News Web Design

In the online industry alone, there is a great deal of conversation about standards - monitor resolution, colors, Flash, CSS, accessibility, SEO, etc., etc.

Today I relished in reading through an email chain from some GMs, VPs, Presidents, and so forth in the news industry on the standards that we should create for design on news sites.

Online news design has many opportunities that our legacy media (print/broadcast/radio) do not. Yet, we still face some standards that are technology based. For print, this was the size of the paper (broadsheet, tabloid, etc) which limited length of stories and number of stories; for broadcast the proportions of the viewing screen, the length of the broadcast spot, etc.

For online, things are changing rapidly and in different ways. While there are issues with types of content, amount of content, editing of content, etc. today I want to discuss resolution and standardization of news design.

News sites are beginning to transition to accomodate the larger 1024x768 resolution and in so doing are calling for a standard page width on all news sites. Numbers ranging from 750 pixels to 980 pixels have been thrown out. Maximum stage area recommended for a 1024 resolution is 980 pixels. Both nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com are using a width of 970 pixels. From overheard conversations it appears that the Tribune sites, such as chicagotribune.com are also going for 970.

The conversation also seems to revolve a great deal around ads, which I really don't think should be the issue. While consideration of ad sizes is a pretty important factor...that should not affect a sites decision on page width. On most news sites, you have a right rail of ads along with the leaderboard and some others. The right rail should be built with an adjustable width, so my question is why do the ads matter?

I think what we are really hearing is that people want to standardize web design for news websites in the same manner that news design in print (to an extent) has been standardized. One key point is that we won't have A1 designers online...we will almost always have our Top Story, Headlines, Top Image, etc. So we are basically trying to define the best "design" for a news site...and where do I see this going:

A page that has a standard width between 960-980 pixels, a top image in the upper left with the top story and abstract just to the side of it; a list of other headlines and links to other key features...which will vary from site to site...

Where do I think the news sites are missing out...personalized pages! Yahoo and Google provide up-to-the-minute headlines. You can rearrange them however you want. Today I may want sports news, tomorrow headlines, the next day entertainment...but now I get to choose! I think Yahoo!'s is the best offer right now because of the user interface and design. Google's is valuable but not as friendly and it's harder to get to other Google services. Yahoo! has caught on to something...news people need to refocus and stop laligagging!