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The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

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Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#81

Post by remyp »

morgante wrote: post #30

It's pretty impressive how good a job the NYT has done of maintaining historical articles. You can even find quite old articles from key historical times and they're presented just like articles today. For example, the famous Crittenden Compromise is at http://www.nytimes.com/1861/02/06/news/the-crittenden-compro...

> "We have already more than once expressed our opinion, that the first duty of men of all parties, Democrats and Republicans, -- is to lay aside all their political differences and rally to the support of the Constitution and the Union, -- to insist that the Union shall be preserved, not as a matter of favor but of duty: -- and that when this result has been secured, it will be in order to consider what new guarantees or concessions are due to the South and essential to the public peace."

I love how different the writing is in old articles like this. The complexity of the sentences compared to today's news writing is crazy.

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#84

Post by massysett »

hackuser wrote: post #78
volaski wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Yor…

> 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 Nothing I mentioned was abouut trends or short term page view revenue. It's about making their site more functional, improving their content by taking advantage of multimedia (hardly a trend by now) and making their excellent content mo…

I appreciate knowing that I can read the NY Times anywhere and not have to view some video or (worse) have a video start blaring out at me.

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#85

Post by kristopolous »

morgante wrote: post #30

It's pretty impressive how good a job the NYT has done of maintaining historical articles. You can even find quite old articles from key historical times and they're presented just like articles today. For example, the famous Crittenden Compromise is at http://www.nytimes.com/1861/02/06/news/the-crittenden-compro...

There's so much opportunity for Orwellian abuse in this new archival model.

Sure there's archive.org - but in the old model, you'd say something in print, copy it a million or so times, then distribute it on paper around the world.

If an evildoer wanted to change a claim from say, 20 years ago, they'd have to create a forgery that looks like it's 20 years old, then secretly swap out all the archival copies in libraries and get large-scale mass obedience from librarians or manually make the swap at each library individually.

These days, you need to add an exclusion to the archive.org bot in robots.txt and then flip a few bits. It's a different ballgame.

In the traditional model, someone could find say, an original copy of the 20 year old newspaper and present that as evidence. Forging that document would be sufficiently hard for a single individual. But in the new model, claiming something is an "original copy" of a web page can be easily disputed because such a forgery can be trivially crafted.

Think about the implications in places with large civil unrest, very little free press, and mostly state-owned media. What's the solution for those societies?

It's a problem.

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#86

Post by knowaveragejoe »

mc32 wrote: post #7

My impression is the mercury news from san jose had an earlier, if paid, presence. Funny how the NYT wanted to charge nearly two dollars to allow you to print older articles. Asking people to pay for the own digitization.

There were actually a number of publications with a web presence before NYTimes. Bloomberg, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired, among the more noteworthy ones.

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#87

Post by spyspy »

lotso wrote: post #80
hackuser wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The NYTimes is at the forefront of dynamic content and page layouts Perhaps, but it's not implemented in production; that is, it's not implemented in the vast majority of their content. I know Snowfall was a big deal to some, but I'll bet most readers of the Times have no idea what it is. I've never heard it discussed outside news/tech insiders. Also, dynamic content and page layouts are not multimedia. >* The font…

>Also, dynamic content and page layouts are not multimedia. Maybe you didn't see it, but a lot of those articles have multimedia. >They are tied to 1851 and say it loud and clear. Others do update their branding. They have modernized it, but it still acknowledges their past, which is in line with their branding. I don't think anyone looks at their typeface and is turned off by it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/ recent updated their site layout. I wonder where they got that from.

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#88

Post by volaski »

hackuser wrote: post #78
volaski wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Yor…

> 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 Nothing I mentioned was abouut trends or short term page view revenue. It's about making their site more functional, improving their content by taking advantage of multimedia (hardly a trend by now) and making their excellent content mo…

Video is popular nowadays not because that's what users want but because that's what generates more ad revenue for media. There are certain cases where video storytelling is better than textual/visual storytelling but very rarely so. In case you have forgotten, there's this thing called "TV" that has been in the video space long before Internet came along. That didn't mean NYT had to turn themselves into CNN. I would never visit a NYT article if they start autoplaying videos on their website, for the same reason I never visit college humor anymore (they used to be a nice fun site but at certain point they started only serving videos, and nobody has time for videos)

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#89

Post by twhb »

hackuser wrote: post #41

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…

I like the home page. It has the right content, and the layout seems to emerge from a more careful consideration of its content and the reader's eye than do homogenous designs.

Content that loads as you scroll is, I absolutely believe, a trend that will be either overhauled or reviled within five years. And reaching the end of the page actually makes me respect the publication more: they have the respect to tell you nothing more is worth your time, rather than a desperation to milk every possible page view out of you with content of lower and lower quality. I don't want "content until you're sick of it", I want just what's a good use of my time.

The font communicates sophistication to me. It's carefully designed and doesn't impede usability. It's branding, at a higher effort level than the more common approach (a color palette). Typography is increasingly a staple of high-quality web design and they do it well. (I wouldn't use it, but only because they've made it theirs.)

Your other criticisms I agree with.

Re: The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996)

#90

Post by Scoundreller »

unicornporn wrote: post #76
morgante wrote: post #30

It's pretty impressive how good a job the NYT has done of maintaining historical articles. You can even find quite old articles from key historical times and they're presented just like articles today. For example, the famous Crittenden Compromise is at http://www.nytimes.com/1861/02/06/news/the-crittenden-compro...

Aftonbladet, the largest news site in Sweden, went live on the web in 1994[1]. Here's a picture of their first server[2]. Aftonbladet was founded in 1830. Their article archive isn't nearly as impressive though. [1] http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/aftonbladetse18ar/article1... [2] http://gfx.aftonbladet-cdn.se/image/12090393/496/normal/5b4f...

What's with the coat rack of cables behind the man?
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