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Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

citylab.com

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Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#81

Post by 43920 »

notatoad wrote: post #74
TekMol wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMP is the only reasonable alternative I've seen How about making the site fast and usable in the first place?

that would be awesome. but how do you expect it to happen? AMP is actually making news easier to read in a real practical way right now. sitting back and suggesting we throw it away in exchange for idealistic nonsense that has been proven not to work by the last 20 years is not making anything better. I'd love for AMP to be replaced by something better. but "just make nice websites" is not better. it's the status quo…

It's (more or less) possible to objectively measure web page performance, though. If Google started measuring how long it takes for news sites to load, and removing any sites that took longer than a certain amount from the top stories section (and added a warning in the search console that your page was being hidden), they could force publishers to change their websites without creating a new standard.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#82

Post by forapurpose »

phjesusthatguy3 wrote: post #5

Newspapers slit their own throats back in 1994-5 or so when they decided to put their content up for free because they could sell ad space. It was a bad idea then, and I don't think anyone's tried to fix it in the past 25 years.

> Newspapers slit their own throats back in 1994-5 or so when they decided to put their content up for free because they could sell ad space.

Newspapers had little choice, because they compete with lots of other free information and because payment mechanisms are too costly (in reader time and frustration).

> It was a bad idea then, and I don't think anyone's tried to fix it in the past 25 years.

In fact, in journalism in the last 25 years - maybe the last 50 or 100 years - I doubt anything has gotten more attention than than a solution to this problem.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#83

Post by Izkata »

ape4 wrote: post #40
some_random wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The news is horrible because journalists are almost never experts on whatever they're writing about, so whenever they write about something that might actually still have meaning in three weeks, they fuck it up.

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 topics?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#84

Post by TekMol »

vntok wrote: post #14
TekMol wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMP is the only reasonable alternative I've seen How about making the site fast and usable in the first place?

Here is why: AMP is much cheaper and simpler to set up, it is way more optimized for mobile usage than trimming down your website, it brings better placement in search results and it is backed by the leading search engine itself, thus ensuring your team is not wasting resources trying to guess how Google works and how to exploit it.

Not simpler to set up. Quite the opposite. AMP adds complexity. It's not a new technology. It's just a set of rules what type of html/css/js your page can/must use.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#85

Post by forapurpose »

samspenc wrote: post #4

I actually did some freelance website development for a local newspaper website around 15 years ago. I can't speak for larger newspapers, this was my experience with a much smaller one. The biggest challenges I found were: 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 departmen…

Many of these issues point to the same root cause: A vacuum of leadership at the executive level. Those people often don't understand the Internet, UX, etc., and thus can't and don't make good decisions, creating chaos beneath them.

For example, until recently at the New York Times, the head of social media did not use social media himself.[0] Think about that - think about how important social media is to the NYT. Imagine any competent company - much less a world leader - hiring for that position; they probably have their choice of applicants and that's who they choose? The bad news is that he no longer runs social media at the NYT, he runs the company - A.G. Sulzberger. How will the NYT and its technical side fare under that leadership? (That ignores the deep blow to morale of such nepotism as making him head of social media or, in times like this, the company - he's a scion of the family that has run the NYT for generations.)

[0] https://www.wired.com/2017/02/new-york-times-digital-journal...

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#86

Post by pictur »

pictur wrote: post #3

I think people want it. I do not think most news sites will reach the same number of visitors after passing a good interface. maybe people like horrible interfaces. yes i am joking. maybe i don't not.

why do you give this comment a negative score? Are you a newspaper site employee? :)

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#87

Post by notatoad »

43920 wrote: post #81
notatoad wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that would be awesome. but how do you expect it to happen? AMP is actually making news easier to read in a real practical way right now. sitting back and suggesting we throw it away in exchange for idealistic nonsense that has been proven not to work by the last 20 years is not making anything better. I'd love for AMP to be replaced by something better. but "just make nice websites" is not better. it's the status quo…

It's (more or less) possible to objectively measure web page performance, though. If Google started measuring how long it takes for news sites to load, and removing any sites that took longer than a certain amount from the top stories section (and added a warning in the search console that your page was being hidden), they could force publishers to change their websites without creating a new standard.

it's easy enough to measure web page load speed. It's a lot harder to measure usability.

AMP isn't just about making pages fast, it's about making pages readable.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#88

Post by tannhaeuser »

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 confidence in a minimum level of digital media competence, so what hope is there for a reader to find journalistic content worth reading?

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#89

Post by always_good »

knowtheory wrote: post #71
jasoncartwright wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slight aside: Django came out of a local newspaper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_(web_framework)#History

Right, and it's still sad to say that they capitalized on that fact so incredibly poorly that the following came to pass: https://twitter.com/jacobian/status/1012781017940316161 > The Lawrence Journal-World, where Django was created, is now a Wordpress site. http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2018/jun/26/redesign-ljworld/

Or they realized that there isn't much value in building their own CMS.

Re: Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible?

#90

Post by salawat »

notatoad wrote: post #74
TekMol wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMP is the only reasonable alternative I've seen How about making the site fast and usable in the first place?

that would be awesome. but how do you expect it to happen? AMP is actually making news easier to read in a real practical way right now. sitting back and suggesting we throw it away in exchange for idealistic nonsense that has been proven not to work by the last 20 years is not making anything better. I'd love for AMP to be replaced by something better. but "just make nice websites" is not better. it's the status quo…

Break your dependence on Javascript and third-party ad networks.

If the ONLY way you can make money is to sell your user's attention span, you're doing it wrong.

Furthermore, people are willing to PAY for quality, but you also have to be willing to kick the 800 pound gorilla in the nuts.

Google is actually one of the leading reasons why, from my understanding, normal news outlet's paywalls can't actually work. If you have to leave the barn door open because otherwise no one will find you... Yeah, you're in a bad spot.

It's one of the reasons I'm increasingly moving in the direction of thinking that the ad subsidized web has pushed us into a situation where 90 percent of sites are mere aggregators\repeaters really only intended to grab ad revenue. Way back in the days of yore, it was more about getting your content out than doing a bunch of traffic with the rest of the world to facilitate botnet and monetizable surveillance.

Use the tool for what it was designed for, (information dissemination) instead of stateful information gathering, and it's amazing how much you can get done with so little.

Web 2.0 wasn't for Users. It was a breakthrough on the road to "monetizing" the Web for service providers. Further efforts to push implementation specific optimizations is just a Goliath throwing it's weight around, and trying to push the infrastructure toward a business favorable direction. Which is anti-competitive. Which is not okay.

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