For example, one of the interesting features of Congressman Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) Web site is that the latest campaign headlines scroll across the front. The scroll includes both news articles from local papers and press releases from the campaign.

It seems that most campaign websites feed this need with a static list of recent articles on the candidate or campaign, press releases, or recentannouncementss by the candidate. But too often the presentation is incredibly boring: the listing will only have headlines that don't fully tell what the article is about, or the content is never updated.

The blurb about Sanders' site got me wondering if something similar to the newscrawl that the cable news networks constantly employ could be adapted to a campaign website. It would likely need to be modified--perhaps a single item could appear at a time in a box on the right hand side of the home page about the size of a typical Blogad, and visitors could click on the headline to be taken to the in-depth item. A handful of news items could be rotated through, and a double-arrow navigation button could allow users to either jump forward in the list or back to an item they just missed but want to investigate further.

In this way, the sites could attract users to the latest news in a more interactive way than simply listing the five most recent headlines somewhere on the page. And items that aren't specifically related to campaign news could be cycled through as well: there could be a fundraising appeal somewhere on the reel, a call to sign up for the email list, or appeals to volunteer could all be items that rotate through the list. The campaign could also use the format to promote items on the campaign blog, using teasers like, "Sanders makes waves in campaign appearance today. Read about it at the Sanders Blog" or something like that.

Of course, the trick is to make sure it isn't overwhelming, but using such a rotating system could be a great way to catch the user's eye (especially if he or she happens to be an online influential), further promote the fundraising and volunteering arms of the web operation, and keep the content fresh.