
Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com - ecaron
http://andyrutledge.com/news-redux.php
======
faramarz
Obviously he's not a NYT reader. I love the times. It's not broken. Their
website is fantastic in every way. You can spend hours upon hours on it and
digest more content, in whatever style you wish to navigate. It has a certain
unity within the chaos. But it's not really chaos. The content is the layout.
You won't find any other News organization who understands design more than
NYT. They let the content design the layout, not the other way around.

Andy turned NYT into a Wordpress blog. :|

I'll give him credit for the work though, but I personally think NYT is an
exception. But go ahead, every other news website, you have Cart Blanche.

cc: Khoi Vinh

~~~
scott_s
I feel the same. I think the NYT's online page is fantastic - so much so that
I pay $16 a month for it. I think they do an excellent job of laying out pages
online yet still feeling like a _newspaper_. I _like_ looking around the page
for different stories, just as I would in a newspaper page. It's engaging, and
I can't help but scan the whole page, read the headline, check out the picture
captions.

When I look at his blog-style page, my eyes just glaze over the headlines.

The NYT App on the iPhone is basically his mobile mockup. And I've found that
even on my iPhone, I'd rather look at the proper front page.

~~~
rationalbeats
I thought it was $8 a week?

~~~
jonknee
That's for the "All Access" package which nets you a tablet app and a
smartphone app. The cheapest package is $3.75 a week.

I would have subscribed, but they gave me a free year after introducing the
paywall.

~~~
rationalbeats
Actually I did not realize that. Thanks for that clarification.

------
adamhowell
I know everybody hates ads, but it only reinforces the "naive businessmen"
stereotype of designers when people say stuff like this:

"Since news is accessed only via subscription, most of the ads can be
eliminated from the pages."

That's like saying because you pay for magazines they also don't need to have
ads. That's in no way at all how the content business works.

~~~
joeybaker
Newspapers made the mistake of devaluing their ad inventory by increasing
their supply. There's a really good – business – argument to be made for
cutting the number of ad slots on the page.

~~~
mrkurt
You shouldn't underestimate how much newspapers know about the economics of
their inventory. In many ways, ad slots are price discrimination. Companies
that want 100% share of voice (ie: no one else gets ads on the page) will pay
a premium to get it. A small company may just buy a cheaper ad slot at the
bottom of the page. They have thousands of permutations on how they can sell
ads, and they _will_ shut off as many slots as necessary to get a premium
campaign going.

------
patio11
It is easy to create a redesign for a website. It is less easy to pivot a
billion-dollar business which has the agility of an aircraft carrier while she
is sinking. If your answer to that question is "What do we really need the
planes for, anyway?" and "I think the conning tower would look much better in
teal.", you might find a wee bit of difficulty getting taken seriously.

~~~
revorad
Exactly. One thing the author conveniently forgot to take into account is the
performance of the current site. If you don't have access to actual usage data
such as heatmaps, click rates, page browsing times, you are quite likely
shooting yourself in the foot just for the sake of beautifying the website.

He could argue that he was consciously only looking at the design aspect and
that would also be a mistake. You can't isolate performance and design for a
site. And when it comes to business, function takes precedence over beauty.

------
dotBen
I was involved in a major redesign of the BBC News Website - when it went form
a sigle column approach to the current two-dimensional layout.

What is interesting about Andy's designs is that he's basically taken the
current thinking in 'modern' news website design (two dimensions) back to the
single column layout. I think this is a fundamental flaw in his design.

People come to a news front page to see the editor's prioritization of the
days news agenda. With a single column approach it is very difficult to
editorially prioritize stories of similar importance. It works for blogs
because they don't have an editorial prioritization as they usually sort by
chronological order.

Two-dimensional layouts, like NY Times and BBC, allow for editors to give
several articles (perhaps a politics story, a business story and a sport
story) equal visual importance. If you have a mainstream appeal you need to be
able to give different audiences something of relevance.

------
arn
The final result looks nice, but I hate these exercises, because if you are
not fitting the same number of ads in the page, then you are not actually
solving the same problem. You are solving a much easier problem, as almost all
sites look better without ads.

Also, there's a major divide between what people seem to think looks nice and
what seems to succeed. The Huffington Post is the biggest example of recent
success in the news realm. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/>

Is that despite of its design or because of it? I don't know. It's hard to
separate out the effect of the editorial content from presentation.

------
dredmorbius
I don't like the final result, and Rutledge dismisses many of the realities of
site design.

I think the existing NYTimes site is among the examplars of good Web news site
design. My principle gripe is that there's too much whitespace around the
primary content. That's probably a consequence of both a 1920x1080 display
(laptop), and highly aggressive ad blocking. (Yeah, yeah. I'll stop blocking
ads when advertisers stop being complete f _ckwits about making annoying ads,
and/or when hell freezes over, whichever comes first.)

There are a few valid points Rutlege makes. Many of the navigation elements
are little (or never) used by me, including the left and top sidebars.

_I want my microcontent.* That means a brief story summary. I have an RSS
reader and subscribe to the NY Time site on it. I rarely read it. Why?
_Because there's no microcontent._ For most news stories, the first paragraph
is all I need (actually, in all absolute truth, the headline itself is far too
much). If I want to read more, that paragraph really helps make the decision
to do so. Jacob Nielson's covered this topic very well.

Presenting the content on the homepage, while making for dense page, does make
a good jump point. My eye can scan far more quickly than I can click back and
forth through pages.

The classic wastes of time for me on the Times are:

\- Video content. Really, text tells the story far more quickly most of the
time. A video feature can be a benefit (and for some rare stories it's hugely
useful), but I _don't_ think it belongs on the homepage.

\- The "Talking Heads" features. There's something in how these are set up
that frequently makes for a compelling lede, but fails to deliver. The format
just doesn't work for me.

\- The formulaic three-headlines-per-section on the front page. Some days some
sections deserve far more news, and some sections (sorry, but "Dining",
"Fashion", and "Automobiles" hold little or no interest) deserve none. To me.

Rutledge has succeeded in vastly simplifying the Times's front page. _By
removing most of the informational content and utility from it._ His design
works for mobile (and as he notes, the Times has a good mobile site). It's not
a good full-featured site design.

