Your content may be absolutely fantastic, but ultimately, layout will make or break your readership. No one will want to read your Pulitzer-worthy text if it’s in bright-red, paragraph-less chunks on a lime green backgrounds, and it’s likely that you won’t be taken too seriously either.
So for today, we’ll be taking a quick survey of some content providers with layouts that work – and a few that really, really don’t (less of the latter, simply because I don’t tend to visit them all that often.)
In no particular order:
The Good
1. The New York Times
For a newspaper that famously held out on refusing to print color photos, the Gray Lady is at the forefront of crisp, clean newspaper design. It especially shines in its incorporation of multimedia content into stories – like in the above image, which combines commentary on an politician’s affair with searchable copies of supporting documentation.
2. Rough & Tumble
Living up to its name, this quick-n’-dirty Cali political roundup compiles worthwhile articles, sorts them by topic, and compresses them into a title, a blurb, and, natch, a byline (let’s hear it for journalists covering journalists). A quick skim is the equivalent of flipping through ten morning papers, without all of the dead tree pulp and increasingly desperate re-subscription ads.
3. The Page
Speaking of inside baseball – Mark Halperin’s quick-firing blog is the essence of love-it-or-hate-it, a picture and headline heavy mainstream political cousin of Perez and his ilk. No judgment calls, fact-finding or editorializing here, just up-to-the-minute links to developing stories across the Web. Not quite as compelling of a read now that election season is over.
4. Slate
No surprise that this early-adopter mag is smartly stylish. The text-on-image style ledes avoid the pitfall of looking like advertisements, while the slide-show format shows off an array of top stories. Small pictures and links below are organized, intuitive, and not overwhelming.
5. Newsvine
I read it through the newsvine? This people-powered behemoth combines a dazzling plethora of sources, from MSNBC and the LA Times to wire headlines, weather stats, and amateur columnists into a surprisingly readable one-stop shopping experience. Ads aren’t overwhelming, either. As befits as sit beholden to social media, everything can be voted up or down, or commented on with the click of a button.
6. C-SPAN
Who said public affairs had to be stodgy? Videos are easily organized by topic, with links to relevant sites. Sharing your righteous outrage by Facebook or Twitter is only a quick click away. The best part? Absolutely no ads.
The Needing Improvement
1. Talking Points Memo
It almost pains me to say anything negative about this impressive blog, part of the small but proud vanguard of new media sites actually willing to do independent research and reporting (and do it excellently) rather than relying on links and snarky comments. But the now-2 column, now-5 column, now-something in between layout is counter-intuitive and migraine-inducing, lending little clue to the relevance or topicality of all but the main stories, and the ads are too similar to editorial images. Sister sites like TPMCafe and TPM Muckraker are nearly entirely separate.
2. Google News
Anything containing the phrase “all 3,227 news articles” surely violates the Don’t Be Evil motto. As comprehensive as all of Google’s efforts, this page reads like a particularly vituperative Bing commercial, driving even the most devoted news junkie to the brink of information overload.
“Related articles” are sometimes identical, sometimes completely different. This works fine as a search engine, but none too well as a casual browser.
3. Newsweek
The magazine redesign? Smart, stylish, and fun to read. The website? Still a work in progress. It’s not terrible, but sort of a haphazard mash of blogs, articles, videos, and ads, seemingly unorganized by chronology, importance, genre, or anything else. The very bottom of the page, a neat row of blurbs sortable by subject and date, is much more appealing, but not many readers are likely to make it to the bottom.
The Ugly
1. The Studio City Sun
My ultra-local weekly’s website was nothing to write home about even when it was just a PDF of the issues with a few helpful links for would-be readers and advertisers. But in a day and age where just about everything is online, it’s hard to imagine anything less professional than voiding your name and space to a blandly generic domain holding space. (If there is, it’s the message now appearing on its sister site, the Sherman Oaks Sun, which asks for login information, turned-off pop up blockers, and makes mention of credit card statements). Apparently, someone hasn’t paid the bills on time. Wonder if I missed a few more newsroom cuts?
