Texas Monthly Launches Redesigned Website

The change in commenting policy wasn’t the only news coming out of TexasMonthly.com yesterday. The magazine debuted a new design and several new online features.

Not surprisingly, the design looks terrific. There are some spiffy additions right up front, starting with video Table of Contents, a narrated slideshow, and video tour of the state capitol from senior executive editor Paul Burka.

Expanding on Burka’s year-old BurkaBlog, the magazine has added blogs from editor Evan Smith (State of Mine), a sports blog (Delay of Game), and a general-interest blog (The Stand-Up Desk).

The site also features a podcast of writer Skip Hollandsworth reading his July cover story, “Angel of Death“.

Some stories (web-only ones, perhaps?) include icons that let you change the font size, email, print, save, and submit to social networking sites like Digg, de.licio.us, and Newsvine.

The biggest downside is that you still can’t access stories from the current issue or from the archives without registering or subscribing. I know the argument is that these stories are the lifeblood of the magazine and can’t be given away for free, but I’d be willing to bet that the money TM is leaving on the table by not making these stories (and their accompanying ads) available on the Web and findable by search engines outweighs the benefits gained from those access/subscriber codes. Opening up the archives also would position the magazine as the definitive source for information about Texas.

And one final criticism, the new site still feels heavy on one-way communication. Future success will come to those magazines who learn to enable their communities (in this case, Texans) to share their knowledge and passions.

All in all, though, it’s a big leap forward for the magazine’s online counterpart.

Bonus: Here’s editor Evan Smith’s letter announcing the new design.