Comments on: Why the New York Times is boring

By: haoboots

haoboots — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:38:53 +0000

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By: HBC

HBC — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:03:32 +0000

I believe it would be a mistake to draw quasi-corrective conclusions based on the present status in overall style and quality of websites belonging to traditional print news vehicles.

Signs are, the point of maturity – at which both online and physical media belonging to the same outfit would effectively complement, rather than ignoring or compromising one another – has yet to be reached. They’ve had years to get round to it – ideally they’d have done it by now, yet they’re not even close.

The New York and Los Angeles Times aren’t isolated examples. Typically, between online and print presence, neither medium is properly exploiting the advantages of belonging with the other – not even when they literally belong under one and the same roof. Until flawed (as in, lack of mutual) concept is overcome, no amount of rearranging the napkins on either deck is likely to help much.

Run-of-the-mill commercial media analysts have been overlooking this for too long, cluelessly twittering away at full boat about how hard it is to do a job they’ve yet to properly tackle. If anyone’s to blame, it’s not the media, it’s so-called media “experts” who have been soaking their publishing clients.

By: GingerYellow

GingerYellow — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 10:08:08 +0000

I’ve long thought the single best thing that could happen to American newspapers would be to drop their staid conventions (ironically enough, Murdoch’s much lamented transformation of the WSJ may be the catalyst) and adopt the best features of international papers. But I do appreciate that it would be very difficult, and possibly inappropriate for the NYT specifically to do so. The Boston Globe, sure.

By: Aiden

Aiden — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:45:09 +0000

I was going to say: “too long, didn’t read,” but I will say that I enjoy many of the long articles in the NYT and I never read the physical version. Where else do you get the actual story of, say jingle mail, with in depth information about and descriptions of real people who are sending their keys in. This is the work that newspapers of the caliber of NYT and the WSJ do. It is also the reason that they are some of the most widely read newspapers and websites in the world. On the other hand, I agree that some mundane updates about congress or the stock market should be less than 300 words, much less 1000.
A way to appease both the folks who want shorter articles and those who want to have more depth would be to split articles into three (or fewer) pages that if you read the 1st page, you would have a full newsbite, but if you read on, you would get the full “newspaper” article.

By: Ninja

Ninja — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:02:19 +0000

While you are right that the articles can at times be boring, you have to admit that NYT has by far the best charts and graphics to go along with the stories. For me that alone is worth sifting through the website.

By: bobbymacReuters

bobbymacReuters — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:35:12 +0000

I posted on this earlier. Here’s what I wrote.

http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2010/ 01/05/michael-kinsley-and-the-length-of- newspaper-articles/