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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."
Online sites in generally haven't gotten it right. If you can't read it on the porcelein throne, it isn't perfect.
That being said, look at what online publishers have to deal with: non-uniformity. HTML is very powerful, but we still can't guarantee that an article will look as nice on everyone else's monitor as it does on the publisher's. Digital fonts still have a VERY long way to go versus paper printed ones -- kerning and other newspaper processes are not as easy to perform in HTML.
PDF is a solution, but not a good one. HTML is far faster on every connection than PDF ever will be (try getting PDFs to look good on your mobile device).
AJAX won't help here because we're mostly talking about static data, and you run up against the different resolutions, screen sizes and operating system problems again.
I've seen some sites that use preset pixel-sizes tables and frames, and that keeps the site more consistent in look-and-feel, but still doesn't look the same system to system and browser to browser. If you have a huge monitor or a tiny one, these pages are a pain to browse.
Raster? Too big and too restrictive.
Flash? Does anyone actually use flash for content anymore?
I can't figure it out -- and I do believe that whoever DOES figure it out will have a pretty penny hitting them from the dead tree publishers.
I've been working on that problem for nearly 15 years. It bugged me back in my BBS running days. My only "solutions" I've come up with is to dump the browser entirely and offer "newspaper skins" for another type of Internet program: something that grabs raw articles from RSS or other feeds, displays them in the format YOU want to read them in, and even print them out newspaper-style. It isn't a great solution since it would require another app on devices that already are being app-downsized. RSS is key in this situation, but I don't think the RSS reader is the best way to display the information.
Just what I need, another username and password which, if I ever change browsers, will be lost. For what? Content that I can get elsewhere online, or through word-of-mouth chitchat at the office? Trust me, I am NOT clicking your banner ads, so the # of distinct page views is a meaningless metric to try and track. Just give me the content, or don't do it. The usefulness of the online medium is the a la carte mentality, don't try and apply an old model to it. Or come up with a way for anonymous micropayments (again, no FSCKING username/password) and for .25 USD, I'll read your damn paper online.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Of course the problem I have with many online newspaper websites is the fact that they require you to register to view their content. While I understand that is their right, I however can simply go to one of the many "free" news websites to get my daily dose of news.
Most of the author's problems with web design are solved by reading the New York Times via RSS.
...online newspapers can't hire good writers because they have little or no budget, which drives away customers, which leads to less budget? Just a guess.
Why would you trust a testimonial when choosing hosting?
I don't have any answer to this conundrum, I don't know the best way to do this, but I do know that no newspaper I've read online gets things right. I want
One solution would be for every news site on the internet to be re-written to please the author.
But why would they go to the expense? Particularly since they already have the author's eyeballs:
I get a lot of news from web sites: whether newspapers, magazines or TV channels, the main purveyors of information are the leading media brands. I read the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, along with other media web sites, and subscribe to RSS feeds for dozens of others.
Huh. Try The Guardian, especially the ball-by-ball and minute-by-minute cricket commentary.
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
1. It's hard to read and article with a flash animation of a silhouette dancing with an iPod
2. It's hard to read an article if you have to subscribe to the site or enter in data about yourself (which most likely will be false anyway)
3. It would be advantageous to have each news site set up in different fashions (one for politics junkies, world news junkies, tech news junkies etc.,) so that the information that is most wanted is easily accessible with one click
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Here is the thing...Generally, newspapers are written for the grade 8 reading level and offer very little in the way of background, just a quick shot of information then on to the next story. Those that do that online, are not using the technology to build a user base. With the ability to post comments, papers like www.globeandmail.com give a reason for users to register online (to post comments)and create a richer experience where the point of view can be discussed.
Now I realize how much time I was wasting on a lot of fluff. Online, I read only the important things, I can catch up a few days at a time, and I can easily save articles, email the, etc. It's actually a much better experience.
I think the biggest problems newspapers have with making money off on-line offereings is this:
Almost nobody who buys the paper does so to get the news.
People who buy papers generally are looking for (in rough order of popularity and priority):
1. Comics
2. Crossword puzzles & brain teasers
3. Horoscopes
4. Sports stats
5. Movie listings
6. Everything else
Items 1-3 are typically not owned by your local paper, but purchased through syndication deals, so the three most popular items in your local paper are missing from the on-line version. Also, IIRC, major-league sports stats require an additinal fee to the leauge in question to re-post them (and users can find them for free from espn or league web sites anyway), so those are also typically omitted.
On top of that, the vast majority of "news stories" run in your local paper are cut-and-paste reprints of wire service reports. The amount of actual unique news content (not counting the editorials) is really very tiny in most papers. They are sort of like Karma whores who make "Link Slashdotted - Article Text" posts. (And they are every bit as redundant.)
