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Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

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Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#111

Post by TeMPOraL »

dazc wrote: post #23
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…

Our local paper was the same but with dedicated days for certain types of ad. Thursday was jobs day, Friday was property day, etc. Pre-internet days, Thursday was always a day you had to buy early if you were in the market for a new job - after 3pm it would be hard to find anywhere with a copy left to buy.

And this is the rare case where advertising works as it should - connects people offering something with people who actually, actively want that something.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#112

Post by forgotpwd16 »

sparkzilla wrote: post #31
rmason wrote: post #2

Building a newspaper business for the digital age is a hard problem that has yet to be solved.

Check what we are up to at NewsBlocks: http://newsblocks.io

Am I the only one that finds those, apparently popular with with nu-coins, pointless "featured" videos annoying?

Nevertheless, I checked the white paper and, as someone could expect nowadays, it looks like yet another attempt to ride the coin wagon though maybe a better one than others.

A data-oriented approach to hosting news and the relationships creation though seem interesting and the concepts can probably be used on the web sans coins. The user-based adding/checking/verifying process can be said is used on ./, HN and similar sites, where people will comment out any issues on the posted the article. Duplication probably exists so older articles of interest can be posted again.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#113

Post by TeMPOraL »

dctoedt wrote: post #57
CM30 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I'd agree with that. I'm no fan of crime documentaries or political coverage, but it seems almost guaranteed that 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. It's just easier for people here to tell they're not experts at tech because people here are more knowledgeable about tech than they are politics or crime. (There's als…

> I'm no fan of crime documentaries or political coverage, but it seems almost guaranteed that there are better sources for those things online [1], at least if you know where to look and how to vet whether someone's an expert [2]. [1] Not sure about that — those "better sources online" tend to be the very journalists whom we're discussing, working for local media outlets. [2] Assumes facts not in evidence — vetting…

[1] - better sources on-line are usually first-hand reports and the opinions of the "protagonists" of a new story.

[2] - well, a lot of people don't want to spend time vetting their sources, but this should prompt them to assign very low confidence to the things they read; of course, they frequently don't, which is why they need to be reminded that when they repeat what they read, they're most likely repeating bullshit.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#114

Post by ryandrake »

snowwrestler wrote: post #66
ryandrake wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It makes total sense to me. Having web developers is not the same thing as "a real technical / engineering department." Most of the cruft on newspapers sites is not carefully implemented custom code. It's a library, or vendor-supplied code, or CMS plugin that is just installed, configured, and forgotten about. Without strong engineering leadership, shit just gets piled on top of shit as the feature requests come in.…

Sure, it would take better engineers to build better cruft. It would take fewer engineers to not build it in the first place.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#115

Post by TeMPOraL »

forapurpose wrote: post #80
CM30 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I'd agree with that. I'm no fan of crime documentaries or political coverage, but it seems almost guaranteed that 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. It's just easier for people here to tell they're not experts at tech because people here are more knowledgeable about tech than they are politics or crime. (There's als…

> 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.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#116

Post by dang »

llao wrote: post #96
sparkzilla wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check what we are up to at NewsBlocks: http://newsblocks.io

> The decentralised platform for trusted news applications > The NewsBlocks token sale is planned for Q4 2018. The token sale will fund the creation of the NewsBlocks blockchain, seed the content, and fund application development. Spam your scam elsewhere.

Attacking fellow users like this will get you banned on HN, even if you find their website annoying. Please don't post like this. The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#117

Post by lllr_finger »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #13
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…

You don't need AMP, you just need PM's with the ability to grasp the tradeoff between more ads and less users as a result of that. Obviously it's not an easy thing to decide, but they should be trying to measure that because I can't handle this crap either. TV is dying because it's jammed full of annoying commercials. And it's getting worse as they are dying.

The problem is that they did see it clearly in the short term, and more ads and tracking always provided considerably more revenue. If Outbrain offers you $1M to be put on your site but it slows page load by 500ms on average, you put Outbrain on your site because there's no easy way to quantify how bad 500ms is to a userbase of 100M.

It sucks, and is part of the reason I changed industries.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#118

Post by TeMPOraL »

pvg wrote: post #59
jccalhoun wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ther…

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. No newspaper can really overcome a combination of idle cynicism and incuriosity. Perhaps you just don't like news.

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 information about the world.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#119

Post by TeMPOraL »

xae342 wrote: post #41
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.

Unless they lie to you in the title and debunk that lie in the middle of the article - which they damn well know most people won't read.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#120

Post by TeMPOraL »

sanj wrote: post #6

One large component is the inability of these companies to calculate the cost of the adtech on their pages. They simply don’t have anyone who can measure the negative impact of slowing page speed, obscuring articles, increasing comics rate, scrolling jankiness, etc. The adtech providers optimize around ease of install (one line of JavaScript!) over any costs that will entail for customers.

It's most likely on purpose. Adtech is as much about making you money as it is about making you think that it's making you money.
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