Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#41

Post by xae342 » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

redleggedfrog wrote: post #20

Why are newspapers so horrible? My family used to get a paper newspaper when I was growing up in the 70's and 80's. It had all the regular stuff - news, local news, editorial, sports, etc. But mostly it was ads. On Sunday it was a monstrosity, being nearly unmanageable due to the number of ad inserts. Most of it you threw away without looking at. Most of the stories had no value. One day later I couldn't remember wha…

Agreed on news being nearly worthless, 99% of articles are filler and could just be summarized in a couple of sentences if not the title. In fact the title of most articles tells you everything.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#42

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

samspenc wrote: post #4

I actually did some freelance website development for a local newspaper website around 15 years ago. I can't speak for larger newspapers, this was my experience with a much smaller one. The biggest challenges I found were: 1. Lack of a real technical / engineering department. Having said that, their core business is news and they really just need a functioning website, not a full (and expensive) engineering departmen…

> 1. Lack of a real technical / engineering department. Having said that, their core business is news and they really just need a functioning website, not a full (and expensive) engineering department.

I agree with the rest of your points but this one doesn't really make sense. My guess is it would take fewer engineers to make these websites better. The horrible parts of newspaper websites are the pop-ups and broken scrolling and ads that follow you and fixed-position "dickbars" at the top and bottom--things that don't come with simple HTML and need to be deliberately added by developers.

Newspapers really do just need a functioning website. Instead they pay developers to add in all these horrible things.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#43

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

vntok wrote: post #14

TekMol wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMP is the only reasonable alternative I've seen How about making the site fast and usable in the first place?

Here is why: AMP is much cheaper and simpler to set up, it is way more optimized for mobile usage than trimming down your website, it brings better placement in search results and it is backed by the leading search engine itself, thus ensuring your team is not wasting resources trying to guess how Google works and how to exploit it.

It shouldn't take more work to make a simple, mobile optimized web site--it should take less work. These web sites have their developers spending effort adding all these horrible things at first, then complain that they have to turn around and spend more effort to "optimize" and be mobile friendly. Just don't add all that junk in the first place!

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#44

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

vntok wrote: post #35

Rjevski wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Washington Post is the perfect example of this. They have two paid plans, a "Basic" one and a "Premium EU Ad-Free Subscription" promising "No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking". However, trying to subscribe to the latter still says the following: > By subscribing, you agree to the use by us and our third-party partners of technologies such as cookies to personalize content and perform analytics. Plea…

"personalize content and perform analytics" does not necessarily have anything to do with ads. Examples abound: 3rd party A/B testing (Optimizely), 3rd party analytics (Google Analytics), 3rd party error reporting (Bugsnag), 3rd party page speed testing, etc.

It's still something you should be able to opt out of, or have to opt in to.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#45

Post by ravenstine » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 3:45 PM UTC

samspenc wrote: post #4

I actually did some freelance website development for a local newspaper website around 15 years ago. I can't speak for larger newspapers, this was my experience with a much smaller one. The biggest challenges I found were: 1. Lack of a real technical / engineering department. Having said that, their core business is news and they really just need a functioning website, not a full (and expensive) engineering departmen…

> Too many feature requests, often contradicting each other.

My last job was at a public radio station that published news online. That was one of my biggest frustrations, in part because it takes time away from properly addressing bugs or investigating what features users don't want.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#46

Post by anoncoward111 » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 3:45 PM UTC

vntok wrote: post #36

anoncoward111 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

w3c is an easier standard than amp

That cannot possibly be true, as AMP is literally a subset of HTML.

We just had a thread the other day about how AMP is an anachronistic, proprietary platform that breaks functionality that is otherwise completely fine for nearly all devices.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#47

Post by jccalhoun » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 3:47 PM UTC

redleggedfrog wrote: post #20

Why are newspapers so horrible? My family used to get a paper newspaper when I was growing up in the 70's and 80's. It had all the regular stuff - news, local news, editorial, sports, etc. But mostly it was ads. On Sunday it was a monstrosity, being nearly unmanageable due to the number of ad inserts. Most of it you threw away without looking at. Most of the stories had no value. One day later I couldn't remember wha…

I agree. The thing that most conversations on how to get people to pay for news miss out on the most important element: the news has to be worth paying for.

When I was in grad school a few years ago the college had a program to encourage newspaper readership that gave out "free" copies of the New York Times and USA Today (which we probably paid for in our tuition fees). I would pick them both up on most days and there was rarely anything in either of them worth reading past the headline. I can't imagine ever subscribing to a newspaper now.

There was so much in a newspaper that I have zero interest in or even if I did I would look somewhere else than dead trees (sports, stocks, fashion, travel, horoscopes, advice columns).

I grew up in a rural area and even in the local paper most of what was original, non-syndicated content was simply stating facts: the high school basketball team won/lost, there was a wreck, obituaries, births, weddings.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#48

Post by jccalhoun » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 3:49 PM UTC

I used to like the local newspaper's terrible site. On the rare times I went to it looking for news, they would put up a div to blur out the article if you weren't a subscriber. It was easy to just open the inspector and delete the div to read the article. Now they update their site to actually not load the article unless you subscribe. Progress...

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#49

Post by jasoncartwright » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 3:51 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #42

samspenc wrote: post #4

I actually did some freelance website development for a local newspaper website around 15 years ago. I can't speak for larger newspapers, this was my experience with a much smaller one. The biggest challenges I found were: 1. Lack of a real technical / engineering department. Having said that, their core business is news and they really just need a functioning website, not a full (and expensive) engineering departmen…

> 1. Lack of a real technical / engineering department. Having said that, their core business is news and they really just need a functioning website, not a full (and expensive) engineering department. I agree with the rest of your points but this one doesn't really make sense. My guess is it would take fewer engineers to make these websites better. The horrible parts of newspaper websites are the pop-ups and broken…

Slight aside: Django came out of a local newspaper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_(web_framework)#History

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#50

Post by vntok » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #44

vntok wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"personalize content and perform analytics" does not necessarily have anything to do with ads. Examples abound: 3rd party A/B testing (Optimizely), 3rd party analytics (Google Analytics), 3rd party error reporting (Bugsnag), 3rd party page speed testing, etc.

It's still something you should be able to opt out of, or have to opt in to.

> By subscribing, you agree to the use by us and our third-party partners of technologies such as cookies to personalize content and perform analytics. Please see our Terms of Service, Digital Products Terms of Sale and Privacy Policy for more information.

Well, yes, and that's an opt-in.