~~~
rjd
Video content brings in 20x the ad rate of display ads. The news agency I
worked for had a "push video for all content" stance because of this, I assume
all other news sites have the same stance.

You bring up the biggest argument of them all, I had it every day with the
site I was responsible for. I'm a minimalist myself, and the person I reported
to was a everything and the kitchen sink guy. We had some heated arguments
followed by days of ignoring each other LOL

I hated his approach, but our numbers did suggest many people landed to the
front page each morning and read the whole thing. So having a lot of
information and links on the page is very important. So assume your behavior
validated as normal viewing behavior. Behavior changes through out the day
though which sucks LOL

And the most amazing thing was user testing is near useless, the demographics,
experiences, behaviors are so vast. Even as noted the time of day has a huge
effect on readers.

So no matter what you do you isolate a community, so you compromise and
compromise, and produce the most average pile of junk anyone has ever seen.
But people understand it, sure they moan, but they get it. Go for the lowest
common denominator.

The times uses the motif of a news paper online, I guess because it's
contextually people understand. I don't know if by design or accident, but
there is a level if usability there because of the fact.

Its messy but its reliable, and sometimes thats what design is about, not a
great looking product, but something that does its job.

~~~
dredmorbius
The lifesaver for me has been the "Remove This Permanently" Firefox plugin
(well, that an the Flashblock plugin).

If something's sufficiently annoying, I just find its xpath and remove it.

Does this put me in the top fractional 1% of browsers? I have no doubt. Does
this work for me? Yes. Does the 1% bit bother me? Not in the least.

If anything, it's the final trump card in an argument I've had with web-design
geeks that the end-user ultimately trumps style.

Video very likely does bring in the money. I can live with that. But so long
as I can rip out the offending content, I'm cool with it.

I've also seen some other good/bad paper designs. In the Bay Area, I'm
continually amazed at how good the _design_ of the SF Chronicle is (the
content's of course gone fully to crap), and how poor that of the San Jose
Mercury News (in the capital of Silicon Valley) is. I actually did an analysis
of how much (and respectively little) content was presented above the fold in
each design.

Sadly each, even in their online incarnation, is becoming increasingly
irrelevant and local-focus blogs/news services are emerging.

On the topic -- if you haven't read John Sealy Brown's _Information Rules_,
I'd highly recommend his section on the community-binding element of
newspapers (and sports teams). It's a strong indictment of micro-targeted /
individualized news streams.

~~~
rjd
I've found ghostery and ad block plus do the trick for me :)

~~~
dredmorbius
Cool, I've added ghostery, will play w/ it.

------
sjwright
Andy's redesign is a disaster for various reasons stated by others, but this
is possibly the most important and underlying reason for its failure: The
existing design _visually demonstrates_ that _'there's a lot going on here'._
His does not.

He failed to communicate the _good_ type of busyness in his re-imagining --
the redesign makes the site look like a five-articles-a-day blog.

