By Ryan G. Murphy, Digital Media Editor

CNN.com recently won the 2009 Edward R. Murrow award for best TV Network Web site. Among the items on the agenda for CNN.com are increasing the amount of original content the site produces and continuing to expand the site by utilizing more user-generated-content, social networking and blogs – all goals shared by many RTNDA members.

On CNN.com’s iReport – something very familiar to you if your newsroom stays tuned into the network during the news day – users submit their own content, ranging from pictures from Fourth of July barbeques, to memories of Michael Jackson to the London bombings. CNN cites iReport as one of the big reasons for the overall success of the site as it creates a strong two-way dialogue with users and gives CNN a chance to air and publish photos and videos from breaking news events before a crew arrives on scene.

It certainly helps to have an internationally recognized news brand behind you when soliciting content, so CNN gets a strong response from users hoping to have their footage aired on television but it’s not solely the CNN brand that makes iReport so successful. CNN actively solicits content on a variety of topics and publishes virtually all the iReports it gets on CNN.com.  That, of course, lends to the possibility of false or less-than serious reports appearing on the site, but CNN publishes unedited iReports with a disclaimer and, more importantly, keeps iReporters and news consumers engaged when something big breaks.

CNN has also made a big push to be ever-present on our desktops, blogs and cell phones with various tools and widgets designed to keep CNN at the forefront of a user’s mind when big news happens. Among the tools available to put on your blog are a Podcast widget and a most popular story and video widget.

According to CNN.com’s Senior Supervising Producer, Manuel Perez, the goal for the CNN.com team is to use all of its tools to give users the most comprehensive look possible at a story.

RTNDA recently had a chance to speak with Perez, as well as Mike Toppo, the senior director for news operations and production at CNN.com.

What do you think makes CNN.com successful. Is it the branding that CNN has as a news gatherer? Is it the content on the site? What is it?

Manuel Perez: It’s how we deliver on the promise of the brand and our ability to cover breaking news and delivering it in a timely, accurate, comprehensive way, both with text and video and to use our email alerts, for example, as a way to inform people when something is happening.  Beyond that, it’s in our ability to cover all angles of a story and do it while it’s happening.

Mike Toppo: The other great thing is our incredible relationship with the rest of the news group. We have access to CNN reporters and producers in the field and great coordination with all our networks, all our shows, all of CNN news gathering in the United States and around the world.

Manuel, can you delve deeper into what covering breaking news at CNN.com is like?

Manuel: We love being a go-to source for users during breaking news events. When there’s a breaking news story it’s not just us, it’s all of CNN, and we’re working as one to get that content out and get a handle on it as soon as possible. When something happens here, everyone goes into what we call “breaking-news-mode,” where, depending on the nature of the story, we’re able to turn to the resources we have to work on that story to get word out as soon as possible and also make sure that everyone is working together…to use the tools we have to explain the story better. We also have use of our iReport unit and getting them involved early on and getting user-generated content on stories…So it’s a really comprehensive process.

Mike, a lot of RTNDA members work in stations where having the entire newsroom on board with all-things web is a priority but there are sometimes problems with TV-Web integration. What’s that atmosphere like at CNN?

Mike: It’s been an evolution and it’s been a learning process for everybody. I think it’s natural. When you’re used to doing your work a certain way, it’s different. You have to teach people and I think what we’ve emphasized for everybody is that we know it’s a learning process. Everybody is aware of that. It’s going to take time to work. The other thing is, it’s a shared success. We want everyone to succeed at CNN.com and I think everybody shares in that success. Manny and I talk daily to producers and reporters and associate producers, executive producers who work on the TV side, who want to know what they can do for CNN.com, how their work can get to CNN.com. It’s been a work in progress but it’s working really nice. Last night Manny and I got an email from a producer on the Campbell Brown show and they had a really great interview with the guy that helped organize the [Michael Jackson] memorial. He explained what had happened with Michael Jackson’s daughter speaking and how unplanned that was and how it came together and that was news. We worked really hard to get that on CNN.com. It’s been a process. It’s been an evolution, but it’s really something we feel is coming together nicely.

Manuel: That’s a good example. We were able to take that initial reporting that they did…and fill it out with more background and more reporting that we did [for CNN.com.] And that story ended up being the lead story on our Web site [Wednesday] morning.

Mike: I think the shared success is a big part of it…If you can help people in the newsroom see it, to the point where they aren’t scared – that’s what you’re going for.

What are the best features of CNN.com?

Manuel: Well, I mentioned breaking news but also the comprehensiveness of our reports. We cover not just breaking news but we offer reports on entertainment, living health, politics, so that the user knows they can come to us for not just the news of the day, but beyond that we’ve been able to do more coverage, more enterprising reporting so we’ve been doing a lot of original interest stories.  Last year and this year we’ve been writing about the economy from a very personal point of view and those stories work very well on the web. We’ve done a lot with original reporting in terms of health and entertainment – we had an American Idol blog from earlier this year that became one of our most popular features on the site.

Mike: It’s really interesting as people come to find live video and use it more and more, it’s really cool that people can be sitting in their office or at home and not have to go to a television. Not that we want to take away business from our television friends, but if you’re not near a television, we have the comprehensive coverage for you there. The other thing is iReport. It’s just continued to grow and find people and bring in interesting content and stories that we don’t have ability to tell and we’ve been able to tell in a sort of non-traditional way.  I think what you’ve able to see with Iran is things we didn’t think we were going to be able to see and that’s one of the coolest things about iReport. Take Michael Jackson. The stuff from Michael Jackson, for us, the memories [users gave us] of Michael Jackson was just something we could have never done on our own. It was just incredible.

How have social media sites and blogs and other user-generated-content played a role in the evolution of CNN.com?

Mike: I think Twitter is the one that has a lot of impact and worked for us in that it’s changing the way people are getting their information. It’s allows us to get things out in a very direct fashion and I think people come to us and through Twitter we can get out breaking news in a different way. Obviously we have breaking news emails and we have banners but this is just a different way to get things to people. That seems to have a big impact as  another way of getting information…It’s our ability to go to the news consumer instead of just them coming to us. We’re learning how people want to receive their information.