Newsroom With A View

Web designer Brad Colbow points out a number of common news site features that range from irritating to enraging, and he titled the post “This is why your newspaper is dying.” They might be why people get frustrated with news sites (not just newspaper-affiliated sites) online, but they have nothing to do with the economics driving newspapers to cut staff and features, which derives almost entirely from advertising declines. Still, he has valid points on the user-unfriendliness of the practices he highlighted, and if you are among the unfortunate, overworked few in a position to reduce them on your site, you should look into ways to do it. If you are in a position to drive changes needed to reduce the less serious but chronic ones (articles that have no links to source material or related sites, even if they are mentioned in the story, for instance, or graphics shoveled from print to online with no adaptation for the new medium), chances are there are people on your staff who already have suggestions.