~~~
snorkel
Exactly. nytimes.com gives the visual impression of being dense with fresh
content and that's what keeps news junkies coming back for more.

His redesign not only lacks compelling visuals (huffingtonpost.com wins that
category, sorry but tabloid style is here to stay) but also advertising: still
a necessary evil, got to make room for the ads.

------
rjd
Well having been in the person in charge of a major news website myself I can
say we all have lovely designs like this pinned to the walls next our desks.

And while I really like his designs and have turned to Andy many times for
inspiration, there are some serious context problems... and while I'm bored
and off work I might as well write a critique...

I had an near identical sports section to the one he designed pinned to me
wall. But I can say he's screwed a few things up, gallery needs to be higher,
users can't find a gallery that low (I know user testing surprises them hell
out me to), no ads again. To use templating that image has to be shrunk, the
quality you get through from external sources if often extremely poor, a
reality he doesn't seem to have considered. Nothing screams amateur news like
big pixalated images some non technical journo uploaded, and credibility is
your only asset really.

Another reality is the business requires as many ad units as you can fit on a
page, big media is expensive. Way more than a blog with 10 or so staff. Flying
people all over the country, investigating stories, hotel rooms. Its like
covering CES every day, which for most tech blogs would be there biggest
yearly expense. Moan all you will but most people are out of touch with exact
what it takes to make decent news.

And you can't win an argument about ads, you get dragged in front of finance,
and if you convince them sales will drag you in front of the board, if you win
that you get dragged in front of agencies to justify changes which may effect
upcoming campaigns. Its a horrible process and really have to have solid
arguments and research, essentially you are risking entire revenue streams,
for what in a lot of cases isn't even break even business.

He's got what appears to be a lot of promoted content, thats expensive from a
support point of view. I had a guy working under me whose job was literally to
make the decision about what story superseeded the next.

The back lash you get from people for having a story up too long or not long
enough is amazing. I've been called every name under the sun. Your audience
isn't a defined well behaved demographic at all. Its like 4chan discussing
politics, just a complete mess always on the attack.

..but at least when thanks comes its usually really good, for example this
year I got a hand made Christmas card from the Indonesian Fishing Association
for getting a reporter in touch with them. Somehow it made up for a year of
insults. It was real touching.

The only real solution, and we worked damned hard with Google on this is
indexing getting people to the page directly, forgetting all about overview
pages and landing pages.

We ended up constructing a 24 hour social media team. We pushed the news via
automation, blood, sweat, and tears to the people. And Google rewarded us, we
entered the elite list of news suppliers whom google monitor for breaking
stories. It works, it really does, but its hard work. I bet there aren't many
people hear who have brought Google employees to an argument with your boss ;)

Anyway he's also under estimating the sheer volume of stories being generated.
He's designed a nice blog template, not something that produces several
hundred of stories a day over dozens and dozens of subsection. He's hasn't
considered the scale, and the unreliability of content. You can do editorial
pages like that for major events, but not the daily drab. The real solution to
the problem was as noted above social engineering, you need to get people
(super nodes) who act as conduits to propagate good stories for you.

The next is the infographics. Again beautiful, I used to kill for decent info
graphics coming in. If I wasn't snowed under I'd try and create them myself.

But the reality is graphic designer can't do it, they have huge work loads
already, and remember you can't just hire more staff, its break even business.
THEN you need a subject matter expert to assembly it and give it to the
graphic designer.

Infographics takes time, and its something that Google and Twitter have taken
away from news journalists by the creation of an attention economy. You need
to break a story immediately or you run the risk of not covering your
production costs.

You don't have time to crunch numbers, you are literally scrambling for
eyeballs to stay in business. You can do it with editorials fine, and one
trick I learnt quick was guest bloggers are GOLD. They often bring a crowd
with them, they often have great researched stories, infographics you name it.
So it became my goal to build those relationships.

But alas 3 months without weekends, high pressure workload, high pressure
targets, unyielding worldwide competition take a toll. So I quit. Theres still
an open position for me if I want to return, but I don't think I'm ready just
yet ;)

EDIT: I don't mean to be harsh towards Andy. I love his work, and his
intellectual exercise into improvement is great. I even forwarded it onto my
old team for review.

But what I guess my point is sometimes there a reason why things are crap, and
fixing may be a hell of a lot harder the moment you try than you expected.

