New York Times Redesign

Despite its far-left advocacy and orientation, I read the New York Times everyday, because, well, it's the New York Times.

One thing I've mentioned before is despite the newspaper's online paywall, you can still read articles past your limit of 10 per month if you land on the homepage through search engines, social media, or what have you. I don't think the Times even tries very hard to prevent readers from navigating around the subscription requirements. They want people to find their articles and then be able to read them.

So, I noticed today that articles at the newspaper had that digital super high-tech kinda publishing elements to them, like the really high quality articles you see at Politico's new magazine, which is very well done.

In any case, here's the announcement, "To Our Readers":

The New York Times is introducing a new design for NYTimes.com, its first since April 2006. The images are larger, the layout and typography are cleaner and the site navigation is better. More enhancements will follow....

A more immersive reading experience? We’re glad you asked. We’ve streamlined our article pages and created a more responsive interface with faster load times. So navigating between stories is easier and finding more content that appeals to you is just a click, swipe or tap away.

And here's the YouTube preview, "Check Out the New NYTimes.com Redesign."

Also, see Margaret Sullivan's update on the changes, "Times Designers Are Monitoring Reaction to the Redesign, With Adjustments Possible."

And from Brian Stelter, formerly of the Times but now at CNN, "New York Times redesign points to future of online publishing":

The last time The New York Times embarked on a wholesale redesign of its Web site, in 2006, the iPhone wasn't on the market. Tablets like the iPad were still years away.

So the new design that The Times is unveiling Wednesday is generating much interest within the journalism industry, both for what it says about The Times and about the future of online publishing.

For visitors to NYTimes.com, it will be obvious "that we've redesigned our article pages and restyled our homepage and section fronts to provide a cleaner, more engaging user experience," said Denise Warren, the executive vice president of the digital products and services group at The Times.

What won't be obvious is this: behind the curtain, there is a whole new publishing and technology system. "This allows us to continually iterate on the site and take advantage of new technology trends as they happen, so instead of seeing major redesigns in the future, users will see more incremental changes over time," Warren said.

While the refreshed home page and article pages retain some of the feel of the print newspaper, the redesign highlights the fact that, as the well-respected news media analyst Ken Doctor put it, "digital publishing is getting to be the main publishing system of the Times, with print becoming a niche, if still a very big one."

Redesigns of Web sites as massive as NYTimes.com are fraught with complexity, not to mention the possibility that readers will be turned off by the changes. The Times, the flagship brand of The New York Times Company (NYT), has been testing the new design internally for some time and adjusting it along the way.

A disclosure is important here: I was a media reporter at The Times for six years. While there, I occasionally engaged in a time-honored reporter ritual -- complaining -- in this case about the limitations of The Times' online publishing tools. But I also gained respect for the people in charge of those tools. I departed The Times in November 2013, and for this story, I refrained from speaking with any former colleagues about the redesign outside of formal interviews.

Many outside The Times see it as a Cadillac of print and online publishing — so it's not surprising that the redesign has already generated press attention. Fast Company magazine said this week that the newspaper has "eight years of catching up to do."

The new site is designed with mobile readership in mind, now that roughly a third of its traffic comes from users on smart phones and tablets. "It was important that we created a responsive layout that enhances the presentation of our content on larger desktops down to tablets," Warren said.

Doctor said that "the flip side is that two-thirds of all the traffic still comes from desktops and laptops. So while the mobile news revolution is hugely important, the Web still brings most of the digital readers and most of the digital advertising."

The new system also allows for new kinds of advertising, which is critical for The Times because digital advertising revenues have been trending downward. In the third quarter of last year, the revenues were down 3.4% versus the same quarter the prior year.

Most notably, the redesign introduces fast-growing "native advertising" to NYTimes.com. The Times is calling these ads Paid Posts. They resemble articles written by reporters — thus they are "native" — but they are actually written by sponsors. Dell is the first purchaser of Paid Posts, and on Wednesday, there were several such posts on the Web site...

Native advertising's a scam, but continue reading (via Mediagazer).

I don't know if I'm hitting the reader limits yet, although you get three articles per day on the iPhone app, and that's not changed.

I know a lot of folks hate the New York Times --- and I've ranted about its leftist bias too many times to count --- but it's still an 800 pound gorilla out there, so you go to blog war with the MSM outlets that you have.