The DMN flunks the test
The Web site 24/7 Wall St. recently published reviews of the top 25 Newspaper Websites, including The Dallas Morning News, which gets a grade of D-. Here's a sample of the report card:
"Dallasnews.com looks like it was put together by The Mad Hatter. Poorly designed traffic and weather sections often sit at the top of the homepage. There are some headlines that have no explanations. Others are explained too much so that reading the story would be redundant. The visitor cannot expect any consistency as he moves around the site. The first few stories are followed by blogs and a photo section where the content seems to have been picked at random. The rest of the homepage has other major sections with their primary stories highlighted. Local news does not get much exposure."Ouch. Trust me, this isn't taken out of context. There are a few kind words about the DMN blogs and the DMN share of premium advertising, but a comment about how the DMN mixes editorial content with advertising also sums up the review as a whole: "Joseph Pulitzer is spinning in his mausoleum."
24/7 Wall St. begins its reviews by noting that newspapers need to increase revenue from their Websites faster than they lose revenue from declining circulations of their print editions. The DMN can't do that if it continues to delegate its Website design to the Mad Hatter. If the executives with careers steeped in print can't see that, maybe it's time to turn the company over to executive talent with some online experience.
3 comments:
Didn't see this on any of my usual rounds- good one.
They aren't wrong. I always understood the DMN to be one of the leaders in investigative reporting, but I'm never able to navigate their site and find any of those articles. I use the site now only for the Richardson blogs. If I want local news I go to one of the TV station sites and if I want national news I use Google News and the Washington Post site.
Sherri
"rke", thanks for the compliment.
"Sherri", I, too, find it so difficult to use the DMN Web site that it cuts down on the time I spend there. Some people say it's because the site navigation is poor, but the root cause is that the site is disorganized and cluttered. No navigation scheme could ever solve that.
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