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Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com

andyrutledge.com

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Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com

#3

Post by verisimilitude »

I really think this looks amazing. It would likely function amazingly well, too.

However, for this to work, you have to eliminate the space for ads. To deal with this, Rutledge suggests "Quality news is subscription only. You pay for valuable information. Fluff you get for free."

I somehow don't think it's that simple.

If you slam the digital door shut (much more than it is now at the Times), and only allow subscriber access, you'll do two things:

(1) vastly reduce your readership; if you want to go back to showing ads, you can't, because you no longer can brag about the vast numbers reading your website daily (2) create a hyper-focused pirating scheme around disseminating NYTimes content for free

I love news. I love good reporting. When I'm no longer a student, I'll pay to get the Times at home. BUT, we've got a serious problem here; this design, while well thought-out, fails to acknowledge that it can't exist (eliminating ads) without changing the industry (changing readership drastically).

I very much look forward to seeing this movie: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/page_one_inside_the_new_york... which touches on these issues.

Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com

#5

Post by adamhowell »

I know everybody hates ads, but it only reinforces the "naive businessmen" stereotype of designers when people say stuff like this:

"Since news is accessed only via subscription, most of the ads can be eliminated from the pages."

That's like saying because you pay for magazines they also don't need to have ads. That's in no way at all how the content business works.

Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com

#8

Post by brownie »

The one thing I dislike (on the main page at least) is the separation of news and opinion/analysis. I can't think of many times where I've visited a news site and wanted to read only opinion or only news, but I can think of times where I've visited a site to read about a particular story - and read related articles that happen to be opinions/analysis.

Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com

#9

Post by arn »

The final result looks nice, but I hate these exercises, because if you are not fitting the same number of ads in the page, then you are not actually solving the same problem. You are solving a much easier problem, as almost all sites look better without ads.

Also, there's a major divide between what people seem to think looks nice and what seems to succeed. The Huffington Post is the biggest example of recent success in the news realm. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Is that despite of its design or because of it? I don't know. It's hard to separate out the effect of the editorial content from presentation.

Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com

#10

Post by faramarz »

Obviously he's not a NYT reader. I love the times. It's not broken. Their website is fantastic in every way. You can spend hours upon hours on it and digest more content, in whatever style you wish to navigate. It has a certain unity within the chaos. But it's not really chaos. The content is the layout. You won't find any other News organization who understands design more than NYT. They let the content design the layout, not the other way around.

Andy turned NYT into a Wordpress blog. :|

I'll give him credit for the work though, but I personally think NYT is an exception. But go ahead, every other news website, you have Cart Blanche.

cc: Khoi Vinh

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