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Why Haven't Online Newspapers Gotten it Right?
An anonymous reader writes "Kirk McElhearn, writing at Kirkville, discusses why he thinks that online newspapers aren't up to snuff. While his article reflects an "old-fashioned" way of looking at newspapers, that is by reading them on paper as opposed to on the web, many of his points are valid. Most newspaper web sites are poorly designed, and don't easily inspire readers to read their content. He doesn't offer any solutions (other than getting rid of ads to make stories more readable) but the issues he raises do merit reflection by newspapers and other websites with large amounts of content."
You know, it's interesting. We (humans) are quite good at indexing and sorting things. When most of us were toddlers, we learned how to put square pegs through square holes...how to organize things (toys) by color, shape, or function. When we learned how to read, we started small, but worked our way up to understanding the sections of a newspaper and what was fun (Comics) and what was not (Business). As our skills developed, some of us found journalists that we liked and some that we didn't - this helped us further refine our "searches" through newspapers.
e rywhere.ap/index.html. They're not talking about online newspapers, but I believe the issue they describe is the same one we face with online newspapers.
Sections, headlines, story titles, author, location - all metadata that is used by us to index the info in a newspaper. I don't think we have the capacity to use many more pieces of metadata to index a newspaper - there's a reason the newspaper is in the form it is today...we have hundreds of years of refinement. Newspapers that sucked weren't bought and "natural selection" resulted in industry norms etc that present the user with a very consistent interface. If I read the NY Times, the interface is similar to the Wall St Journal, USA Today, etc. It's predictable, easy-to-use, and well-defined. My choices are limited, but the format is similar.
The web is a lot bigger than a newspaper - and the web presents the user with a number of different sources for info - all in a very inconsistent format. when I was growing up, there were 2 daily newspapers that we subscribed to - the Hartford Courant and the Journal Inquirer. Neither one was perfect, but they worked the same way for me. Today, if I don't like something I see on CNN.com, I've got a gazillion other choices out there. The challenge to the user is to find a mix of news sources that meet their appetites for knowledge. They also need to wade through the mountains of crap website designs that mean no 2 news sites are the same. I'm all for individual expression and I love clever unique designs - I like to think I've come up with a few in my time - but it does present the user with an interesting problem to solve. Some of us get it, some of us don't. Remember that article about Google users having a richer online experience? Some of that is because of Google - but some of that is because of the people as well. People who use Google are more likely to be able to cope with information overload and quickly parse out the important bits.
CNN has another take on it here http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/12/26/information.ev
How do we make sense out of petabytes of data? This is why I think the work Google is doing w/Google Print and the work IBM is doing with UIMA http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/uima is so critical. We've long since outgrown the day that a file cabinet was capable of organizing all the info that's important to us. We've outgrown the filesystem as well. And the web has outgrown us.
There seem to be two points here that have been covered too many times already.
The first is web site design. Kirk (no relation) complains that you can't scan or skim on news websites, but a lot of sites have designs that approximate this. The Onion has on its front page headlines, and about a paragraph of text. Just go through this page and you're scanning.
The second issue is pay vs advertising. Peoples opinions seem to be divided on this. Everyone curses NY Times online for requiring registration, but several people have already commented on this article saying "I'd gladly pay, just get rid of the ads". Well, you have to have one or the other, and whichever method an online news site chooses, someone's not happy about it.
In any case, these issues have been covered before, and it looks like this is just another blogger making up fluff-filled articles to try to wring out some revenue from his site. I wish this non-news wouldn't make it past the Slashdot editors.
That was the point that got me. It seems that he's taking the main advantage of online newspapers and turning it into a fault.
That said, a master's candidate recently did a critique of my paper's website, and he was brutal to a fault. He didn't understand the concerns of the newsroom -- or even how our print publication, which is unique, worked -- at all in many of his arguments, he picked away at the tiny stuff, and essentially ticked away at some of the things that lowly web design people and newsroom folks (I'm the latter, a graphic designer to be exact) can't touch for corporate reasons.
Which eventually leads to my main point: Often, the structure of the newsroom is the problem with making many of the improvements needed. Advertising won't budge on something, administration won't budge, a reporter will get pissed if their story isn't given the play it deserves, editors don't trust their readers.
But large newspaper sites? It's like vomited information, in blown chunks every-which-where, with no helpful structure, and it's starting to dry and get a little discolored. One of the things that my paper (Bluffton Today) has done, is that it's taken the interactive community elements and played them up. We're probably the only newspaper in the world that uses Drupal as a CMS. We've basically relegated, for better or worse, most of our content to a print version of the newspaper that you can weed through in an "As Printed" section. The decreased focus on the paper's content (which is distributed free to 16,500 people throughout the community anyway) has had the side effect of getting to the meat of what we should be for our town: A resource for the community, and an organic one at that. The blogs and spotted galleries are our centerpiece, and that's what makes it unique and useful to readers.
