Of the many profound changes in how news is produced and consumed in this 21st century, none is more exciting than the central place the internet now has in our lives. An illustration of this is what you're reading now: the newly redesigned CBC.ca website, which is being launched in stages beginning this week.

The CBC.ca site is very rich in editorial content. Beyond this single page, for example, there are an extraordinary 750,000 others available.

But how can you — or anyone — deal with this amazing amount of material?

Answering that question in a way that makes it easier for the user is what this redesign is all about. It has been 15 months in the making, and the team at CBC.ca started with what you, the readers, told us you wanted.

You want your news and information presented in clear and accessible ways, so that it is available where and when you want it.

We get it. In fact, that's what changes throughout CBC News have been focused on in recent months.

The latest example is the aftermath of this past weekend's counterterrorism arrests in Toronto. CBC News provided blanket coverage on radio and television, and on CBC.ca there were numerous special pieces providing background and context.

In this redesign of CBC.ca, the first major one in six years, you will see many changes intended to make it easier for people to access the site's rich range of journalistic content. Among them is the creation of new "Canada" and "World" sections.

As Canada's role in the world expands, both in Afghanistan and beyond, CBC News is working to strengthen its coverage — and CBC.ca is a central part of that strategy.

That fact was evident last week when CBC's foreign correspondents and producers returned to Canada for a special week of staff meetings and public forums. With the latter, it was a rare opportunity to connect CBC's international bureaus directly with our audience at home, and the encounters were very gratifying.

Hundreds of people attended the town halls, hosted by Peter Mansbridge and Anna Maria Tremonti, and it was clear how high public expectations are for quality international coverage from CBC News.

The week of CBC staff meetings also allowed producers, editors and correspondents to review all of our programming and practices to ensure we are able to deliver on that expectation. And the headline was how prominent the role of CBC.ca figured in our discussions.

The CBC News commitment is to provide what we know many Canadians want from us: "More and better" international coverage, with emphasis on original and contextual journalism from a Canadian perspective. They particularly want "international made local" so that the coverage of local world affairs becomes more directly connected to the daily lives of Canadians.

Throughout our internal CBC discussions last week, it was clear how central our world coverage on the web is to these goals. So many of our major programming initiatives — whether from China, Afghanistan, Iraq or Europe — now appear on all of CBC's different networks and platforms. This allows us to provide a broad range of complementary coverage that can deepen public understanding of complicated issues.

Above all, with the growing popularity of the internet, CBC.ca is now crucial in this. During our meetings, many ideas were voiced on how to better tap into our international bureaus. With the new redesign of our website, this will be that much easier.

All our new programming initiatives to strengthen CBC's international coverage are being thought through with CBC.ca as a key element:

• Last February, we introduced a regular "Our World" feature segment on The National and CBC News Sunday Night, as well as a weekly program hosted by Brian Stewart on CBC Newsworld. This will continue next season in tandem with CBC.ca and CBC Radio.
• Next January on CBC Newsworld, we will launch North America's first nightly prime-time program devoted to world affairs, and this too will be designed in tandem with CBC.ca and CBC Radio.
• And a few months ago, we launched a new section on CBC.ca called "Reports From Abroad," which features CBC News correspondents offering their perspectives on events and issues unfolding around the world.

Before these meetings, we also announced several new assignments involving our international bureaus that will make our coverage even stronger.

Consistent with what Canadians have told us they need from CBC News, these staffing changes will result in strengthened documentary coverage out of Europe, the Middle East and Asia by two of the CBC's most respected senior correspondents; new CBC correspondents in London, Beijing, Jerusalem and Paris; and special reporting out of Kandahar to monitor Canada's increasing military involvement in Afghanistan.

All of these new assignments involve multiple award-winners with CBC News:

• Don Murray, who has been the senior European correspondent with CBC-TV News since 1995, will specialize in documentaries and special news series focusing on Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He will be based in London. And Patrick Brown, who has been CBC's Beijing correspondent for a total of nine years in two postings, will have the same role focusing on Asia as China prepares for the 2008 Olympics. He will be based in Beijing and Bangkok.
• Adrienne Arsenault will move from her Jerusalem post to succeed Don in London. The new CBC Jerusalem correspondent succeeding Adrienne will be chosen later this month. And Michel Cormier, currently with Radio-Canada in Paris, will become the CBC's news correspondent in Beijing.
• Paul Workman, who has been based in Paris for the past 10 years, will become the CBC's lead reporter in Kandahar, reporting for CBC Radio, TV and CBC.ca on Canadian troops stationed there. He will be succeeded in Paris by David Common, a national reporter currently based in Toronto.

These changes are intended to strengthen and deepen the journalism of CBC News. So are the new programming initiatives being planned for the year ahead.

And so are the redesign changes launched this week on CBC.ca.

What's consistent about all of these is an effort by us to deliver on what our audiences want. We have tried to determine this in multiple ways, ranging from soliciting your personal feedback to conducting more rigorous studies and surveys.

In the end, it all amounts to a dialogue — between you and us — that can never stop. Thankfully, you've never been shy about expressing your views in the past, and that has been wonderful.

But don't hesitate now. We need to know from you what works, and what can work better.