Looking at nytimes.com today and realized that it is probably the best designed website - design including layout, user-friendliness, information design (menu location, number of available options of functions, ability to communicate intent of links in a consise way) and aesthetics.

Polygon.com, Mashable.com, Theverge.com are great looking sites, and they have some interesting design as far as the aesthetics of their sites influencing the user experience.

Nytimes.com is clean and crisp visually. It presents alot of information in a number varying subjects of information. (headlines, general news stories, links to videos) And probably most importantly, it also reflects the visual language the Times newspaper and magazine have had for however long.

Look at this page:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/us/washington-mudslide-search-continues.html?rref=homepage&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Home%20Page&pgtype=article

Look in the upper left hand corner. You'll notice an animation of the Times logo that appears as the page is loading. You'll also notice that aside from the headline and the top menu, the text of the page loads at once. Contrast that to most sites where the page loads in chunks and makes for a more frustrating experience if you want to scan down the page and there is a blank section.

The 'Section' menu juts out from the page on the left. It is a nice aesthetic touch, but also is functional as it is a landmark that a user can remember if they choose to navigate to another section of the site.

It's all about the little things...

Do you have sites that you visit simply because the design and user-experience is that impressive?

can't remember if it was Dave Snider or Alexis Gallisa, though, and if it was on a Mixlr stream from Jeff's car or actual Giantbomb product. But one of them went on a little monologue about how beautiful that site is especially from a database management perspective, and how impressive it is they still find time to give it at least one design revision per year.


One thing I've really come to appreciate quickly that the NYTimes still doesn't have is some form of progress bar on the page, like how A.V. Club uses its banner to progressively display where you're at in the story. It's a minor touch that any intuitive person could gather from the scroll bar or page number but it actually spurs me to keep reading articles sort of like a completion percentage in a video game.


