Seems odd that he points out that the business model is broken.
Yet, doesn't make any room for advertising on his redesigns. The main source of income for most newspapers.
Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
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Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#72Well having been in the person in charge of a major news website myself I can say we all have lovely designs like this pinned to the walls next our desks. And while I really like his designs and have turned to Andy many times for inspiration, there are some serious context problems... and while I'm bored and off work I might as well write a critique... I had an near identical sports section to the one he designed pin…
Also probably worth mentioning while on the subject all my research and experience added up to designs that are very close to Al Jeezera. Perhaps I just favor it because it resembles my own thinking but I believe they have one of the best designed news sites out there: http://english.aljazeera.net Clean, crisp, clear, all gridded up nice and tidy. Handling information overload well. Being a new kid on the block, no l…
One of the best online newspaper designs I've seen recently is the Indian paper The Hindu (http://www.thehindu.com/). While most Indian newspapers will give you eye-cancer just by looking at them (ex: The Times of India, which is one of the oldest newspapers in the country also has one of the most horrible online editions, plastered with spammy ads and horrible layout). The Hindu has always been a bit of a boring (some might call it lack of sensationalism) but it's got an excellent new redesign. (The original design was like a 1995 webpage)
Also up there in my list is NPR (http://www.npr.org/) and PBS (http://www.pbs.org/). Not technically newspapers, but their pages are mostly about news delivery.
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Video content brings in 20x the ad rate of display ads. The news agency I worked for had a "push video for all content" stance because of this, I assume all other news sites have the same stance. You bring up the biggest argument of them all, I had it every day with the site I was responsible for. I'm a minimalist myself, and the person I reported to was a everything and the kitchen sink guy. We had some heated argum…
The lifesaver for me has been the "Remove This Permanently" Firefox plugin (well, that an the Flashblock plugin). If something's sufficiently annoying, I just find its xpath and remove it. Does this put me in the top fractional 1% of browsers? I have no doubt. Does this work for me? Yes. Does the 1% bit bother me? Not in the least. If anything, it's the final trump card in an argument I've had with web-design geeks t…
I've found ghostery and ad block plus do the trick for me :)
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#74It is easy to create a redesign for a website. It is less easy to pivot a billion-dollar business which has the agility of an aircraft carrier while she is sinking. If your answer to that question is "What do we really need the planes for, anyway?" and "I think the conning tower would look much better in teal.", you might find a wee bit of difficulty getting taken seriously.
Exactly. One thing the author conveniently forgot to take into account is the performance of the current site. If you don't have access to actual usage data such as heatmaps, click rates, page browsing times, you are quite likely shooting yourself in the foot just for the sake of beautifying the website.
He could argue that he was consciously only looking at the design aspect and that would also be a mistake. You can't isolate performance and design for a site. And when it comes to business, function takes precedence over beauty.
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#75Dear god, where to start. I worked on the Times web site for 7 years (dev, not design). Before I even saw his "redesign" I read his preamble. First, lets be clear, he is working from the wrong assumptions. He demonstrates clearly what is wrong with many news outlets but then he lumps the Times in with them too. Since his piece is about the Times I have to feel all assertions he makes are about that too, and not just…
I actually read the online edition of the Times and I find it highly readable. A very enjoyable experience. I suspect this designer isn't a regular reader. News organizations are viewed as easy targets for designers trying to increase their brand by writing a sensationalist article (did we really need any more convincing after "news itself is broken"?). So don't be bitter. The good work being done at the Times is sel…
I'm actually getting really tired of this trend of stripping every UI design down to a moronic level of simplicity. There's probably some room for simplification in the front page but gutting it down to next to nothing is a big step too far.
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also probably worth mentioning while on the subject all my research and experience added up to designs that are very close to Al Jeezera. Perhaps I just favor it because it resembles my own thinking but I believe they have one of the best designed news sites out there: http://english.aljazeera.net Clean, crisp, clear, all gridded up nice and tidy. Handling information overload well. Being a new kid on the block, no l…
One of the best online newspaper designs I've seen recently is the Indian paper The Hindu ( http://www.thehindu.com/ ). While most Indian newspapers will give you eye-cancer just by looking at them (ex: The Times of India, which is one of the oldest newspapers in the country also has one of the most horrible online editions, plastered with spammy ads and horrible layout). The Hindu has always been a bit of a boring (…
The Hindu looked bad too, a couple of years ago. They started testing a new interface at beta.thehindu.com for sometime before using the new interface for everyone.
The Hindu has always been a bit of a boring (some might call it lack of sensationalism) but it's got an excellent new redesign. True.
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#77Why haven't news sites like this tried the "spotify" model. Where you can pay to have the ads removed?
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your take on the strong emphasis he puts on separation of "news" and "opinion" and whether an editorial team could adequately resolve that? As a reader the distinction seems very artificial. I can see how senior newspaper executives might like his argument about emphasising the volume of "editorial writers ... promoted as exclusive, valuable properties" though.
Editorials and blogs are the same thing. They are opinion pieces, they are not news, they are bias, and often have an agenda. Sometimes they are satire. That isn't news its entertainment. From a purist point of view the news should be factual and impartial. Editorials fail to impartial most of the time. You have to choose what side of the fence you sit on, are you the BBC or are you Fox News? are you news or entertai…
Personally I don't like seperating them into "news" and "entertainment". I wouldn't ever class an opinion piece as news, however it is possible for an opinion piece to not be entertaining (as in, not try to be) and to actually be a useful aspect of finding out about current events.
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#79While we're on the subject, I recently did a news site design myself, even though it's not my main area of expertise (I'm more of a UI designer). I can attest that news sites are probably among the hardest sites to design, since there are so many parameters (and yes, ad units are very important!).
Anyway, I'd love to get some feedback on the design:
Re: Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com
#80There is no need to redesign when you can read the NYT in basically any format of your choosing with the NYT Skimmer: