Pax Arcana
As any garden-variety “futurist” or cliche-toting Web consultant could have told you in 1995, the promise of the Internet is that it offers an expansive, flexible medium for content delivery.
For news gatherers and distributors, that means things like videos, graphics, pictures, charts, and interactive elements can be fused into content — offering a richer consumer experience at very little cost.
The big mistake many newspapers made at first was to try to replicate the experience of reading the print edition online. This is because most newspaper executives are old-skool and proud of it. If they could give you paper cuts and inky thumbs through the Web, they would.
“Dorothy, get in here! I think the shift key is stuck on my Internet machine. Have a copy boy come in here with some pliers, would ya? And refill my Scotch drawer while you’re at it.”
Thankfully, most big media sources have gotten away from that and have started to integrate cool Web design elements into their sites for enhanced content delivery. The New York Times is the best example of this, though even some of the smallest local outlets, like the Wicked Local town sites, are offering video reports along with written stories.
Then there’s this abomination in today’s Boston Globe.
As local media guru Dan Kennedy points out, designing a letter to Hillary Clinton (from Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert) to look like an actual letter works in the print edition.
Online, it looks like someone just got a copy of HTML for Dummies. Come on, people.
UPDATE: Astute reader Adam G. points out that they’ve fixed the issue, replacing the absurd GIF file they used with actual text. Luckily, I saved a copy of the GIF. Click below to see what it looked like earlier.
You can’t read this [Media Nation]
Grasping our moment of opportunity [Boston Globe]
3 Comments
March 21, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Looks like they’ve heard you guys: They’ve replaced the big ol’ .GIF with actual text.
March 21, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Thanks Adam!
March 21, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Thank goodness they rectified it — The Globe would have been hearing from people everywhere. Newspaper sites are hard enough for screen reader users to negotiate, even with all HTML!