Also, everything on Polygon is gorgeous, even their random video interviews are shot wonderfully. It's a shame the personalities behind their site are generally so abrasive on camera other than McElroy or I'd have bought into that site more heavily.


~~~~~~~~~
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>Also, everything on Polygon is gorgeous, even their random
>video interviews are shot wonderfully. It's a shame the
>personalities behind their site are generally so abrasive on
>camera other than McElroy or I'd have bought into that site
>more heavily.

I have not generally been a fan of the trend to gear all websites for the mobile experience. Everthing seems... smaller.

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/blackpeopleonlocalnews

The mobile site is 'small'. The text and menu options read too small and the site doesn't offer the ability to alter the font size. The site doesn't seem to be a responsive design that would shift the elements on the page depending on the width or the zoom level of the browser.

The app is a cleaner design than the mobile site and allows for better navigation and easy to read articles.

With the amount of information that their home page needs to communicate and variety of types of content it holds, it is remarkably uncluttered.

It probably could hold less information and still be effective displaying the relevant stories of the day. That being said, the Times is a business and a user seeing links to articles that aren't normally appealing cause users to stick around the site.

Gotta make that money, maan...

I have not generally been a fan of the trend to gear all websites for the mobile experience. Everthing seems... smaller.

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/blackpeopleonlocalnews

where they hid/got rid of some of the content that used to be displayed on their pages for the benefit of mobile users. people cried foul, but as usual the changes stuck.

I don't have an example near at hand, but I love their photo essay layouts as well.

I used to dig Grantland's simpler layout, but I understand why they switched to this one, as it allows stories to linger on the front page longer. However, this means that I have incentive to check the site less frequently since I know I won't miss a story if I check every other day or so.

Big, big fan of Polygon and Verge. Their magazine-style layouts really shine in their longform articles, but I tend not to read those at work since I browse in a window like a quarter of my screen.

Keep an eye out for Vox.com. I'm a news junkie and a huge mark for Ezra Klein (former lead policy writer for Washington Post's Wonkblog). The concept for the site is intriguing (providing well rounded news coverage, not just the breaking updates), and it's from the same folks that run Polygon and Verge.

The Upshot launch is going to be another interesting site to watch, as its focus sounds similar to Vox, but more data driven (sort of a cross between Vox and FiveThirtyEight.com). Without Nate Silver though, I have less interest in this one but it's got a huge brand behind it (NY Times) so I still expect good things.

And with the recent launch of Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight it seems like we may be entering an era of these "super" sites that are like blowback from the trend of blogspammy sites like Huffington Post, Gawker and Buzzfeed. Instead of trying to write as many rehashed clickbait headlines as possible, these established journalists are compiling superteams of quality writers with a bigger focus on original content and longform articles. Fuck Silver's hire of climate denialist Roger Pielke though. Really bad form and it's souring early impressions of his site.

And Re/Code with Mossberg and Swisher sounds like another one of these super sites, but I haven't been checking it.

I could be wrong, but did Grantland start the trend with Bill Simmons? I'm struggling to think of another website that was able to successfully combine aesthetic design, quality original content and mass market appeal before Grantland did.


Edit: Great topic, btw. Huge fan of efficiency and elegance in website design.

Grantland is borne of the same parents as the sites your mentioned in your post. All of these sites are just more well-formed regarding their mix of Old Media format (long-form, in-depth articles), New Media style (personal perspective that weaves serious topics, tabloid taste & pop-culture references, influenced by Big Data), splashy aesthetics that magazines developed, and modern web / information design.

They're all modern websites in that they are aware of how presentation effects the communication of information. A sense that style is as necessary as substance.

To make a music comparison, these sites are analogous the changes Rock made once the studio techniques were viewed as legitimate as traditional songwriting or hip-hop once producers and MC's sought artistic credibility.

Interesting thoughts, co-sign.

Totally makes sense, and it's pretty sweet to see that The Internet is still maturing as a medium, especially in news.

Also, Vox is up: www.vox.com

Pretty pleased with what I've seen so far... the card system is basically a glorified FAQ, but once the site starts filling out it seems like it could be a great tool for following news going forward.

Surprising amount of content so far in the few days it's been live... this is a massive undertaking because basically for every breaking news item, they need to construct the underlying cards.

Great looking site, I dig the relative simplicity and the fact that highlighted text (my "nervous" browsing habit) is yellow and not blue.

As a sidenote, I'm also impressed with the neutrality being exhibited thus far with the political hot button topics... for this to really get off the ground it needs to maintain credibility, especially considering Klein's political clout.

WAY too much info in a poorly organized manner. I end up there from my RSS reader, and when I get there, I can't follow articles based on when they were posted.

Worth reading if you've followed the other posts in this thread

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/business/media/voxcom-takes-melding-of-journalism-and-technology-to-next-level.html?single=1

Vox Takes Melding of Journalism and Technology to a New Level

WASHINGTON — Ask Ezra Klein what prompted him to leave a high-profile position at The Washington Post to start a new website, and the answer is a little wonkish, even for the founder of the newspaper’s Wonkblog, a mix of politics, economics and domestic policy that had become must reading in the Beltway.

