Old News: News Sites

The Drudge Report and Google News have to be two of the ugliest news sites on the web and yet are two of the most popular. Why? I like to think it is because they cut to the chase and give you the ability to scan headlines quickly. There is so much news happening at any given time of day that the best way for us to keep up with it is to allow us to do it at our own pace.

I am the biggest fan of sites that let you get straight to the content without all the fluff, but that doesn't mean a site should go without some aesthetic appeal or a change of structure. Newsmap came out years ago and although the interface isn't perfect (some of the titles are so small they are impossible to read), to me it is still lightyears (damn that measures distance not time so is that accurate?) ahead of the field.

Why can't news agencies get on the ball and realize they are missing a great opportunity to leap ahead of their competition? Whenever you read about the newspaper industry all you hear about is the decline of revenue and how all papers will soon disappear. Everyone is fighting for eyeballs and the way they do it is by looking like their competition? I can understand that coming from the USA Today because they are supposed to be generic, but from the rest of the field? Come on!

Here is what is disappointing to me about the design of news sites. You know most of them have big time designers behind them, but there is no way that these designers are releasing these designs themselves. They are probably going through a million levels of bureaucracy and it comes out looking that way in the end.

Khoi Vinh has done a great job over at The New York Times, but even then you have to feel as though he wishes he could take away some of the content. That site feels like it should be broken down into 10 different domains just so some of the content can breathe.

Now I know it doesn't have as much content as the NYT, but don't you wish that more news sites looked like The Morning News? Would you ever have a problem going to a beautiful site like that to catch up on what is happening today? Hell, wouldn't you go back to check even more just because of the pleasant design? We are forced to go somewhere if we want our news and that is what is keeping these horrible news sites alive.

Information Overload

The design dilemma these sites are facing is that their is simply too much content. Instead of trying to narrow down what content needs to be shown on the homepage, they try to find ways to ensure that all content is shown on the homepage. You can't honestly tell me that all news items deserve front page coverage no matter how small the link is can you? The only reason I scan a news page is because I have a hard time keeping my eyes focused on one spot. I am forced to scan it so maybe there is a trick or two in there that I don't know about yet. The trick is to not encourage your readers to scan the page, but to force their eyes to go into a state of perpetual motion until their finger saves them and clicks on a link. Brilliant.

Seriously though, how often do you go to a new site looking for one particular headline that is crammed 2400px down the page? I know I don't and I can't remember finding any hidden gems either. If I want sports I go to sports. If I want politics I know where to go. If I am just looking for what is happening around the world I will simply go to a news site and check the major headlines.

In an industry that is trying to figure out how to handle itself online, maybe the axiom of less being more really does apply. Why not treat your website like you do your physical newspaper and allow people to browse without overwhelming them with a million bits of content at once?

Could you imagine watching a news broadcast that split the screen into 16 squares and they all reported the news at once? That is how most news sites feel to me. Newspapers always have one front page article that receives the giant headline treatment. The rest of the articles the readers have to "scroll" and find. Why can't their online counterparts work in the exact same way?

Offline you have beautifully designed newspapers with eye-popping headlines and ads that don't get in the way of the content. Online you have sites that could have been designed by anyone. If you can come up with beautiful designs for your offline news then it shouldn't be that hard to do so online.

There you have four award-winning newspaper designs from around the world. I understand that print design varies from web design because you have greater freedom due to the restrictions of what you are working with (yes, that makes sense). But why can't some of the design principles being used offline be applied online? Even if your site is producing a new major headline every hour you can't tell me someone in your organization is not wise enough to cook up some sort design to accommodate it.

Pictures are great, but the way I scan a news page is by looking at the text quickly to see if anything catches my eye. Looking at the full screenshots of some of the larger news sites on the web you can see that they offer their readers a lot to scan. Probably a bit too much.

How To Improve

Let's try to knock out some of the misconceptions these publications seem to have. If you looked at the screenshots of their sites you will notice that they are very, very long. Apparently, they don't believe in the above the page fold myth either, but there has to be a limit to how much content you put on a page before it starts to lose its purpose. When you come across a single page site that is long, it makes sense because the content is all related and it is used to guide the reader. On a newspaper's site the next content you scroll to probably has nothing to do with the content you just read. It breaks the flow for the reader. In fact, I find myself scrolling to the bottom and passing over everything in the middle.

Looking at the screenshot of Newsvine on the left they have the shortest homepage of any of the sites shown here, with the exception of Skimmer, and they don't suffer because of it. The rest of the sites above cover at least 3000px in vertical space, which to me seems like over 1000px of overkill.

Why not take a page out of blog design and have a running tally of your most recent major headlines? This way I can visit a news site any time of the day and see what I missed previously. Can't you safely assume that a majority of the readers aren't going to scan the whole front page for something that interests them, especially if you are trying your best to draw their attention with major headlines?

If the purpose for the long pages is to stick more ads on them then wouldn't it be easier to just find ways to get your audience to browse the site more? I don't mean breaking up long articles into pages like some jackass sites do, but find ways to encourage readers to go somewhere else on the site after reading an article. It works that way when I use the Times Skimmer, but maybe I am in the minority.

I haven't gone through the history of online news site design, but I wouldn't be surprised to witness very little change. The time is ripe for someone to jump at the opportunity to change how we read our news online. Newsvine changed the social aspect of news, so why can't the major news outlets at least try to change the way it is presented? And if you think CNN's recent redesign is a positive step forward then you are mistaken. They might as well start all over from scratch with that one.