The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

After 20 years, they still are adapting to the 'new' platform. Look through their site with fresh eyes: If you were designing a news website (rather than moving a newspaper to this new platform), how many design, UI and functionality choices would you make differently?

A quick start:

* The separation of different forms of content: They don't really mix text with video, images and graphics, even though most web-native bloggers will do it. They seem to lack fluency with mixing media; it's a project for them. They'll staple a video and decorate text with images and graphics, but they don't really commuicate with it; they don't say, 'here's how Clinton responded to Sanders:" , or, 'here was the scene when the earthquake struck' , or even in a movie review, here's what the scene looks like: or . Instead, they try to describe the visual with text. Even explanatory graphics are a separate, special production, on a separate page.

* The font in their title: Back when printing fancy fonts was a technological feat, this font communicated that they were serious and sophisticated. Now, if you step back and ignore the history, it looks like a kid playing with fonts. (Look at it this way: would you ever use that font on a website you were designing?). It says, insists even: We're anchored to the paper age and will never let go. We're the old, dying generation. If you want something new, go elsewhere.

* The discoverability of content: Obviously mimicing a newspaper, but a bad choice for the web. How many links are on that home page (scroll down)? And even more content doesn't even appear there. All that hard work and content, unlikely ever to be found, buried and lost forever. It's tragic. But that's what they did in the hard copy newspaper so I guess it's ok.

* Also, where are stories updated since I visited a couple hours ago? Oh look, if I look at every link a red 'updated' indicator is next to some links (just like the web 20 years ago!), which I see if I examine every one of them (and how do I identify brand new links in this massive page of links?) - but where in this multi-page story are the new parts? I guess I'll just re-read the whole thing.

I say this all out of love. They are an very important institution. The news business is hard enough; stop handicapping yourselves! From the outside they look like they still, in 2015, haven't fully embraced the new technology. What would you say about another business' web team (that was not adapting a newspaper to the web) that produced a site that looked like this? Egads. [1]

EDIT: Some minor edits and additions

[1] I'm not blaming the web developers; I assume they are working within the general constraint of: Make it look like the newspaper.

The pain would have come either way. Probably did better by understanding it's evolution then just ignoring it.

> how many design, UI and functionality choices would you make differently?

I'd start by not hijacking clicks with JavaScript. In Firefox, double clicking the body of the article (which I do often to search for terms in the article) changes the font size (??), clicking in some parts of the body activates a link to another article. It's been like this for years.

Tip: The website works better with JavaScript disabled. Occasionally you need to turn it on for some special graphics, but 99% of the time I'm happier without it.

Just because something is in vogue doesn't mean it is the right answer in the long term. Their mission is NOT about generating more pageviews in the short term to rack up ad revenue but stick to being a reliable source of information. Outlets like Buzzfeed have their own place but that doesn't mean New York Times need to "adapt" to become one of those. That's the worst decision they can make. People who go to New York Times are not there because they're bored and want to read the next "what sex and the city character are you?". They are there because they want to stay on top of only what matters today, which means not everyone will appreciate it if the front page is an infinite scroll page of links. Also your opinion about their font is your opinion. I am fond of it. Lastly, there are tons of articles with embedded media, here's one: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/nyregion/bronx-school-embr...