It was, in essence, about content management systems, Mr. Klein said.

“We were badly held back not just by the technology, but by the culture of journalism,” he said of daily newspapers, as he offered a preview of his new site, Vox.com, which was introduced Sunday night.

While The Post is an excellent publication, he said, he felt that the conventions of newspaper print journalism in general, with its commitment to incremental daily coverage, were reflected in publishing systems, which need first and foremost to meet the needs of printing a daily paper. And he wanted to create something entirely new, which is why he and two Post colleagues ended up at Vox Media, a rising digital empire that includes sites like SB Nation and The Verge. Vox, he said, had the tools he was seeking.

Photo


“At our first meeting, we knew we were going here,” said Ezra Klein, who left The Washington Post to start and lead Vox.com. Credit Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times
“At our first meeting, we knew we were going here,” he said. “They had the technology we thought we were inventing.”

Wonkblog, which will remain the property of The Post, had established Mr. Klein, 29, as a prominent voice in the capital, and was a formidable driver of traffic. So in January, when he and his colleagues announced they would join Vox Media with the aim of creating a site bigger and broader than Wonkblog, it seemed to be another watershed in the news business: a moment when young talent began demanding superior technology as the key to producing superior journalism.

Technology has become crucial to every newsroom, of course, but not all technology has been designed equally. News organizations born in the print era have generally knit together disparate systems over the years to produce websites that integrate graphics, social media and reader comments with various degrees of smoothness.

Many all-digital organizations have built their content management systems from the ground up with the Internet in mind. That strategy, many say, produces a more organic melding of journalism and technology.

The result is an increasingly dynamic publishing universe where sites like Vox, Vice and BuzzFeed, and new enterprises like Pierre Omidyar’s The Intercept, are luring seasoned journalists as well as a new generation of storytellers.

In this high-tech universe, Vox Media’s content management system — which even has its own name, Chorus, and is used to publish all the company’s websites — has earned recognition. It is credited with having a toolset that allows journalists to edit and illustrate their copy in dramatic fashion, promote their work on social media, and interact with readers — all seamlessly and intuitively.

Even the competing website TechCrunch has written a love letter to Chorus, calling it “next generation” technology, while noting that comparatively “the rest of us have been stuck turning screwdrivers.”

Reporters and multimedia journalists say the enhanced technology of Chorus enables them to do things like make photos appear as a cursor slides down a page; add links automatically to copy; and identify problem commentators through word identification.

“Most journalists hate their content management systems,” said Melissa Bell, who was director of platforms at The Post before she left with Mr. Klein to join Vox. “The joke is that Chorus is a unicorn with a kitten on its back. People think it is a magical system that fixes everything.”

Chorus does not fix everything, of course, said Jim Bankoff, Vox Media’s ambitious chief executive, but it is sexy enough to be a recruiting tool. “For this generation of talent, which grew up digitally, having the proper tools to ply their craft is essential,” he said in a recent interview. “Being able to offer them the best possible platform to achieve their goals is a great advantage.”

Recruiting is important for Vox, which was the fastest growing digital media site in 2013, according to comScore. (It reached 75 million unique visitors in March, according to its internal site metrics, which are measured by Google Analytics.)

Vox is adding publications as well as readers. Since its inception in 2008, the company has raised nearly $80 million in capital from Accel Partners and Comcast Interactive Capital, among others, and has used it to build The Verge, a technology site, and to acquire the food site Eater and the real estate and design platform Curbed.

Like Mr. Klein, the founders of all those sites confirmed that Chorus was crucial to their decision to team with Vox. Josh Topolsky, editor in chief of The Verge, came over in 2011 after growing frustrated with the limits of the computer system at Engadget, an AOL technology publication. He had grand ideas for a site that could do in-depth science coverage while integrating new design elements.

After looking widely, he said, he decided Chorus was the best option. “It was so obvious and where we needed to go,” he said. “From a storytelling perspective it couldn’t be accomplished in any other place that I have seen.”

Others are catching up, but the rich graphic interface and facile reader interaction have helped Vox earn a reputation for quality and attract a highly desirable audience: its largest demographic is educated households headed by individuals under 35 years old with incomes over $100,000.

Perhaps more important for its long-term survival, Vox’s formats attract attention directly, so the site does not have to turn to gimmicky features like quizzes, teasing headlines or lists to generate traffic through Facebook or Twitter.

The company’s attitude toward content management has its roots in the basement of Trei Brundrett, now Vox’s chief product officer. It was there that he and some partners developed SB Nation, a sports blogging website that became wildly popular when it was introduced nine years ago. Mr. Brundrett and his crew cast themselves as equal parts journalists and software developers.

Because SB Nation needed a platform where sports fans could communicate with one another, the team created word-recognition software that would help police comments. Because it covered live sports events, it created an organizational tool, called story stream, that allowed editors to click and drag relevant material — from previous stories, Twitter posts or commentary by the writers — all into one continuous flow.

That culture has translated forward into more conventional journalistic enterprises. Developers at Vox Media call themselves journalists and work continually with writers and reporters to build the tools they require. “It is thrilling as a journalist being able to envision a tool and having it become a real thing,” Mr. Topolsky said. “And it is rare.”