That's the kind of thing, whether through institutional weaknesses or traditional thinking that large papers just suck at. There's such a focus on news judgment -- and how theirs is better than readers -- that they don't want to open the community input can of worms. Instead, they can't think outside the newshole or the thousands of tr and td tags that make up a newspaper front page.
A friend of mine, an online editor for a Big 10 college paper, recently mentioned a talk he had with the editor of his college newspaper. He wanted to try some untraditional things similar to Facebook or MySpace, and the editor essentially brought up the trust issue -- he didn't trust his readers to have as good of news judgment as he did. That sort of institutional thinking is bad for an industry as a whole, and I have a feeling my more open-minded friend will go a lot further than that editor will because he is looking at the prize when it comes to online journalism, and it isn't the same prize as print. The prize is taking the community and making them just as much of the news generation process as the newsroom itself. When it comes to online newspaper websites, that's the untapped resource, seeping its way through the tertiary levels of the soil, beginning to surface in the newsroom -- well, after someone moves the coffee maker off the top of it.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
I use the BugMeNot Firefox extension and it works great. For those who don't know, BugMeNot has a database of bogus (presumably) registrations, and the extension pulls one and fills in the login information for you. Technology to the rescue!
Superficially that seems nice, but there are some serious problems.
1. The back button doesn't go back anymore.
This is really reason enough to dismiss it immediately, but we'll continue to some details...
2. Clicking on the left and right column to change page is totally unexpected. Did you know some people compulsively select areas of text? They will constantly be moved to the next page.
3. The previous and next links are very small text-embedded images in a faint colour, beloved of graphic designers but actually very annoying and difficult to read.
4. You can't select the whole article (e.g. to paste into an email)
Sorry, but no.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
I understand that newspapers such as the Austin American-Statesman (AAS) are increasingly concerned about declining readership. Many years ago, I read the AAS frequently. Pretty sure I was a subscriber at least some of the time, though it's so long ago that I can't really remember for sure. Therefore, I write on behalf of your lost readers, though I think I write from the 'leading edge' of that trend. My main message to you is that I see no sign of increasing attraction, either in general or as a result of today's website visit (to be addressed below). If you're waiting for me to resubscribe, I have to resort to the cliché: "Don't hold your breath."
First I'll address the general issue. Why would I want to read your newspaper? As a media organization, I think you have only two real assets: integrity and credibility. Do you speak the truth? And are you believed when you speak it? As already noted, I don't have enough recent contact with the AAS to address these assets specifically in your case, but I do think I can say that if you were doing a better job, then the AAS would have emerged visibly from the morass that is the modern MainStream Media (MSM). Since the AAS has not 'emerged' in that sense, I'm just classifying you with all the other MSM newspapers that I sample at random via recommended links to articles on their websites. In summary, the MSM rarely tells the complete truth, they often repeat unfounded and usually partisan lies, and why would I pay them for 'information' that has to be cross-checked and verified? (By the way, that even includes indirect payment via advertisers. No click-throughs from me.)
These large issues go too far afield, though I could say much more on them. Today, I visited your website for a highly specific reason, and I was quite disappointed. I should have known, but optimistic to the last, eh? The specific public issue which is troubling me is American-government-sponsored torture. The specific information I sought was a list of the Texas Representatives who joined the loser Senator Cornyn in opposing Senator McCain's legislation against torture. I do know that some of the Representatives from Texas were among the 112 members of the House that voted futilely along with Cornyn, and I want to know if my Representative from North Austin was among them. If so, I would like to start now in supporting his political opponent, though there are only a few days left to make such a donation in 2005. Perhaps the information exists somewhere in the AAS website, but I think not. I think you simply ignored the issue. Typical MSM behavior--and that's why I didn't even bother to write a "letter to the editor" on the topic. (There's also the minor reason that I am in general only an accidental reader of the AAS these years.)
My own belief is that such torture is an extremely serious matter that ought to be receiving *MUCH* more coverage. When I first read about this issue (in non-MSM sources), I was greatly offended and ashamed. I felt that I should express my outrage to the 'Senator'--who is certainly failing to represent me. I do not know if I succeeded, though I do know that I never received any response from him or from his staff. I think it most likely he never got my message because it isn't the sort of thing he wants to hear, and he has no sincere interest in representing anyone who doesn't agree with him. Cornyn's only concern is with his *LARGE* campaign donors.
Following is a copy of the message I attempted to send to Cornyn:
Your name appeared on a list of the nine Senators who opposed Senator McCain's anti-torture amendment. If that is incorrect, then please provide me with the corrected list and I will apologize. However, I think my source was reliable, and that you did vote against this amendment. Speaking specifically as an honorably discharged veteran, I wish to express my strongest displeasure and outrage at your action.
Torture does *NOT* work. It does not produce reliable information, but merely encoura
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I don't mind reading online at all.
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