In reading this article entitled “Newspaper.com visitors up by nearly a third, NAA says”, I didn’t realize that “newspaper.com visitors” was just a way of saying “online newspaper visitors” in a general sense, so I was quite surprised when I got to the real newspaper.com.

At the site, it is not a newspaper conglomerate such as News Corp, Gannett or Knight-Ridder, but instead some fantastic screenshots of “the world’s first international multimedia online newspaper, News In Motion“, which existed from 1993-1996 and was eventually usurped by the web. My guess is that the reason the site is still around is because the domain name is worth a pretty penny, but it’s still nice to see some insight into some older online news thinking with the splash page, ISSN number, and button navigation.

• A flow chart on whether or not you should create an all Flash web site
  (tags: web design flash comedy)
• The Long Zoom
  (tags: game design)
• First Look: A showcase for new features and services being developing for NYTimes.com
  (tags: web design news work)
• Gothamist breaking news map
  (tags: crime google map news work)
• Rentometer: find out how good your rent is comparable to nearby places
  (tags: apartment money google map)
• Participation Inequality: Encouraging more users to contribute
  In most online systems, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.
  (tags: web culture)
• Soundflavor DJ
  Creates playlists from your library, finds new music “by sound,” and helps rediscover great songs you own but may have forgotten about.
  (tags: itunes music playlist)

Recently someone at work printed an article from our site (like this one, for example) and wondered where the images were.

If you print it (or save some trees and just look at a print preview to see what you would get), you will notice that the presentation is largely different from what you get on the web. It is using print styles in the CSS to hide various things, such as the navigation, sidebars, and photos. It also displays a different, more minimal footer. What this printer-ized version tells you is where it came from, how to contact them, and the text of the story.

One argument for not displaying the photos is based on why people print out web pages: simple reading, reference, filing, or forwarding. Another argument is printer ink: The majority of people who tested this site mentioned that the reason they choose “printer-friendly” or text-only versions of a page was so that the images would not print. Why? The cost of printer ink. Printer ink costs more per drop than vintage Dom Perignon, so that’s quite understandable.

One stated argument for printing the photos is that, since this is a news story, they are also “telling the story” and thus should be preserved.

I really don’t know that there is one true answer to this, but I’m interested in your opinion on the matter, or perhaps some more arguments for and against printing photos from a web page. What do you think?

Well, I talked to my boss and got the green light to post about work-related things. I doubt I will need to worry about it, but seeing that this is my personal space, I will still disclaim that my comments are entirely personal and do not represent the views of my employer. There.

So, in case you didn’t know already, my job is the web designer for Minnesota Public Radio. (Wikipedia has a pretty nice entry if you’re unfamiliar.) MPR is foremost a network of radio stations based on three services: news, classical music, and alternative/eclectic music… but it’s really much more than that. MPR has quite a robust offering of news and features apart from the radio content — much more so than most radio stations (public or not) — and it is very akin to working at a newspaper company (or so I’m told).

We actually recently did a redesign of the site just a few weeks ago, and are pushing out things in manageable chunks. Today, for example, we pushed out the new design to our weblogs. (My “other job” is as a contributor to one of said weblogs, The Bleacher Bums, which is all about baseball, which is a big deal right now if you live in Minnesota.) Most of what I do has to do with the presentation of the news content, creating interactive elements (sometimes complementary, sometimes entirely web-specific) and crafting the numerous sections, projects, and general interactions of the site.

The news aspect is only one part, which is part of why it’s such an interesting place to work. I also do work with American Public Media, which is the brand under which MPR produces and distributes public radio programming for other stations around the world. I’ve designed a handful of sites such as Saint Paul Sunday, Pipedreams, and American Mavericks (which won a Peabody, by the way) and been a part of a lot of interesting projects.

So there’s news, there’s music, and there’s ideas, design and presentation. I’m a huge fan of all of those things. If you are too, check out my bookmarks and future posts on this weblog.

Anything in specific you’d like me to talk about?

Over time I have bookmarked news media sites that I find particularly well-designed. In particular I like to have the home page be the largest factor because of all that it usually has to cover, but I am also interested in well-designed “common” pages, such as a simple news article or collection/index of news articles. I am posting them for posterity’s sake, but also to hopefully garner some suggestions from the audience on sites that I am missing out on. These could be television, newspaper, radio, strictly online, or perhaps even something loosely based on any one of those. Here they are, in no particular order:

• BBC

  I actually liked their previous iterations better, but this home page is still an exercise in clarity and simplicity, given the scope of the organization. I wish more people could sell designs like this to similarly-sized companies.