So don't judge people/teams to harshly, instead offer a hand like Andy has
done, sometimes they need it (especially in big media)

~~~
rjd
Also probably worth mentioning while on the subject all my research and
experience added up to designs that are very close to Al Jeezera.

Perhaps I just favor it because it resembles my own thinking but I believe
they have one of the best designed news sites out there:
<http://english.aljazeera.net>

Clean, crisp, clear, all gridded up nice and tidy. Handling information
overload well.

Being a new kid on the block, no legacy systems or clients to contended with,
learning from every one else's mistakes I assume play a huge part in why Al
Jeezera looks so good.

If I can remember the worst news site I've seen I'll post it. Its a state
level TV station from America somewhere, shocking abuses in design. It was
like trying to read at a pocket dictionary from 10 feet away, total text
chaos.

~~~
alphakappa
One of the best online newspaper designs I've seen recently is the Indian
paper The Hindu (<http://www.thehindu.com/>). While most Indian newspapers
will give you eye-cancer just by looking at them (ex: The Times of India,
which is one of the oldest newspapers in the country also has one of the most
horrible online editions, plastered with spammy ads and horrible layout). The
Hindu has always been a bit of a boring (some might call it lack of
sensationalism) but it's got an excellent new redesign. (The original design
was like a 1995 webpage)

