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The Media Age

Musing About New Media Business, Ideas and More

User Design for Newspaper SitesMay 7

Doing consulting work in the newspaper industry has keyed me into one of the major problems for newspapers as they transition online.  They don’t use web designs that are user-friendly.

If you were to look at the recent redesign by our local Charlottesville daily, The Daily Progress, you might, from a consulting standpoint, believe the site is a well-designed site.

It has all the bells and whistles, flash intro pages, monetization spots, widget partnerships, tags, featured readers, etc. The problem, and most of my peers agree, is that a site like this is horribly difficult to navigate. I do appreciate what the Roanoke Times (a close by award winner) has done with their site design, but still as a casual reader, the amount of content and the complexity of the layout scares me and most anyone else away.

Site design should be about minimalism and simplicity. Why? Users have the worst ADD on the planet right now and it’s going to get worse as they are bombarded with more and more online content. I do have evidence to support this.

Take a recently published study titled “Not quite the average: An empirical study of Web use.” I highly suggest you read this PDF if you are involved in web design. The authors studied detailed browsing patterns of 17 to 30 year olds. My favorite

RE: “Why traditional ‘print’ media is doomed”January 25

Don MacAskill recently ranted on how much of a closed community traditional print media companies impose on their users. While I would agree that some if not most large media groups are seriously lacking the insight necessary to monetize today’s generation of consumers, it is a little too early to say that all traditional media is doomed.

Gannett and Tribune recently invested more capital in MetroMix, the Tribune’s original foray into the hyper-local scene. While the site may not have the best functionality or user interaction, it is a good start. You cannot ride the subway in NYC without seeing their ads plastered all over the inside of the trains. The question is not how traditional media companies will succeed or participate in the web 2.0 space, but when. These companies are sitting on a large regional or national footprint and an executive guard that does not understant how publishing content online can bring in revenue.

Web 2.0 Is Not That Obvious To Most

For most of us it sounds very obvious, we see the online space as unlimited “print” real estate….pages upon pages of space to throw edgy content and targetted advertising. So its obvious right? Not as much as you would think. Do any of you remember trying to teach your parents, mostly successful business men and women, how to use a computer? Even to this day they struggle ju

Upcoming Conference ScheduleOctober 22 2007

The Media Age/DeParis Redinger team will be attending the following conferences:

Future of Business Media Conference: we will be in New York City for a couple of days the week of October 30th.


We will be in Las Vegas from November 6th-10th. Please let us know if you will be attending!

Good Old Media vs New Media VideoSeptember 14 2007

One of the points I make in a Newspaper Association of America article I just wrote is that print media doesn’t grasp culture of openness on the internet. Watch the video below for more:

What do you think? I think it brings up a lot of underlying issues between the old guard and the new folks.

Gnomedex 7.0: Keynote SpeakerAugust 10 2007

 

Robert Steele is the craziest keynote speaker I have ever seen. I can describe him as a combination of the following
• Steve Ballmer (jumping up and down on-stage)
• Jack Bauer: he is apparently an ex-CIA spy
• Chloe O’Brian: ok, another “24″ reference, but he did start the first Hacker conference in NYC in 1994
• Oh there are so many more references…but this guy is speaking at a mile a minute

Open Source is the New Black
Robert takes the traditional “open source” notion to a new level. At first glance you must think this is regarding software: Microsoft Vs. Linux. Instead we have an inside-out view of the world…

Robert is calling for transparency in worldwide governments via technology empowered denizens. This is a pretty provocative story. He is basically telling us what we have already been doing, most in part supported by blogging technology….The citizens of the world are now able to be the Anderson Coopers and of course, Stephen Colberts of the world. It seems we have not been taking enough advanta