• Bayersicher Rundfunk

  Nothing particularly breathtaking, but definitely organized and fairly uncluttered given the circumstances.

• Australian Broadcasting Corporation

  An excellent example of an organized bevy of text links. Could use some design polish, but it is very skimmable (is that a word?)

• Chicago Public Radio

  Nothing spectacular here, but a decent sense of design and restraint (although possibly because the rest of the site is fairly shallow.)

• Deutsche Welle

  The top navigation, map, and graphical arc are a poor use of real estate, but the rest of the page is templated and fairly well kept. This site would probably go downhill real fast if it had banner ads.

• dradio.de

  I love the boxed grid system, the simplicity of the navigation, and the choice of HTML over graphics in alot of places. Although some might argue the grayscale color scheme is a bit boring, I like how they use blue/red combo to both make the radio services stand out from the gray, and also connect the radio services from the top navigation to the right content column. A terribly clean gridded design.

• Schweizer Radio DRS

  An excellent grid system on several pages. I particularly like the display of the radio services across the middle. Although I’m not a fan of color-coding every section of a web sites, they at least handle it well by termpering everything with alot of gray. The news stories need some help, and those photos in the bottom right of people with headphones frighten me.

• Inc.com

  For all the ads and ad-like content on the homepage, I can still skim fairly well. The icon system and font size/color variety help alot with that. I love that header bar. Great design on the home and story pages, especially with way too many ads.

• International Herald Tribune

  The poster child for out-of-the-box news story thinking. The clippings feature and the customizable three-column pageable story text have been around for years, and people are still trying to copy it. Amazing stuff. Clean, simple, excellent grid system. I don’t think I’m alone in this, but I totally love the serif headline with sans text. I’m also a sucker for horizontal line backgrounds, good icon sets, and (if you hadn’t noticed it yet) grayscale color themes.

• Lawrence Journal-World

  The poster child for news site innovation in (at least) the U.S., along with it’s sister site lawrence.com. Decent grid system and color scheme, but I also wish they would use HTML more often, like for the “services” block, and for all the section headers on the page like “latest stories” and “local sports”. (By the way, what the hell are “top ads”? Who are you kidding?) I like the potential of the very large graphical news block at the top, but I’ve never seen it executed to much effect. The photos and accompanying display font text are lacking. Can’t get enough of the dynamic weather graphic.

• MDR (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk)

  I absolutely love the cropped horizontal photo space on the home page. The simple navigation, grid, and color scheme aren’t half bad either. I like the balance of HTML text/navigation and graphics/photos.

• NDR (Norddeutsche Rundfunk)

  I’m a big fan of the top navigation bar with the logo, photos, sharp colors, and subtle rollover links. Great grid, good typography. The double-wide photo space on the first story in a list is a nice touch.

• WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk)

  Lots of spacing, big text, and thumbnails. The icon system could use a little work, but at least they have one. A very clean design, with a good balance of text and graphics.

I will add more comments to the rest of these as I get more time…

• Newsmap
• PBS (Public Broadcasting System)
• RTE (Radio Telefis Eirann)
• Special Broadcasting Service
• WBUR
• WGBH
• Radio Mark
• San Francisco Examiner
• Times Online
• Radio Canada International
• Hartford Courant
• SuperNaturale
• Child.com
• Seattle Times
• Thirteen/WNET
• ABC News
• Guerilla News Network
• AlterNet
• CANOE (Canadian Online Explorer)
• Cambridge News
• Sacramento Bee
• Knoxville News Sentinel
• WCCO

Please add suggestions in the comments!

It isn’t “shovelware” to me if I never saw the pile it was originally shoveled from.

Newsmap: Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap’s objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.

Great idea on Idea a Day: Launch a web based news service that gives an alternative view of major news stories but with a positive and more realistic spin. For example, in the event of an air crash the site would give statistics on how many airplanes had taken off and landed safely that day. This would help mitigate the sensationalism that dominates today’s news by reminding us all that the world is generally a pretty great place.

Why Drudge is bad for online journalism: “The internet is turning into a gigantic gossip laundering operation for cowardly print hacks.” (Turning into? Where have you been?)

Participatory journalism in an unlikely (or likely?) place: Adrian Holovaty talks about consuming as-it-happens news from where you least expect it, and also getting it from the sources that you least expect.