Also up there in my list is NPR (<http://www.npr.org/>) and PBS
(<http://www.pbs.org/>). Not technically newspapers, but their pages are
mostly about news delivery.

~~~
nrbafna
The Hindu looked bad too, a couple of years ago. They started testing a new
interface at beta.thehindu.com for sometime before using the new interface for
everyone.

 _The Hindu has always been a bit of a boring (some might call it lack of
sensationalism) but it's got an excellent new redesign._ True.

------
donohoe
Dear god, where to start. I worked on the Times web site for 7 years (dev, not
design). Before I even saw his "redesign" I read his preamble. First, lets be
clear, he is working from the wrong assumptions. He demonstrates clearly what
is wrong with many news outlets but then he lumps the Times in with them too.
Since his piece is about the Times I have to feel all assertions he makes are
about that too, and not just media in general.

    
    
      Digital news is broken. Actually, news itself is broken. 
    

No its not. The business model is broken. Print is declining. Online revenue
is being experimented with. Could be better, could be much worse.

    
    
      Almost all news organizations have abandoned reporting in
      favor of editorial; have cultivated reader opinion in
      place of responsibility; and have traded ethical standards
      for misdirection and whatever consensus defines 
      as forgivable. 
     

Please don't lump the Times in this category. They have a small amount of
clearly stated _Editorial_ content. Separate from that is the _Opinion_ pages,
and what is completely separate from that is _News_ (thats the bit where they
try their damnedest to keep Opinion out of it and cite sources, provide
analysis and present facts).

    
    
      And this is before you even lay eyes on what passes for
      news design on a monitor or device screen these days.
    

We'll get to this part...

    
    
      In digital media—websites in particular—news outlets 
      seldom if ever treat content with any sort of dignity
      and most news sites are wedded to a broken profit model
      that compels them to present a nearly unusable mishmash
      of pink noise…which they call content.
    

Actually that "broken profit model" isn't broken for some but thats another
argument. If you have ever sat in a newsroom meeting, or a design review, or a
meeting where product people spar with editorial who spar with developers you
would realize that dignity is a big deal. A big _FUCKING_ deal. You might not
like the fruits of that but don't never say they don't give a shit. The Times
prizes content to a fault.

    
    
      In an effort to disguise and mitigate the fact that they
      have little idea how to publish digital content 
      properly—often sneakily called "differentiation"—some
      news outlets release apps for digital devices. These 
      apps typically (but not always) do a better job of 
      presenting content and facilitating navigation, but
      they’re a band aid on a festering abdominal wound. 
      Digital media is simply digital media; if you do it 
      right you publish once and it works anywhere. If you’re
      using an app to deliver content, you’re doing it wrong.
    

First, its not clear that this criticism is Times specific. However its still
wrong. I've been in plenty of meetings with bright people from inside and
outside the company where we started off with the goal that, as he put it, "if
you do it right you publish once and it works anywhere". It didn't work. These
were not just "old media" types either - these are talented people, some of
whom who don't even read the print edition. _gasp_

Its something thats very easy to say - hell I wish it were true. It is not.
Devices, apps, platforms, whatever. They have strengths and weaknesses. You
can not have one magic solution for all. This is a crappy comparison but its a
bit like saying you have one single car for every type of terrain - same car
for soccer-mom and deer-hunter alike! Sweet!

    
    
      Instead of working with a handful of redundant, 
      mitigating formats (websites, mobile sites, apps, etc...)
      for content delivery to popular devices, news 
      organizations should simply deliver it correctly in
      the first place, one time; using html, css, JavaScript,
      ...oh, and design. The employment of content design
      would be quite refreshing, actually.
    

Sadly, this is very much an example of a person looking in. I'm not sure how
to counter this. Its simply a matter of not knowing what happens on the 7th
floor of the Times Building. Nor could he. However I can only assure you that
a very dedicated group of Designers are actively working on NYTimes.com and
they know their shit.

There is definitely a crap load of work to do to fully redesign a web site
that was last done in 2005 - but it does happen. A couple of URLs come to mind
which are not illustrated in his piece:

 _Opinion_ (redesigned last year)

<http://www.nytimes.com/opinion/>

[http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/07/25/how-
budget-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/07/25/how-budget-cuts-
will-change-the-black-middle-class?ref=opinion)

<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/opinion/26brooks.html>

 _Times Skimmer_

<http://www.nytimes.com/skimmer/#/Top+News>

 _Books / Best Sellers List_

[http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/combined-print-
and...](http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/combined-print-and-e-book-
fiction/list.html)

 _T Magazine_ (CHECK THIS ONE OUT - you seem to have missed it Andy!)

<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/t-magazine/index.html>

<http://www.nytimes.com/gst/tmagazine/video/index.html>

 _Dealbook Blog_

<http://dealbook.nytimes.com/>

 _Business Day Sectionfront_

<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/index.html>

 _LENS Blog_

<http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/>

 _Times Machine_

<http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser>

 _Opinionator Blog_ (my favorite design)

<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/>

Slide Show (Great Homes)

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/20/greathomesandd...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/20/greathomesanddestinations/20110721_eastberlin.html#6)

So whats next... well too much actually. I do not have the time nor the
patience to dig at all of Andys points. Im sure not all of them are bad, but
there is enough there to make me wonder whats wrong with this guy. Again, he
is a professional. I am sure he has had critics of his work, and he knows that
there was an inner process where a lot of those points were brought up and
shown not to hold water. He is now doing the same thing.

So I'll leave it on one final point. Mobile Sites. Its an example of what
happens when you don't know that the Times is aware of his point and we
discussed it and there was a damn good reason we made the decision that we
made.

What am I talking about? He shows the iPhone with the full NYT homepage and
has the caption "Um, are you frisking kidding me?". In other words why not a
mobile site.

Well, very simple. The iPhone is capable of rendering and interacting with the
full page. It was the first browser to do so - it don't require a lite
version. You could tap, zoom, pinch, drag and get the full depth of the page.
Other browsers - like those for Nokia, RIM etc couldn't handle that.

This was talked over to death. There were compelling arguments about going
down this road - or not. In the end, the decision was made to NOT redirect
those advanced browsers to the mobile site. You can still go to m.nyt.com if
you like, we just wont force you too.

    
    
      but it should not require anything more than a media 
      query fetching different CSS and perhaps some additional
      scripting so as to simply restyle the content experience
    

Andy does say that all you need is media quires for the CSS and such and
bingo. Well, no. No its not that simple. If you want to redo the homepage for
a specific mobile experience then you probably want to serve different sized
images, maybe not have some Flash stuff on the iPhone, maybe drop the
bandwidth intensive stuff that works well on desktop.

CSS media queries does not solve the problem. It is never that easy and shame
on your for saying so. You are a professional. You should know better. Bad
Andy. Bad. No biscuit for you.

Man, this makes me bitter. _RANT OFF_.

~~~
palish
_"In the end, the decision was made to NOT redirect those advanced browsers to
the mobile site. You can still go to m.nyt.com if you like, we just wont force
you too."_

Thank you so much. Seriously. It's extremely rare for it to ever be enjoyable
to use a "mobile" site on an iPhone. At least for me.

I feel like sending you a cake.

I wish there were some way to disguise the iPhone as a PC, so that no website
automatically redirects me to any mobile version ever.

