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Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

citylab.com

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Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#161

Post by jiggunjer »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #115
forapurpose wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are better sources for those things online, at least if you know where to look and how to vet whether someone's an expert What if someone did that for you, as a full-time professional job, and did it both online and offline? What if they actually spoke directly to the participants, from senators to the bus driver in the crash to the head of safety at the regulatory agency; and what if they interviewed leading…

Might be, but then again, it's a rare thing. And the "idle commentary from bloggers and commenters" has the benefits that for any topic, you can find bloggers/commenters who are both subject matter experts, and have no incentive to misrepresent the story.

because blogs never contain affiliate links. /s

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#162

Post by marssaxman »

mrep wrote: post #105
marssaxman wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never encountered an AMP site so far as I know, but the real practical way I make news easier to read is to put everything in reader mode. Simple, straightforward, lightweight, ad-free, does not depend on cooperation from the server.

> ad free So are you suggesting all news agencies switch to subscription models with paywalls?

I suggest nothing; their profit models are not my problem. If they would rather not make their content available on the open web, that's their right. If they are willing to publish their hypertext, however, I feel no obligation to follow all of the image links they offer; I'll look at the images I care about and ignore the ones I don't, because it's my computer and my attention and my time, and I'll spend it how I choose.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#163

Post by twsted »

jumelles wrote: post #146
BurningFrog wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds utterly ripe for someone to develop a standard newspaper web site that all the thousands of newspapers around the world can adopt with some minimal branding and customization. I assume/hope someone did this in the 15 years since?

I don't think they ever will, but it would be incredible if the New York Times open-sourced their tools. https://open.nytimes.com/building-a-text-editor-for-a-digita... https://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/scoop-a-glimpse-in...

Oak is based on the open source and very good ProseMirror.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#165

Post by Double_a_92 »

rossdavidh wrote: post #91

So, besides the many negative things I could say about how bad newspaper sites yes in fact are, I have a question: is there anywhere out there a newspaper site (even local) that IS just static HTML, with unobtrusive or nonexistent ads? Like, we only need one maybe, and we could support it. Does it exist?

https://eu.usatoday.com Seems pretty nice after they were "forced" to remove all the nasty scripts.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#166

Post by forapurpose »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #115
forapurpose wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are better sources for those things online, at least if you know where to look and how to vet whether someone's an expert What if someone did that for you, as a full-time professional job, and did it both online and offline? What if they actually spoke directly to the participants, from senators to the bus driver in the crash to the head of safety at the regulatory agency; and what if they interviewed leading…

Might be, but then again, it's a rare thing. And the "idle commentary from bloggers and commenters" has the benefits that for any topic, you can find bloggers/commenters who are both subject matter experts, and have no incentive to misrepresent the story.

> bloggers/commenters who ... have no incentive to misrepresent the story

Isn't that a exceptionally idealistic given what we know about misinformation on the Internet? While we can debate the motivations, the Internet is a cesspool of misrepresentation. Just look at HN comments; they are among the highest quality available, but still it abounds.

> bloggers/commenters who are ... subject matter experts

And orders of magnitude more who claim to be.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#167

Post by [deleted] »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #88
lllr_finger wrote: post #7

I worked for a media conglomerate for several years on several high volume media sites. The GMs and POs that I came across often had a great sense for what made user experiences great, but those would take a back seat every single time for revenue opportunities. A company wants to do an ad takeover for the sites and slather sidebars/banners/popups everywhere, Ad Ops wants to sell a new module in the right rail, Outbr…

The problem with the "AMP being the only reasonable alternative" argument is that web sites are bloated exactly because of the ads and trackers. Google wants to be seen as a white knight for something they themselves create in the first place. AMP is a dead end, and you could as well give up altogether. For any self-respecting publisher, demonstrating such (economical, technical, and political) incompetence ruins any…

[deleted]

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#168

Post by [deleted] »

jiggunjer wrote: post #160
Izkata wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I don't know your full background, that you're on this site implies you have tech experience and so can spot reporting failures in tech. This makes me think you're just experiencing the Gell-Mann amnesia effect [0], and trust the reporting of other topics solely because you have less experience with those topics. If you can expect reporting to be wrong on one topic, why do you trust them to be right on other…

because describing quantum physics is harder than describing political activism.

[deleted]

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#169

Post by [deleted] »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #165
rossdavidh wrote: post #91

So, besides the many negative things I could say about how bad newspaper sites yes in fact are, I have a question: is there anywhere out there a newspaper site (even local) that IS just static HTML, with unobtrusive or nonexistent ads? Like, we only need one maybe, and we could support it. Does it exist?

https://eu.usatoday.com Seems pretty nice after they were "forced" to remove all the nasty scripts.

[deleted]

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#170

Post by TeMPOraL »

tptacek wrote: post #129
TeMPOraL wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to call it "idle cynicism and incuriosity" if you know that most of what's in the news is at best a surface-level coverage, most likely bullshit, and also completely inconsequential for anything. News is great as a social object - you and me both read some reporting about an event at the same time, so when we meet at a bar, we have something to talk about. It's really bad if you're trying to learn accurate infor…

As a general statement this seems plainly false. Just go to the Pulitzer site, to the last year's winners, skip to the "investigative journalism" category, and click around the finalists and back year over year. Nerds discussing journalism on HN are obsessed with something called the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect (it's really the Michael Crichton effect but whatever). It suggests that if you have an area of expertise ---…

> But of course, that's a silly thing to argue.

I don't see how that's a silly thing to argue. Or maybe, what's actually argued is something slightly different. You don't just call "Gell-Mann Amnesia" upon spotting a simple jargon mistake and call all news bullshit. But people have different expertise. You, me and others here know our CS; many of us also know our maths & physics, and derived specializations ranging from batteries to rocketry. We can routinely spot nonsense in news stories within those domains. Then, we all have friends who are knowledgeable in other areas. Myself, I have a historian in my circle, whose pastime is debunking nonsense written within his field of expertise. If you ask around, between yourself and your friends, you can spot the same reporting problems emerging across many domains. A pattern emerges.

That's not to say that good journalism doesn't exist. I maintain that good stories, and good journalists, are few and far between. You may read a solid, trustworthy[0] report on an important topic every year. Or every month, if you're good at curating your news experience. But these good stories are not what majority of people read most of the time; using them as defense of modern journalism is just plain motte-and-bailey. Regular people read regular news, with clickbait headlines, bad reporting, lowest-effort articles and no attempt at being accurate.

--

[0] - But then, if it's not in your field, is it trustworthy or just good sounding? How can you tell?

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