Comments on: Why the NYT will lose to HuffPo

By: Nietzcheisdead

Nietzcheisdead — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:57:36 +0000

People need to stop using the term “platform agnostic” or “site agnostic”.
It really betrays the stupidity of modern leftists/pagans/atheists/agnostics/secul arists.

You’re saying that the Huffpo website coding doesn’t believe in different websites? The Huffpo brain can’t say whether those websites it links to exist or not? Could go either way?
You guys are like what you claim religious people were or what the Nazis actually were. You try to use language to brainwash people and alter the cultural landscape.
In your mind an agnostic is a smart, breezy, cool person who can switch from belief to belief with the utmost coolness and that’s what you think the word “agnostic” means. Or you think if enough of you use it that way we will have that connotation for agnostics.

Agnostic actually means you’re too afraid to decide. So I’m guessing by saying that Huffpo is “site agnostic” you meant that it’s too afraid to decide whether or not it believes in other websites.

Maybe the fact that leftists got big pretending to be wise and intelligent when they’re naive, uneducated, close minded leftists is what’s sinking the NYT ship! (But I’m eager to hear more of the wildly creative excuses that leftists come up with!)

Please stop hacking language just because you’re ignorant of anything that happened before 1960!

By: spectre855

spectre855 — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 22:37:20 +0000

I can’t imagine looking at that side-by-side and thinking that the HuffPo image is preferrable. I guess it’s probably a matter of personal taste but I’d say that those two layout styles are comparable to Google’s search page versus Yahoo or MSN or any of the rest. Google offers a super clean and focused page that doesn’t have a lot of extraneous distracting crap while Yahoo is a mess of ads and links. Obviously user traffic shows that Google won the design war.

By: adsprung

adsprung — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 21:29:45 +0000

Maybe I’m a snob, but HuffPost layout says “junk” to me, even when it’s not (which is often enough). I find the Times site easy to navigate and full of visual interest. The WSJ site has been behind a paywall for a long time and has remained easy to navigate. It’s true that Westlaw and its ilk are a pain.

By: tgerdes

tgerdes — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:21:40 +0000

The more important question, in the post print world—which is certainly coming—how does the New York Times make any money, absent a paywall?

I still believe there is a market for well-written and edited reporting. For what it’s worth, in the examples provided above, I also think the NYT page is better designed than the gaudy, unfocused HP example. Though in my mind, in terms of presentation, a tablet focused app may be better suited to protected content than a web page filled with links and ad banners and driven by search engine optimization and click through rates.

I’m not convinced a closed model won’t work for quality content. And enough of the bigger players do it what the the aggregators offer in their place?

By: Londonhack

Londonhack — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:12:30 +0000

I might seem like a dinosaur but I see much more value in the sites that actually report things first rather than those that aggregate and link to original reporting.

By: newfie53523

newfie53523 — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:34:59 +0000

How many outbound links does HuffPo have to NYT each day? How many outbound links does NYT have to HuffPo each day?

One is a parasite. There is a finite number of high-nutrition hosts for the this parasite. Play this scenario out…

By: chipk

chipk — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:13:50 +0000

I’m not sure the argument here adds up to NYT losing to HuffPo, or what that even means really. But the analysis here is compelling and useful. And stepping back a bit, it makes all these sense in the world that HuffPo’s navigation strategy would outperform NYT. If you think about the core competencies of these two companies, NYT at it’s most essential would be called a content creator while HuffPo is a content organizer. HuffPo is simply more focused on navigation/link strategies and Felix’s suggestion that NYT consider the HuffPo model deeply and leverage relevant elements from it is a very good one.

By: flippant

flippant — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 06:52:49 +0000

Beyond the dread NYT paywall is a larger issue – it used to be called “top-fold” journalism.

The NYT website is boring and appeals to a (Barneys) niche audience. HuffPo is a mass-market Target, Inc. brand of journalism, with AOL playing the role of Dayton-Hudson.

By: brandonsadkins

brandonsadkins — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 05:07:18 +0000

Not to mention that this is a terribly loaded and view-grabbing headline.

HuffPo and NYT aren’t in a direct battle. Yes, NYT may make a mistake in putting up a paywall, but their content seems more worth the money by far compared to HuffPo, which, despite some of their politics I agree with, is fairly low-quality in content.

When you distract your readers purposely from your content in the interest of making money, you don’t care about your content.

By: brandonsadkins

brandonsadkins — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 05:03:57 +0000

You must be kidding. The NYT page is beautiful and can be read easily without distraction. It can be shared via social media services using the small section of links.

The HuffPo page is a nightmare of ads and ugliness. It makes me want to surf away immediately, except for the fact that I use ad-blocking extensions anyway. Still yet, the NYT page has far more class and aesthetics, which my brain instantly interprets as far more trustworthy and content-focused.

HuffPo seems like they’re more interested in ad revenue than content, and that mantra shows in their page design. Social media, comments, and discussion are great, but they aren’t the point.

Give me only the news, unless I specifically ask for more.

By: FifthDecade

FifthDecade — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 04:33:20 +0000

Now it’s been sold for $315 million (HOW MUCH??!!!) I don’t think the Huffington Post will generate as much content as in the past, since much of it was written for free by others. There are a few articles around saying AOL are making another Time Warner sized mistake… I tend to agree with them. Here’s just one:
http://www.macworld.co.uk/business/news/ index.cfm?newsid=3259978&olo=rss

Having said that, if the NYT is so difficult to navigate, that is unlikely to live long either as an online news supplier.

By: silliness

silliness — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 02:51:10 +0000

Well, Mr. Salmon, have you had a look at your web page with its black, white, and a very little blue? And yet we all still come here to read the best analysis around. Content matters more than all the pretty colors.

By: eudaimonia17

eudaimonia17 — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 02:36:04 +0000

This article assumes the same audience is as likely to go to either site for news about Olbermann. But it seems much more likely that the audience for the Times’ Media Decoder is different to the Huff Po reader in several important ways, such as being less likely to care about Olbermann qua politics than Olberman qua business. Thus all the argument about the relative merits about design and interactivity is moot. Know your audience.

By: Holltastic

Holltastic — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:35:39 +0000

I think you mean “OnCe the paywall goes up…” You know. Once with a C.

By: bschaeffer

bschaeffer — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 23:41:05 +0000

The more stuff there is to click on, the more I feel I am being duped by the website. Do they want me there because they have something I should read or am I only there to click on/be served ads.

Even though both the NYT and HuffPo are probably after the same thing (my pageview), the NYT doesn’t make me feel like I accidently typed in twtter.com and got served some fake website filled with horrible ads and aggregated content.