Tag: news

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State of Design ’06 — Online News Sites

Check out Luke Stevens’ post featuring an invaluable collection of screenshots and design stats from newspaper Web sites around the world.

I find the unfortunate placement of ads on some of the U.S. sites to be shameful, at the very least degrading to the integrity of the news content within. For example, I never noticed NYTimes.com‘s mirror image ads on their masthead until seeing the repuslive “Blood Diamond” ads from this distant perspective.

If newspaper’s are hoping I become a print subscriber to escape the onslaught of ads on their home pages, I’ll repeat that there’s no money to be made on my $1 Fri-Sun delivered-to-top-of-hill subscription to the L.A. Times (and before I even take it inside I drop all the inserts in recycling).

If a news Web site’s goal is to have users regularly visit the home page, or even use it as their portal to the Internet, then the advertising is most definitely misplaced. Of course, as far as cost-per-click is concerned, the big money (and the most measurable) ad placement is on the site home page. However, it’s the ads in the actual articles that truly have the most impact, in my opinion (although each days’ paper has a fresh set of unique URLs), especially in this age of RSS and the ubiquitous Google search (leading directly to the article).

I’ve seen many people type the name of a Web site, columnist or publication directly into the Google searchbar as their mode of entry. I believe this is because of the uncluttered and easy-to-use Google homepage. Who wants to try and find a search box at nytimes.com when it’s scrunched between scrolling and animated ads? Personally, I default with Yahoo! News and digress with their full coverage links or news search engine. My other go-to is Google Reader, stocked with the latest from the hundreds of sites and blogs I track (see my opml). New York Times’ home page has a whopping 15 paid, graphic-based ads (not including a handful of self-referential ads) to only 9 legitimate (content-based) images.

As Yahoo’s news site proves, it’s better to be content heavy up front and keep the ads on the inside. Houston Chronicle is another example of this at chron.com. The home page is much shorter (lengthwise) than many of the others drawn upon in Stevens’ post but Yahoo’s cover presents at least twice as many hyperlinks (opportunities for deeper browsing — leading to a platform to better target ads based on content and the fact that the reader has already linked through).

I think the most effective news Web site home pages should be clean, content-heavy, customizeable and hyper-local — if not geographically, at least unique to the users preferences. Readers demand and deserve control of their content — why set your home page for news if the first thing that pops is going to be multimedia ad content?

And, yeah, those Scandinavian news sites (coming in at up to 9400 pixels in length!) are really something else.

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Check out these sites / blogs about Online News Web site design: NewsDesigner.com, Editors’ Weblog, Paid Content, Press Time, poynter.

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NYT Researcher to be Freed after 18 months in Chinese Prison

Zhao YanZhao Yan, the New York Times research based in Beijing who was greatly overshadowed by the comparatively brief jail term served by NYT reporter Judith Miller, will be released after 18 months in isolation in a Chinese prison.

The New York Times reports that Zhao has been found not guilty of one charge and may be released within days. Reporters Without Borders:

Zhao, 42, who had been held in custody by state security for 18 months, was facing charges of “divulging state secrets”, an offence punishable by the death penalty, and of “fraud”.

He had been accused of giving the news of the political retirement of Jiang Zemin to his newspaper before it was made known officially. The New York Times has always maintained that the news had not come from Zhao.

“We are absolutely delighted at the announcement of the imminent release of Zhao Yan,” the organisation said. “They have finally accepted the innocence of a brave man who became the scapegoat of a government which scorns investigative journalism”.

Can’t think of a better way to close out Sunshine week — an annual call of attention to current threates to open government — than the news of Zhao’s release. He was awarded for Reporters Without Borders.

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Tribune’s curious strategies for the future of news

Newspaper Cuts - Daryl Cagle Nov 19 2005

When I moved to Los Angeles in August I fell in love with the LA Times – there actually is a REAL newspaper outside of DC or New York, I thought. I wondered how they could pull off an international grade paper with various nat’l and international bureaus under the Trib Co umbrella (I had previously dealt with the increasing rate of newsworthlessness as a reader of my hometown Chicago Tribune.

Ken Auletta’s piece in the New Yorker a month ago or so made it obvious that I had fallen in love with the LA Times just as the the paper could no longer resist the effects of the slow yet suffocating downsizing of Tribune Co’s newspaper outlets. Alas, not even Dean Baquet would be able to salvage it. My new lover is undergoing a rapid anorexic disformation – under a forced hunger strike.

Still, Steve Lopez exuded award-winning, ambitious journalism with his Skid Row series. A deep search of the web reveals that very little traffic visits the Chicago Tribune’s website for national or international content. On the other hand, the most e-mailed article in today’s LA Times is columnist Tim Rutten’s take on Bob Woodward‘s involvement in the leak investigation. (Rutten was forced off a post as a National editor in a round of Trib Co cuts, only to recreate himself as a columnist, albeit relegated to the “Calendar” section. He has since been named Associate Editor of Features).

