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Pushback to ‘redesigned’ New York Times website: News is social

avatar by Published July 27, 2011 11:15 am

Design View / GigaOM / Nieman Lab
Among all the reactions to Andy Rutledge’s criticisms and redesign of The New York Times’ website (and news sites in general), some of the loudest have been to his assertion that news is not social. “There is no ‘most popular’ news,” Rutledge declares. “Popularity of stories is something not contextual to news sites, but to social media sites.” Mathew Ingram at GigaOM responds that this “ignores the fact that millions of people like to share news stories with their friends and followers, and that this is an integral part of what the media business is today,” from personalized news services like News.me to customized digital magazines like Flipboard. Nieman Lab’s Josh Benton says Rutledge’s redesign doesn’t deal with the core challenge for a major news site like the Times’: how to present the massive amount of journalism it produces. “The problems of large-scale information architecture for news sites are really hard problems … their solutions require more than a nice slab-serif typeface and some white space.”

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  • Anonymous

    “Cripes” and “You kiddin’ me?” — amusing, but not what you’d call serious commentary. Similarly, his crack about how the paper wants to show off how much stuff it has — maybe he should check himself? The NYT does have a lot of “Potemkin Journalism,” but it has nothing to do with the design.

    All he wants to do is neaten up and regularize the design. Very good, if you’re jus glancing at the page, and not using it. Real readers will scan each item. Not hard, not time-consuming. So, for every item you remove from the layout for “clarity,” you’re going to send your reader on a snipe hunt. For instance, the other day I’m looking for a paid obit notice. Where do I find this if not in the left-hand nav bar?

    Plus, finally, I’m supposed to take advice from a guy who uses a hyphen after adverbs ending in “ly”? Not in this lifetime, baby!

  • Anonymous

    >>>Nieman Lab’s Josh Benton saysRutledge’s redesign doesn’t deal with the core challenge for a major news site like the Times’: how to present the massive amount of journalism it produces. 

    Judging by the popularity of the New York Times Web site, it does just fine – the paper’s journalism reaches more people than ever. The core challenge for it, and for all papers, is how to make money. The Nieman Lab would do well to spend more time studying that.