A thought provoking article about online news papers by Andy Rutledge. He nails it here
Newspapers are in business to make money. Period. Sure, they’re in business to keep the world informed, but only as long as they’re profitable. Period. Paragraph.
If your business is concerned with providing text content to readers and attracting eyes to your advertisers’ ads, it makes sense to do it well – in whatever medium you’re operating. With very few exceptions, top-tier newspaper publishers are failing to present quality on the web. In fact, their newspapers are among the least readable publications available on the Web
Here are some of the problems that he points out
- The number one problem with online newspapers is the presence of garish and stylistically inconsistent ads on the main page. Readers don’t visit these sites to be dazzled by frenetic colors and dizzying arrays of ads. Rather, they come to read news and be informed.
- n almost ever case the layout and design of online newspapers sucks. Very few online newspapers employ intelligent use of grid, color and content hierarchy. Most have a flat aspect with no visual clues as to how the page and its information is supposed to be consumed.
- With most online newspapers, the site navigation is horribly confusing and inconsistent. Furthermore, the link text on the page is often disguised, easily confused with non-link text, and provides little or no visual feedback when used.
- Online newspapers often have questionable typography and paragraph configuration. Some (like The Wall Street Journal) have quite a horrible mishmash of font styles, coupled with poor font selection. Proper typography is more important in the low-resolution online environment than it is in the high-resolution environment of print.
Precisely, what we are talking about! Look out dinosours! Your free ride is coming to an end pretty soon!
here is my review man:
http://vinu.wordpress.com/2006/04/08/taazzacom/
End of Barcamp Chennai – Day one
It was certainly an interesting day filled with discussions on technology and about different ideas that percolate the minds of the tech-savvy. I was very impressed with some of those thoughts and needless to say, it was a day well…
Here is my review
Though its true what you have written, I like the layout of Times of India which is juss like a Physical newspaper available online to browse through.
Maverick
Very informative post. I’ve found your blog via Yahoo and I’m really glad about the information you provide in your articles. Btw your sites layout is really messed up on the Kmelon browser. Would be great if you could fix that. Anyhow keep up the great work!