Newspapers are not news companies, and have not been for a long time. They are ad space companies. They just happen to use news content as one of several ways in which they capture your eyeballs.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
One of the more interesting things is that the NY Times and the WSJ took opposite approaches when it came to paid content. Remaining free at the WSJ - via OpinionJournal.com - is almost all of the editorial content that sparks discussions and draws people to the site. You pay for the hard fact reporting and business analysis that backs up the editorials and makes famously accurate projetions about the future of the market and world events. The NY Times makes all of the daily reporting free, and then makes people pay to see the editorials that might otherwise keep people coming back to the NY Times' site. (For me, the net result has been that I continue paying for the WSJ subscription, but have stopped visiting the NY Times' site altogether.) Hiding the editorials behind Times Select has also lead to far fewer people linking to the NYT as the majority of the free content is already available in varying forms from hundreds of other sources.
The International Herald Tribune www.iht.com
You'll want to click on an article to discover the true value though as it doesn't get really good until you start reading content...
Notice how the entire article is already loaded into the page but it's broken up into 3 column sections that shuffle to a new page of text when you click the 'next page' button (which is triggered by clicking anywhere on the first or third columns), without reloading the html page (and without reloading a bunch of ads and all the 'extras' including the useful tools).
This design is sooo much easier to read than any other I've found.. the only thing that comes close is a simple long page of text but even that has it's drawbacks as it becomes difficult to read when you are constantly scrolling every few paragraphs. In fact if you want to read it that way they have an 'article tool' to 'change the format' to vertical scrolling as well.
The only thing I can think of to make it better is if they used keybindings on the arrow keys and pg up pg dn keys to control the buttons (though this is probably an issue of standard behavior across browsers at this time).
On the commercial side of things, it looks like their text ads at the bottom are also going to be the most relevant ads they can be as they are based on the entire text and not some short summary or 1/5 of the article.
As for the rest of the site... it's clean. Yes there are ads but they don't let them be too obtrusive and they way it's layed out, if you have ad blocking enabled, you won't even notice them being gone (which not all sites do well.. often removing the ads ruins the overall layout and is just as difficult to read as having them in).
IHT is an exemplary site. I won't compare their content but as far as design and usability is concerned, they are the #1 Newspaper site on the web today.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
The worst part of reading a pulp newspaper is navigating the various pages to read the articles. Editors love to post "hunks" of articles across various pages, for various reasons. Some, to free up space on the Front Page, but most of the time it seems simply to force you to skim ads as you search for the next 4-inches of article text. And of course the text is smashed up into small columns already so as to fit around the ads in the paper. Personally, I hate trying to read the 'paper'.
So now we have online news. Well, again many times it is hard to read and navigate because the text is often smashed into thin columns and forced around ads (often obnoxious, animated ads). Most online articles worth reading are broken into multiple "pages" which need to be clicked through, and entirely unneccessary most of the time, except to create more opportunity for ads. Online "papers" seem to be designed by similar people whom design the print versions, with the same headaches for readers.
A side note, and personal peeve. Online, you see a lot more press releases passed around as actual news items.
{ - Generic Guy - }
If the ads bug you so much, why don't you just read the articles using the "Printer Friendly" mode?
I find articles of interest on different newspaper sites. One of the biggest pains is having to register before being allowed to look at content. I don't care what their marketing departments wants. I usually put in dummy information just to screw up their database. I know the newpaper executives have the puritan attitude of "you are not going to get what you want unless you work for it!". Usually the executives and the marketing department are in bed with each other and work closely.
When marketing gets a hold of something, they royally screw things up.
People read newspapers for:
* News
* Opinion
* Fun
http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and http://www.cnn.com/ have news completely sewn up in my mind. I wouldn't think of going to a newspaper's website for news - it'll probably be out of date in comparison.
Fun - there are more fun things to do online, and reading a paper newspaper is much much more enjoyable than reading something on your laptop - less eye-strain, less weight, less worrying about $1000 of equipment having coffee spilled on it.
So that leaves Opinion. There's a wealth of opinion on the net already, but some of the best opinion pieces come from newspapers. But I rarely go and seek these out - I'm normally pointed to them by other people. Besides, I read opinion pieces as a leisure activity - so see the above point.
+Pete
Score:-1, Funny
Anyone click on any of Google News' links the Yahoo/CBS streaming TV article yesterday? (Still on the front page this am...)
I had to to hit about five different articles before I found a link to the site that they were all reporting on, and I believe the site I found it on was new web media, not a traditional paper's site.
It blows me away how the printed media can consistently, even stubbornly, leave out hyperlinks (in both their web and print versions) when discussing events on the web itself.
What's up with that?
Half the time I read an online article, when they mention a website, they never have a fucken link. Often they even have the website's URL slapped down but with no anchor tags around it.
No to mention the lack of multimedia such as photos, diagrams, and videos in many articles where you'd expect such a thing. Nothing more annoying than an article about some new product and the lazy fucks can't even be bothered to get a photo in.
Online newspapers haven't gotten it right because most of them are just bloody lazy.
[end of rant]