The labyrinthic task of reading news online

by gabriela on 19/05/2010

We’ve been thinking a lot lately about the publishing industry in general, and newspapers in particular. The decisions behind information design. The things that matter when presenting news and the things that don’t. And we remembered five little bullet points which we still abide by (and that funnily enough, are the pillars that sustain Planetaki today):

-Present snippets of information

-Frequent and constant updating

-Only one time line

-Immediacy over depth

-Use structures that are not too deep

We have yet to come up with a newspaper that has fully embraced this.  A newspaper that’s not fighting with the idea that their customers are not as willing to spend 45 straight minutes in their web anymore. That they’ll probably skim through the headlines and save the articles they want to read in apps like Instapaper or similar. There are no websites out there that make it easy  –and efficient– for users to assess at a glance the importance of a story. Kinda like it is on paper. Would you agree? Are there any newspapers you think are doing a good job?

Because when we go to elpais.com or nytimes.com we always feel well…kinda lost. You have like six or eight different formats in the space of an 160-character news (trust me, we’ve done the counting). They end up sending you all these different signals at the same time and confusing you, instead of holding your hand and, through design, telling you: “here, this is where you’ll find what you’re looking for”. So after a few minutes your head is just a mess. And you give up. (Or at least we do).

How do you read news? Directly on the newspaper’s website? Through feeds? Which do you prefer?

If we could pick a wish we’d love to redesign the web of one the newspaper’s we dig. If we ever do, what would be your wishlist? Which things would you change (which would you keep)? What do you think is missing?

P.S. (slight digression): Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a newspaper app in the lines of what Bonnier R+D and Berg have done for Popular Science for iPad?  It’s all wishful thinking though…

Do check out the post in Berg’s blog (in case you haven’t already) explaining the rationale behind the Popular Science app. Here’s the video:

But if you want to have a complete notion of what Berg’s striving for in the publishing industry, take a look at this one where they talk about Mag+:

There are 2 comments in this article:

  1. 20/05/2010Ayma says:

    Interesting article. When it comes to reading news online, my favourite site is bbc.com. By far. Second best is theguardian.co.uk. I haven’t found any Spanish sites I like as much as those, yet. I don’t really use feeds that much, I’m obviously way behind you guys when it comes to accessing information online. But learning…

  2. 24/05/2010gabriela says:

    Hi Ayma, any reasons why you prefer one over the other? is it the palette of colors (one is more or less monochromatic whilst the other has most colors under the rainbow)? or perhaps the BBC’s separation of sections/content in boxes?

    And about feeds, give them a try. Let’s say they’re like index pages and you just access one page to have access to the sea of content you regularly read online. We’re particularly proud of our feed (planetaki.com) but try whichever one you feel the most comfortable with. See how you feel and give us a shout if you like the experience.

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