Andy Rutledge's nytimes.com designs are pretty, but some of his thoughts about news sites are ugly
Why does Andy Rutledge have to make it so hard to like his designs? His suggestions for the Times are elegant, but they are a little misguided. Websites need to be more readable and usable and to a degree, Rutledge presents some elegant solutions to those problems. But he goes too far in making his point. Here are some mistaken assumptions about the news industry:
1) The news industry has abandoned actual journalism. That’s just silly. If that were true, if all of the content was bullshit, what would be the point of redesigning it?
2) The newspaper’s “promotional strategy” and “pandering” is “thoughtless.” Actually, they have put a lot of thought into it. Perhaps it’s executed poorly, but news sites make a lot of money from ads and simply suggesting, “Hey, why don’t you move to subscription model?” isn’t a viable option for a lot of sites. The question really should be: Is there a better way of incorporating advertising into news sites?
3) Most Popular is worthless. People like to know what stories are trending. Dismissing it as social media makes no sense. Like Cameron writes, social media should be integrated into news content. How other people are experiencing the news can be as powerful a reading experience as the news itself.
This all being said. I agree with Rutledge’s point. High quality content deserves high quality design. I would just go one step further. While Rutledge’s design solutions are easier to read and use, I don’t know if they would inspire readers to open their wallets. In order for there to be a subscription based model, I think design has to go even further, treating each piece of content as a discrete design challenge. This means dumping templates. But I would limit this idea to magazine-style content, not daily news content.
Andy Rutledge:
Regarding content strategy and mechanism, today’s ‘news’ is rife with irrelevancies and distractions. Part of this is due to the news industry’s abandonment of actual journalism, but much of it is due to thoughtless promotional strategy and pathetic pandering. I suggest that digital news acquire a responsible and more usable approach.
Andy’s arguments and mockups are both very well-conceived — I would love to see online journalism (all of it, not just NYT) head in this direction. His design concepts are fabulous.
I do believe, however, there should be an affordance for social components in news media, as the context of others’ opinions as to what is news and what isn’t, and what is more important news for that matter, can be helpful in sifting through the daily deluge of reported information. Not that peers are more discerning than editors, mind you, but that their voices (ours, that is) should be allowed to influence society’s understanding of the world around us.
