News Pages
At serial consign, Greg Smith has an interesting post on the evolution of the architecture of information as presented in newspapers. Greg's thesis, "Movable Parts: The Retooling of the Los Angeles Times" explored some of these themes in more depth.
Most fascinating perhaps is this image:
Greg's description:
The above image tracks the front page of latimes.com from 1996 through 2006, illustrating how quickly online presence can evolve. Note how the page structure and hierarchy have changed as images (yellow) and advertising (orange) have gradually become integrated with editorial content (blue). However, the manner in which information and links are collaged across a page (or interconnected through a database) is emblematic of a deeper organizational problem with the way that newspapers have dealt with digital content.
Greg promises more such entries in the "paper space" series; it's a fascinating way of considering news presentation.
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Quite interesting to see how they managed to shrink the page and the way the information was displayed. The next thing should be the use of draggable boxes as on newsvine.com
Since the number of people who read news just online increases, we will see more research about the page structures. Now in 2007, I see a video part in the middle on LATimes web page and I really wonder what it will look like when we add a graph for 2008 on this image.
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Greg J. Smith [08.31.07 01:34 PM]
Hi Rodolpho,
Simpler is pretty on the money, the Times splash screen from 2000 is an absolute train wreck. It was about a mile long.
I think web-editors have begun to think about the splash screen as a portal rather than a place to put everything. Advertising is now clustered with content by theme, rather than flashing in the margins. Co-branding is more tasteful. etc.
What is really interesting is how (treeware) newspaper front pages are simplifying now that so many people are getting their news online. The two mediums have a pretty interesting influence on one another right now.
I've really got to get the rest of my diagrams online to share!