July 30th, 2005, 6:20 am

Treatise on the importance of rotating content on the homepages of websites — even weekly ones

Imagine reading the front page of CNN.com: ‘Astronauts step out for spacewalk,’ it reads at 6 a.m. Saturday morning. Imagine that you browse around, read a few stories, then go about your day’s errands. You get home at 7 p.m., and return to CNN.com. Nothing has changed. ‘Astronauts step out for spacewalk’ is still the lead story.

You, being a savvy media user, sigh to yourself. Slow news cycle, you think.

The next morning, like clockwork, you check in. The same top story appears.

How long will it be before you, as the user, go to get your news from another source? A day? Three? Five?

Not a chance, my friends. It’s a click-away world, and the chances are that you’d be onto Google News in less than four seconds. See-ya, bye bye.

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I bring up this scenario to illustrate a point: in an on-demand world, users have the expectation that they will always be treated to fresh, brand new content when visiting a website. Even if that newspaper only produces content; say … weekly.

Anyone who is familiar with the alternative weekly world knows that budgets are tight, and resources are thin. Producing stories on a daily basis — ha! you jest! — lies in our future.

So how then can alt-weeklies produce that fresh, daily content? Here at Creative Loafing, we’re experimenting with rotating our content, based on its section, in the ‘lead story’ section of our sites. It’s a controversial move — especially among some who feel that that featuring a movie review as the top story is undercutting our cover stories.

In turn, I point to my image of CNN.com above, spacewalk after spacewalk after spacewalk and ask: How long would it be before you clicked away, and found yourself a new website?

p.s. Don’t you love my mad photoshop skillz? I am cult-bad.

p.p.s. My neighbor is listening to Bennie & the Jets at 7:19 a.m. LOUD. Say what?