Online newspaper design: expired vs. modern

by javier on 31/01/2011

We’ve been ruminating on this subject for some time now but hadn’t had the time to organize our thoughts and jot them down. The opportunity came a couple of days ago when Mario García, newspaper design guru, asked specialists what they thought a modern newspaper design should look like. You can read what we had to say in García’s original post but the subject is worth expanding on.

In short:

In 1998, former Apple, former Microsoft, now journalist and consultant Linda Stone, coined the term Continuous Partial Attention. This should be the fundamental concept behind online newspaper design, what sets the difference between design that is modern and design that is expired.

Before the immediacy of the web, before feed readers, Facebook and Twitter, it took us 20 to 40 minutes to read a newspaper everyday. Today, we no longer read information in blocks, we scan for it or come by it in snippets. One article here, another one there. By the end of the day we have tailored our own newspaper with information gathered from all sorts of sources: blogs, newspapers, magazines. But it didn’t take us 40 minutes, it took us the entire day. I think there’s something there going on for newspapers if only they had the courage to move forward and forget about their print inheritance.

How can newspapers embrace this? By providing us with a homepage that:

  • is easy to read, that is not cluttered or where I have to zig zag between columns.
  • is continuously updated, and where updates are visible.
  • doesn’t tell me what’s the most important news of the day but gives me the latest and allows me to set my own hierarchy.
  • is designed to make information king (not the ads).
  • visual, where without having to read much, photos can aid me to know what the story is about.
  • can work in my iPad, where I don’t have to zoom in hundreds of times to reach a link.
  • can inform me both superficially (online) and in-depth (to read later in my iPad).
  • doesn’t organize the news into absurd sections (culture, politics, sports), but classifies it into easy to identify/searchable tags.

We’ll keep touching on this subject in the future. In the meantime, let us know if you think we have left anything out in the comments.

There are 11 comments in this article:

  1. 31/01/2011Tweets that mention Online newspaper design: expired vs. modern - THE COSMONAUTS -- Topsy.com says:

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by torresburriel, Francisco Tosete, Dani Alías, Mauricio Candamil , Javier Cañada and others. Javier Cañada said: @chrominance Check our latest post on that topic http://www.vostok.es/blog/online-newspaper-design-expired-vs-modern [...]

  2. 31/01/2011torresburriel says:

    First, I love the blue pic. You can make shirts, really :)

    Second, I wrote some thoughts (in spanish) [1] about new media and there’s one big proposal: break the home page. Then… do the rest.

    Great post!

    [1] http://www.torresburriel.com/weblog/2010/06/11/rediseno-de-abc-mas-de-lo-mismo/

  3. 1/02/2011Maximo says:

    Hi Javier, I would add to your homepage requirements:
    - A homepage that can learn from my use to prioritize for me
    Of course this is a challenging one. And if you don’t nail teh interaction just leave time as THE variable.

    Salu2

  4. 1/02/2011Maximo says:

    Takin’ a second look at your pic… is it suggesting that Vostok in right in the middle between the old and the new way? Why don’t you move to modernity? ;-)

  5. 1/02/2011Javier Cañada says:

    Máximo, it is a good onw although I’m a bit wary about such intelligent systems. Most of the time they just *give you more* of what you just had.

  6. 1/02/2011Javier Cañada says:

    Regarding the rocket… we are OBVIOUSLY on the modern, modernist modernissimo side of the table, it’s just that we all like some symmetry, don’t we? ;)

  7. 1/02/2011Javier Cañada says:

    @torresburriel The pic was made by Gabriela who had a big laugh when she read your comment :)

    Thanks for the reference to your article. I recall it as a very good one and recommend those reading Spanish to check it out.

  8. 10/02/2011El rediseño de Gawker « En casa del herrero says:

    [...] media (por ejemplo Gizmodo) y cómo encaja con las ideas sobre el rediseño de periódicos tienen en Vostok o Torres Burriel. Varios de nuestros clientes tienen webs que o bien son muchos elementos en común [...]

  9. 22/03/2011Läsning: 100 snippets och css-selektorer | Fosseus.se says:

    [...] Vart tar dagstidningarnas design på webben vägen? Läs och begrunda. http://www.vostok.es/blog/online-newspaper-design-expired-vs-modern [...]

  10. 14/06/2011Fran says:

    Hi, i am the one asking for advice to redesign an online newspaper (the one not really inportant) but i am now a bit more informed about it.

    Great information. Thank you. The only problem is when you need to eat and you push hard to explain your clients they are in the need to think out of their bo(x)sses.

  11. 14/06/2011Javier Cañada says:

    Hello Fran,

    The most difficult part of redesigning media is when you have to deal with old-school journalists who don’t understand the fact that their readers won’t spend 30 minutes of their time online reading their website but just 30 seconds.

    Send me an email and I’ll share something special with you (javier@vostok.es)

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