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Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

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Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#151

Post by fouc »

The better question is - why are newspapers so horrible?

I think that in today's age, we need to focus on a new way of presenting the data instead of converting them into narratives/prose. The problem is there's a limit to how much information you can cram into prose, or read back from it. It's hard to quickly get an overview of any particular bit of data relative to all the others that are nearby. You have to trust the news author actually understands the whole story and didn't discount anything. Plus stories aren't static, there's constant updates that are coming out, why not see all the information and the timeline all at once, continually updating? Especially in a distraction free format.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#152

Post by Ajedi32 »

saagarjha wrote: post #150
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…

> Apple and Facebook want walled gardens where they control the content and give the providers whatever revenue they consider "fair", with the huge benefit that the stories would be fast to load and provide a friendly, uniform interface. Funny, this really looks to me like you just described Google and AMP.

> where they control the content and give the providers whatever revenue they consider "fair"

AMP doesn't give Google any control over content or revenue. It supports hundreds of different ad networks, not just Google's: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-ad#...

> and provide a friendly, uniform interface

AMP doesn't enforce a uniform interface. Its restrictions are primarily technical; not stylistic.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#153

Post by dsfyu404ed »

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.…

> Having web developers is not the same thing as "a real technical / engineering department."

That's a dangerous opinion to have around these parts. ;)

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#154

Post by aptwebapps »

tptacek wrote: post #142
patio11 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they're also the ones staffing bureau's overseas As someone with repeated direct experience with the elite corps that staffs their bureaus in Japan, I cannot provide evidence in favor of your hypothesis that they keep a special breed of Pulitzerschreck around for that purpose. They still call me for Japanese domestic political analysis on the basis of a) in Japan b) speaks English c) was in the NYT in 2011.

I believe that you got contacted by a dumb reporter about a Japanese political story by an NYT reporter, but I also know that there are people like Tom Wright getting paid by major news outlets to cover Asia; the evidence I have suggests that those outlets do a great deal of important investigative journalism.

I agree there's good journalism being done but Chricton's observation is not completely off either. The nature of _most_ reporting requires that journalists talk about stuff without being adequately informed. They have to produce stuff on demand and there's little penalty to getting stuff wrong.

In any field there's going to be variability in quality and it's not fair or wise to tar the whole field with the same brush but I think journalism sometimes attracts people who have a different relationship with facts and ideas than I do.

I read a piece by a moderately famous journalist a while ago (and I've been trying to figure out who even since with no luck) who when talking about his practice said that sometimes there _are_ no experts in a particular subject and the journalist has to do a 'deep dive' and become the expert. Now he didn't say exactly what constitutes a 'deep dive' but it struck me as profoundly arrogant and symptomatic of this problem.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#155

Post by mwfunk »

fouc wrote: post #151

The better question is - why are newspapers so horrible? I think that in today's age, we need to focus on a new way of presenting the data instead of converting them into narratives/prose. The problem is there's a limit to how much information you can cram into prose, or read back from it. It's hard to quickly get an overview of any particular bit of data relative to all the others that are nearby. You have to trust…

This is all tangential, but fascinating. Newspapers are the way they are because they’re still printed, and the digital version ends up straddling the line between the preexisting print format and a web site. What you’re describing only makes sense in the context of purely digital newspapers, or newspapers that are digital first, and print a distant second. A site like Axios may be a step in that direction, but it’s only scratching the surface of what could be done in that space. I would love to see something like what you described someday.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#156

Post by tptacek »

aptwebapps wrote: post #154
tptacek wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that you got contacted by a dumb reporter about a Japanese political story by an NYT reporter, but I also know that there are people like Tom Wright getting paid by major news outlets to cover Asia; the evidence I have suggests that those outlets do a great deal of important investigative journalism.

I agree there's good journalism being done but Chricton's observation is not completely off either. The nature of _most_ reporting requires that journalists talk about stuff without being adequately informed. They have to produce stuff on demand and there's little penalty to getting stuff wrong. In any field there's going to be variability in quality and it's not fair or wise to tar the whole field with the same brus…

Sometimes they're talking about becoming experts at linear algebra† and we roll our eyes and fair enough, but sometimes they're talking about becoming "the" expert about disability compensation for West Virginia coal miners, and they aren't fucking around, that is for real.

But popping a couple frames back off the stack: the argument that most of what's in the NYT is superficial or "bullshit" is silly. Though maybe stay away from the opinion section.

What's annoying is how hard these dumb barbs are to rebut, even when they're plainly fatuous. Like, I had to go navigate through the Pulitzer categories and relay back to the thread how to do it, and all the original commenter had to do was write "the NYT and USA Today are the same thing and both are just superficial made-up trash".

† though I'm sort of waiting to spring a little quiz on the next person who takes a shot at Gladwell for "Igon Values".

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#157

Post by cwyers »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #138
lllr_finger wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"e there's no easy way to quantify how bad 500ms is to a userbase of 100M" No easy way, but it's not that-that hard, and ultimately they have to grasp there is some kind of tradeoff or it would all be ads. I wonder if there's a business model there.

How certain are you that this analysis would come out in opposition to pretty much whatever advertisers want?

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#158

Post by jakeinsf »

dang wrote: post #116
llao wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

As an innocent bystander, and at the risk of getting banned, I have to say I think the post you're replying to was thoughtful and had a substantive point which is that posts that use the comment section to promote their business ventures, especially those that are most likely pyramid schemes, are unwelcome. You'd rather ban the whistleblower? I guess you don't like the word "scam" because it assumes a value judgement? The fact is, scams do exist, and they are promoted online, as we all well know. In fact, this very article is about how newspaper websites have turned into advertising spam sites instead of journalism destinations. The fact that you seem to be advocating advertising in your comment section is worrying to me. I was attracted to HN because it doesn't feature advertising that I'm aware of (at least not with javascript turned off and an ad-blocking proxy). If you're trying to let comment-advertisers know you're a safe space for them, I probably won't want to continue visiting. Next you'll be telling us you make $7,000 a month working from home and here's how!

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#159

Post by rhizome »

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 thought this was going to be about the mechanics of the newspaper industry and how much the money game has changed in the last 40 years (read: Craigslist), but all in all it sounds like you just don't like newspapers.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#160

Post by jiggunjer »

Izkata wrote: post #83
ape4 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't experts at tech but are the best a local news, politics, crime, etc

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.
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