There are thousands of sites one can log onto to get news. Literally. When I typed “news sites” into Google, I got 280,000,000 results. What’s going to filter these results down is the content, and the layout. While both are personal choices, below are the layouts of sites I think work, and those I think don’t.
NPR – While they are a radio station, they’ve done a great job of putting their foot in the door for the online world as well. Their site is clean, and forward. Their section tabs at the header on the top of the page (Home, News, etc.) are prominent and clear. Also, instead of several links in a row down a page, each of their main stories are spread apart, with bigger font, and even dotted between sections so the reader knows what links go with which story.
Wonderwall – This is MSN’s answer to competing Yahoo OMG, Perez Hilton, and other gossip sites. Despite the content, they decided to lay this site out as a magazine, which is the usual portal through which people get their celebrity news. Having the black background really makes the pictures pop, and as you roll your mouse over them, a short summary comes up. The left-to-right scrolling is different, and I think that’s one of the main reasons its appealing.
FOX News – This site layout does not appeal to me for multiple reasons. First of all, there is way too much white in the background, and not enough colorful pictures to spice it up. Also because of the navy text, it is hard to see what is bolded as the story title (or link) and what is plain text. FOX, along with several other sites, has chosen to go the route of superimposing text over pictures for their stories. I think this both takes away from the pictures, and the story. Because the picture is not fully visible, you almost need a mediocre picture so the viewer doesn’t worry about the parts of the picture they can’t see. On the flip side, if its an intriguing picture, and if the text is hard to see and/or gets in the way, that’s another problem all together.
The Huffington Post – The Huff Post takes their main story, and blasts it across the page for their viewer. For me, this is at first confusing, especially on my first time to the site. When the home page first pops up, literally all you can see is that one story. At first I thought it was a pop-up ad, and went to click out of it. Because their main story’s picture is so large, but the text explaining it isn’t, all the viewer sees is a picture they don’t understand, and that’s it. Once you get through that and scroll down, you encounter the second problem of not being given clear sections; stories are just randomly placed next to each other. As a reader and consumer, I don’t quite know where to start.