Mr. Klein, hoping to avoid incrementalism — “the biggest source of waste is everything the journalist has written before today,” he said — instead wants his journalists responsible for constantly updating pages that are the ultimate resource on a topic.

“It would be like a wiki page written by one person with a little attitude,” Ms. Bell explained.

To help accomplish this, the developers have been building a tool they call the card stack. The cards, trimmed in brilliant canary yellow, contain definitions of essential terms that a reader can turn to if they require more context. For example, a story updating the battle over the Affordable Care Act might include cards explaining the term “insurance exchange.”

Ms. Bell said Vox.com would start with roughly 20 reporters with expertise around specific topics, a limited travel budget, and, of course, very inchoate technology.

Ms. Bell confessed that she was both “excited and terrified” to go out with a product that has had just three months to gestate. “I worry people will say, ‘Hey, you guys promised us magic,’ ” she said, “and I’ll say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Give us some time and we will get there.’ ”

Re: original post: no, not for me. Frankly I don't think I've seen a single "newspaper" site that I would give such a crown to.

I'm a huge Vox fanboy... which started for me as soon as the SBNation United project went live. I think Vox understands web publishing on a whole different level from almost everybody else right now. I'd love to get my hands on their Chorus CMS, and see how all of the workflow is set up, because it sounds friggin awesome.

I think, particularly in the responsive realm, sites like NYT are still showing a bit of their "age" (which I realize is a silly thing to say since the latest design is quite recent.) When I get at NYT on a touchscreen device, there are some truly maddening things about the UX. I can't tell you how many times I've "swiped" to next/previous article without actually having any desire to do that.

And NYT is still struggling with understanding large modern displays. What was immediately impressive about the SBNation roll-out was the degree to which layouts weren't fluid, and yet the typography and particularly imagery never came across as "small" no matter what type of resolution you were viewing it from. I think this is certainly evident on other Vox properties mentioned here such as The Verge, Polygon, and Vox.com

http://www.nytimes.com/upshot/

Should be interesting to see what NYT can do now that wunderkind Nate Silver stumbled out the blocks. Looks interesting so far, but we'll see where it goes.



Oh, and Vox is just getting better and better... looks like their card system is being more deeply integrated into articles instead of just at the end. I hope they change a click to a new tab or a pop-up instead of navigating away from the page you're on though.

And lol... I thought Klein would attempt to be neutral when covering topics but there's a definite liberal bias in the writing and the topics covered. Not that I'm complaining in the slightest, but I figured he would attempt some sort of appeasement to both sides of the aisle. I'm also pleased to see that it's starting to get visibility from other media as well.

____

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How is 538 doing as a stand alone website? Now that its no longer being hosted by the NYTimes I'm not checking it. I feel Nate Silver often comes across as a smart alec - yeah, he's fucking smart but so are a lot of people who manage their public persona with more charm.

The Eric Cantor defeat made me think I'd usually read what 538 would have to say.

However, what is the 538 website like now that its diversified away from politics and is being funded by ABC/Disney/ESPN?

Anyone reading it?

The whole climate change article they published right
away was bad

And then they continued with the bullshit so I've kinda
stopped checking for them

They are basically a bunch of insufferable data nerds who
use numbers to create internet memes that they
hope will get them hits

The hope for a nuanced and critical analysis of the issues
via the use of data is now LOL

The Vox is dope, though, kinda what I hoped 538 would be

----------------------------



O_E: "Acts like an asshole and posts with imperial disdain"




"I ORBITs the solar system, listenin..."

(C)Keith Murray, "

And I find it hilarious that 538 hired the fraud Pielke to write about environmental science but now they're hiding him behind topics on everything but.

This isn't really high tech related, but I'll take any chance I can to shit on Pielke.... great Krugman piece where he eviscerates Pielke's kindergarten analysis:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/05/energy-choices/

Vox is definitely a website I am checking on a regular basis. They are my go to whenever there is a big issue or topic I want to know more about with current events. I hope they get more readers and momentum.

538, agree that they are insufferable data nerds. The problem is when you are Nate Silver and you start dissing every other traditional journalists articles as boring you know you aren't gong to get much support from the journalist community when your new site isn't doing too well.

I don't even bother to surf 538 at all after seeing a few stories and finding them all boring. Has NYTimes's web traffic declined now they aren't hosting Nate?

The elections later this year might help the 538 website but realistically he'll have to wait until the next presidential election in 2016 and thats a long wait. Plus all other news websites will have their analytics teams in place to ape what Nate did so well previously.

Anyway Nate Silver must have made $$$ with the deal from ABC/Disney. I know they were going to try and replicate the success of Grantland (which I like a lot too) but clearly 538 hasn't been able to achieve this.

http://www.americansuburbx.com

It's not as good as NYT or The Verge, but it works especially well for reading on the iPad.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/27/world/greenland-is-melting-away.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

Doesn't do it justice to view this on mobile

And it uses actual paragraphs and not a bunch of one-sentence paragraphs. This article helps me hold onto the hope that journalism isn't run 100% by morons.
______________________________
http://i.imgur.com/Gj5Wy56.jpg

Simply because of its design?

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O_E: "Acts like an asshole and posts with imperial disdain"




"I ORBITs the solar system, listenin..."

(C)Keith Murray, "