EDIT: For example, I just got an email saying I've been tagged in a photo on
Facebook. So I go to facebook.com on my iPhone, and they've managed to
_completely break scrolling_ in their mobile version. I literally cannot
scroll down on any page. 100% certain, and 100% aggravating --- and as far as
I can tell, no way for me to get to the full site.

~~~
donohoe
I agree completely. I'm not sure its best for everyone but that is also my
preference too.

Send a cake. I'm in Seattle now but you could send a cake to the designers on
the 7th floor.

    
    
      NYTimes.com Design Group
      c/o Angela Rutherford
      The New York Times
      620 8th Ave (7th floor)
      New York, NY 10018
    

Tell them to invite the Developers from the 8th floor too, and the Interactive
News Group on the 2nd.

Add a brief note on any design/ux tweaks you'd like :)

 _Cake = (!Lie) ? Motivation : Lie_

~~~
graupel
Wouldn't it be even better if we could send the cake to one floor, and have
the designers, developers, and content team all work together? :)

~~~
donohoe
I couldn't agree more. If we had that I might have stayed - or gotten a hell
of a lot more done.

------
lukeschlather
>The Times politics page. I think the object of the game must be to fit as
much “content” onto the page as possible in an effort to overwhelm the reader,
tricking them into believing that the NY Times is just bursting with a
mindbogglingly-bottomless array of important information. If only the reader
could learn to ignore 60% of what’s here, she might have a chance at a
pleasant experience. Please stop helping. What you’ve got here is not content,
but noise.

You can't get a good coverage of world events in the number of items that
Rutledge wants. The world is noisy, and what Rutledge is suggesting vastly
oversimplifies. I'm sure it would convert wonderfully, raise ad revenue, all
that. It wouldn't be good journalism. Even if the NYT is full of pointless
noise, it's still better than a handful of painstakingly crafted articles. A
handful of pretty, well-formed articles cannot accurately reflect a disordered
world. If the NYT isn't noisy it's not doing its job.

------
jamesteow
As one of the designers of a major news organization redesign, it's very nice
to do a pretty page but to honestly think you can get away with no ads is a
not only a losing battle but one that doesn't take the needs of the client
seriously.

I also like how the NYT's website looks like a newspaper with a variety of
content. The redesign looks like a Wordpress template.

------
natesm
The iPhone example is funny because Apple themselves used the New York Times
as the example in their "it's not the mobile Internet ... it's just the
Internet" advertisement.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzV-W_6WOm0>

------
catshirt
so, remove the ads... and replace them with infographics?

forgive me for being crass but this whole post seems naive. don't get me
wrong, it's pretty; but we're talking about the new york times. i think this
is more accurately "andy rutledge redesigns nyt for andy rutledge". which is
fine, but not at all the same thing.

"broken news" is a big claim. i'm not sure a sleek blog theme is going to fix
it.

------
verisimilitude
I really think this looks amazing. It would likely function amazingly well,
too.

However, for this to work, you have to eliminate the space for ads. To deal
with this, Rutledge suggests "Quality news is subscription only. You pay for
valuable information. Fluff you get for free."

I somehow don't think it's that simple.

If you slam the digital door shut (much more than it is now at the Times), and
only allow subscriber access, you'll do two things:

(1) vastly reduce your readership; if you want to go back to showing ads, you
can't, because you no longer can brag about the vast numbers reading your
website daily (2) create a hyper-focused pirating scheme around disseminating
NYTimes content for free

I love news. I love good reporting. When I'm no longer a student, I'll pay to
get the Times at home. BUT, we've got a serious problem here; this design,
while well thought-out, fails to acknowledge that it can't exist (eliminating
ads) without changing the industry (changing readership drastically).

I very much look forward to seeing this movie:
[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/page_one_inside_the_new_york...](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/page_one_inside_the_new_york_times/)
which touches on these issues.

------
rayboyd
Martin Belam (IA guy at the Guardian) wrote an excellent rebuttal to this
yesterday. [http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2011/07/andy-news-
redux.ph...](http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2011/07/andy-news-redux.php)

------
josscrowcroft
Am I the only one who thinks his 'redesign' just looks like any other blog?

~~~
parallel
"Newer isn’t better. Better is better."

Sometimes it takes courage to put forward a design that doesn't have the
glamour of the new. Things that work well can often be boring.

