New Charlotte Observer website
Posted on 31 Jul 2008 by Justin Ruckman
“Today, the Observer’s Web site converts to a completely new format. The new site will be faster, easier to use and more responsive to all that you need to live well in our region. It’ll have a cleaner design, more logical format, bigger type, crisper graphics, larger photos and a fuller screen for video and will offer more breaking news updates, video and reader-comment features.”
Charlotte.com now redirects to charlotteobserver.com. Charlotte.com is to be relaunched in the future as a separate website.
Amazing! A bright new Web 1.5 design-by-committee generic site along with the same mediocre outsourced journalism? How could I not bookmark it?
Really though — Ann Caulkins, is your paper called charlotteobserver.com? No? Then why doesn’t the paper’s name/logo appear at the top of the page? It’s all.the.way.at.the.bottom.like.you.were.trying.to.hide.the.fact.you’re.embarrassed.by.lame.design.
Even chicagotribune.com has their paper’s name/logo underneath their “web presence.”
Yuck. It’s too bloggy. They need a website that embraces the rich tradition and history of a great American newspaper (Look at nytimes.com or latimes.com) but incorporates Web 2.0 technology.
I still don’t like the layout of many newspaper websites. I find them very cluttered and busy. I never can find what I’m looking for and there’s a lot of wasteful information.