LA Times had managed to keep up despite repeated cuts to staffing, maintaining 22 international bureaus, some with multiple staff members, whereas Chicago Tribune currently staffs just12 individual foreign “correspondents.”

Following the bastardizing of the op-ed columnist line-up, abandoning the weekly “Outdoors” section and the launching a Metromix for Tinseltown The Envelope website, the LA
Times is looking more and more like its crippled sister paper.

The choices that media corporations make in the coming years in making a transition to the teenaged generation (the last that will buy newspapers) is not to be taken lightly. The audience is well aware of the multiple options for newsgathering and is quicker than ever to scrutinize sweeping corporate-minded changes that ignore the intellectual and consumer-friendly values of the product. Simply put, content transcends multiple media, but poor quality content does not translate much better – if at all – in different contexts. Its insulting.

A Look to the Future: For the past year or so the Chicago Tribune has highlighted the inside back page of Section 1 with the laughably pathetic ” PERSONALS: WHO’S WHO & WHAT’S UP NAME DROPPING.” Every Day. Section 1.

A weekly column in the Tempo section showed up a year ago as wel, summarizing the content of that weeks’ US Weekly, Star, InStyle and the like. On the front page of Tempo, no less, Its heading: CELEBRITY MAGAZINES: WE READ THEM SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO.

Now, I understand the “what’s going on in the Soaps this week,” and other gossippy columns, that regularly appear in a tucked away but consistent corner of the paper. But to have these 2 regular sections, so prominently placed – and given their bold headings – is just downright insulting.

The Metromix concept is one that the Tribune is expanding, and The Envelope is likely a result of this. Be on the look out in your town.

Finally, and i hate to bring this up, but a friend told me that they’re going to start charging for Red Eye. Red Eye is the 30 or 40 page tabloid roundup of news summaries, sports and entertainment launched a couple years ago in Chicago. Shaped not unlike The Onion, it is filled with photo and graphic-heavy summaries of the news as defined by a high school student, written at a 7th grade level. They have been charging a quarter for it since it launched, at least 2 years ago, and there are cash boxes where its available for purchase right next to The Sun Times copycat Red Streak. But its given away for free everywhere, hence its no surprise that its news if they “start charging.”

As the Tribune Company continues its mission to dumb down society one job cut at a time, while future strategies of any media corporation are trivial and unproven, all I ask for is please, please, please:

A World Championship Chicago Cubs team in 2006.

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FOX News – Biased? or Just Ignorant?

fair and balanced
On any given day, Fox News Channel has more unique viewers than CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC combined.

More people rack their brains with a steady stream of misinformation from the too-ugly for radio pundits and “anchors” at Fox than skim the headlines of the Sunday L.A. Times.

Bias and partisanship is more or less irrelevant when such a large percentage of the populous is exposed to downright misinformed pundits who speak from a “no-spin zone.”

The latest example comes from Bill O’Reilly, who not only proclaimed this week on his “Radio Factor” that “the war in Iraq is all about Chirac,” he later insisted on “O’Reilly Factor” that if al-Qaeda attacked the U.S., nobody would care if they hit San Francisco:

“[I]f Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off-limits to you, except San Francisco.

Media Matters for America has a deluge of further examples (with video), not limited to O’Reilly or the Fox News Channel.

It is not worth noting the incredulously ill-informed yammering and wankering that occurs on a daily basis across the cable and local news spectrum without pointing out the long-term harm this has on American culture.

The image of the United States in the eyes of the world is repeatedly harmed by the promotion and amplification of such absurd ideas as Scooter Libby’s indictment for perjury, among other things, proved that “no underlying crime” was committed. This was repeated in several news broadcasts.

Simply put, our nation’s comfort with consumer-driven news programs and networks is a serious threat to democracy.

This CAN be remedied. Most visitors or immigrants to the U.S. are completely surprised by the lack of pertinent local or international information in any American news broadcast. Most shocking of all, is that there are actually commercials!

A poll conducted by the Public Relations Society of America and released Thursday found that 61% of the general public generally trusted news on PBS and NPR, while 56% trusted papers like the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or New York Times, and 53% trusted the commercial broadcast and cable news operations.

Considering this, how is it that the federal government is threatening to cut funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and divert those funds for Gulf Coast restoration and recovery efforts?

As it stands, without applying further cuts, Public Broadcating (radio & TV) gets a whopping $1.30 per capita in federal funding. Compare this to upwards of $100 in the UK and Germany, even $27 in Canada and Australia.

Clearly, something must be done.

Fox News