EDIT: quote is from <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2803681>

~~~
int3rnaut
As a total noob in comparison to most readers of HN, I have to totally agree
with this sentiment--not that it's a noob idea but I feel like there are very
skilled and brilliant people here that want to show the world their amazing
talents and sometimes lose sight of things. It reminds me of what I always see
on that show with Chef Gordon Ramsey where he's always telling these hot shot
Chefs to stop being so cocky with their creations and that simple is often
better; no one wants a 58 flavour chocolate creme brulee steak muffin.

Better is Better, but again I think we have to remember, that it's all
subjective.

P.S.

Don't let the down votes discourage you. :)

------
prayag
The problem with such a post is that it violates the first principle of user
centered design. _Talk to your users._ Did anyone tell him that NYT is broken?
Did he go and ask a single user who goes to NYT everyday to figure out what
his problems are? Or saw him use the site.

It's easy to re-design something from outside in. It's much harder to design
it inside out when you have a more complete picture of what users are doing
and have a rough idea of what they want.

------
solipsist

      Popularity has nothing to do with news
    

If you've been on the internet before, you'll know this is not true.

------
flocial
The design has its moments but I actually like NYT. The only thing I would
like more is fixed dimensions for items on the front page, maybe 2 column
layout with both sides perfectly aligned per item. The draw of newspaper sites
is both the quality content within articles but the curation of articles
themselves so having everything in uniform lists is too confusing. Additions I
wouldn't mind are most tweeted or tweeted by your friends type social media
integration.

If design was the only thing killing the newspaper industry their problems
would be solved.

------
tjogin
I think Andy's design is very stylish and presents the content in a tasteful
way. I have no significant qualms about his design in any way.

When he goes into business territory, however, he loses his shit. This is the
money quote:

"Since news is accessed only via subscription, most of the ads can be
eliminated from the pages. Story pages could still have one or two tastefully-
presented ads, but preservation of the content is what will keep readers
happy, engaged, and willing to continue paying their subscriptions…just like
in olden times."

People didn't pay for news in the olden times. They paid for printing and
distribution, and then the advertisement covered the rest, with some tiny
variations on that theme. Not significantly different from today.

If you were to make the content subscription only, and some publications have
tried this recently, you'd lose 90% of your readers. That means also losing
90% of your ad revenue. Now the remaining 10% of your readers need to make up
for that loss. That makes it a rather expensive subscription, losing a lot
more subscribers, and around it goes, the vicious circle.

That doesn't mean digital news isn't horribly broken, it is. Just that making
it subscription only isn't the solution.

~~~
jonknee
... The NYT uses a subscription model these days (though you get a handful of
articles for free every month). That's what he was talking about. He was still
wrong from a business point of view though.

------
yarone
Andy's designs look beautiful, but I'm reminded of the old saying: "No battle
plan survives contact with the enemy".

I'm afraid that if you take his designs as a starting point, and revise them
based on the needs of the NYTimes and the expectations of its millions of
visitors, they would require a large number of changes and would more closely
resemble the current NYTimes.com

------
brownie
The one thing I dislike (on the main page at least) is the separation of news
and opinion/analysis. I can't think of many times where I've visited a news
site and wanted to read only opinion or only news, but I can think of times
where I've visited a site to read about a particular story - and read related
articles that happen to be opinions/analysis.

------
petercooper
I suspect that while this is a reasonable and logical redesign, it misses out
on some non-rational behavior of the majority of people who read news. I know
that, non rationally, I quite like a bit of "jumble" from my newspapers and
news sites so I can just "wander" around from thing to thing for a while. The
redesign showed here turns it more into a blog and I think I'd have trouble
wandering around it.. I'd need to know what I was looking for.

I dislike the Daily Mail but I know their site is almost entirely driven by
numbers and what catches on (and what doesn't): <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/>
\- it has a certain formula to it but it still has an element of randomness
and chaos because, I suspect, that's what readers are going for, whether we
like it or not.

------
webjunkie
He designed a blog... the whole of NYTimes ist not a blog.

------
dasil003
Andy is a talented designer, but his style shows through a bit too strongly
here. He knows how to utilize whitespace to create an aesthetically pleasing
visual flow, but I don't think he pays enough respect the essence of a
newspaper—namely _density_ of information.

------
newhouseb
To me it is incredibly important that an abstract is presented up front before
I click through to the article. For other news sites (like CNN) that are more
about breaking news and less about well written and researched journalism -
just the headline is fine (because chances are the article won't say much more
than the headline).

NYT's strength is that it is a professional journalistic organization and thus
taking words _off_ the page would only serve to betray the value that the NYT
offers.

------
rs
Not to be a pain, the design is good, but there's no place to actually put an
ad, considering the advertisements are one of their sources of revenue

~~~
code_duck
Indeed, tastefully weaving ads into a design is on of the prime challenges of
web designers in the real world.

------
ImperatorLunae
_I think the object of the game must be to fit as much “content” onto the page
as possible in an effort to overwhelm the reader, tricking them into believing
that the NY Times is just bursting with a mindbogglingly-bottomless array of
important information._

That's just what paper newspapers look like. I don't think that's an accident,
either.

------
danso
"Since news is accessed only via subscription, most of the ads can be
eliminated from the pages. Story pages could still have one or two tastefully-
presented ads, but preservation of the content is what will keep readers
happy, engaged, and willing to continue paying their subscriptions…just like
in olden times."

Rutledge hasn't apparently visited the NYT often and maybe hasn't picked up a
newspaper in awhile.

1\. Not all of the NYT's traffic is through subscribers: it lets the average
user access at least 20 articles a month, and its "paywall" is very permeable.

2\. Even when you pay full price for an issue at the stand, that newspaper
still comes with ads. Subscriptions have not accounted for the entirety of
newspapers and magazines revenues in a while...

------
niels_olson
A few years ago, I laid out head-to-head comparisons of the top newspapers in
the US with and without adblock and noscript. NYTimes, on a screen, is easily
the best newspaper. Unfortunately, the pressure of jamming more and more links
and stories above the fold seems to have eroded the NYTimes usability.

[http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0002nk#above-fold)

We should do a poll too: I think a lot of netizens would support NYTimes to
the same degree they do NPR, but I don't think the average netizen donates
$260 to NPR annually (the price NYTimes is asking for their tablet app).

------
MrAlmostWrong
There is no need to redesign when you can read the NYT in basically any format
of your choosing with the NYT Skimmer:

<http://www.nytimes.com/skimmer/?pagewanted=all#/Top+News>

------
prawn
Design is always so much easier when you don't have to incorporate ad spots.
Very naive.

------
code_duck
This is in the vein of just about every 'xx person redesigns yy site'. The
elaborate comments from others have done a better job than I could of laying
out the details. I don't know why people insist on publishing articles such as
these. Oddly, as in in this case, often they end up with a pleasant, but
rather common looking, design which is blissfully unaware of all the different
constraints and special issues that guided creation of the original.

The conclusion of this article is a rather bland design, in my opinion, which
looks like 50 other sites out there and has no space for ads. Hardly worth the
wall of text created to herald it.

------
RossDM
Those look nice, but I still prefer Google News' two-column layout. I can't
stand when news organizations try to force everything into a single Twitter-
like stream (Google News included).

------
spullara
Not entirely different than Yahoo! News is designed on the desktop and on
mobile. <http://news.yahoo.com>

~~~
acqq
Exactly, there is already a news site that functions very good on mobile, and
it's named Yahoo News. I'd say it's very probable that the author was aware of
it.

------
spacemanaki
"If you’re using an app to deliver content, you’re doing it wrong."

He's completely wrong about this. I love the NYT Android app. I can start it
at home, while I have decent coverage, and am then able to read the paper any
where I am throughout the day, including the subway, because it caches every
story on sections you open, even if you don't open those stories. It's one of
my favorite Android apps because of this.

------
sgdesign
While we're on the subject, I recently did a news site design myself, even
though it's not my main area of expertise (I'm more of a UI designer). I can
attest that news sites are probably among the hardest sites to design, since
there are so many parameters (and yes, ad units are very important!).

Anyway, I'd love to get some feedback on the design:

<http://thejournal.ie/>

------
prawn
Khoi Vinh's just responded with, in part:

"I’m purposefully not identifying this person or the project or providing a
link back to the redesign itself, mostly because I think it’s counter-
productive to continue to reward this effort with more unwarranted attention.
To me, it felt less like constructive criticism than link-baiting, and so I
have tried to avoid making any public comment."

------
Jason757435
Anyone else see the irony in the fact that the very bottom of Rutledge's web
page where this article is found is improperly formatted on the iPhone
(background color not extended far enough to the right to cover all offered
links). Petty? Yes, but if you're going to blast away at NYT, you better make
sure your house is in order.

------
antidaily
_Digital news is broken_

/rolls eyes.

------
TamDenholm
Got to say that is a really beautiful redesign. Someone go and make this
functional or i will...

------
karl_nerd
Oliver Reichenstein, a swiss/japanese news designer, has been writing about
some similar thoughts: <http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/business-class-
news/>

------
benjash
Seems odd that he points out that the business model is broken.

Yet, doesn't make any room for advertising on his redesigns. The main source
of income for most newspapers.

------
robgough
Why haven't news sites like this tried the "spotify" model. Where you can pay
to have the ads removed?

------
AverageAtasi
Looks ok, but I'd rather them use shitty design than take advice from a right-
wing asshole.

------
bryanallen22
For very brief, clean, non partisan news check out 24in60.com. It saves me
lots of time and makes news fun for me to read.

~~~
bryanallen22
Hm. This must have looked like self promotion or something -- it wasn't. (It
does sort of read that way.) Sorry.

