Blog Redux: An unsolicited rewrite of an Andy Rutledge blog post
Caveat: I don’t know Andy Rutledge, and I only semi-followed the brouhaha involving his unsolicited redesign of the NY Times website — and only then because the part I followed involved my cousin and Lendle partner, Jeff Croft.
In this case, I think Jeff’s criticisms — and popular opinion — seem to be justified. More importantly, Rutledge appears to be missing, or ignoring, the point of most of the criticism and has now veered off into hyperbole. (Libel? Really?) To that end, I’m offering a totally unsolicited redesign of his initial blog post:
News Redux
July 17, 2011
I think this is as good a place as any for Rutledge to make all the caveats he seems to be making in hindsight. Right at the top. It probably would have been wise to (at least) feign respect for those who put a lot of work into the design he’s about to dismantle.
Also, as Rutledge is a designer, but not (I assume?) involved in the news in any real way, that probably would have been worth mentioning, as well. Admitting our own limitations while pointing out the faults of others seems humble. Rutledge doesn’t.
Digital news is broken. Actually, news itself is broken. Almost all news organizations have abandoned reporting in favor of editorial; have cultivated reader opinion in place of responsibility; and have traded ethical standards for misdirection and whatever consensus defines as forgivable. And this is before you even lay eyes on what passes for news design on a monitor or device screen these days.
In digital media—websites in particular—news outlets seldom if ever treat content with any sort of dignity and most news sites are wedded to a broken profit model that compels them to present a nearly unusable mishmash of pink noise…which they call content.
In an effort to disguise and mitigate the fact that they have little idea how to publish digital content properly—often sneakily called “differentiation”—some news outlets release apps for digital devices. These apps typically (but not always) do a better job of presenting content and facilitating navigation, but they’re a band aid on a festering abdominal wound. Digital media is simply digital media; if you do it right you publish once and it works anywhere. If you’re using an app to deliver content, you’re doing it wrong.
Complete assholish and accusatory snark. He should rewrite all of the above without it. That is, if he doesn’t want to spend the next few days arguing with the internet.
Instead of working with a handful of redundant, mitigating formats (websites, mobile sites, apps, etc…) for content delivery to popular devices, news organizations should simply deliver it correctly in the first place, one time; using html, css, JavaScript, …oh, and design. The employment of content design would be quite refreshing, actually.
More of same. See above.
News Today
Some news sites are done better and some worse, but The New York Times presents a rather typical example of terribly-designed news. As they are somewhat well known in the news industry, I’ll use their site as the redux example in this article (know, however, that it is news in general that I’m talking about).
The Times politics page. I think the object of the game must be to fit as much “content” onto the page as possible in an effort to overwhelm the reader, tricking them into believing that the NY Times is just bursting with a mindbogglingly-bottomless array of important information. If only the reader could learn to ignore 60% of what’s here, she might have a chance at a pleasant experience. Please stop helping. What you’ve got here is not content, but noise.
It is hard to believe that the Times, or any other similar publication, actually cares about the news when they treat it with this sort of indignity. Worse, the design makes it quite hard and often frustrating to simply scan the news and find stories that one might be interested in. As a news reader, I want to be able to scan headlines and logically find news I’m interested in reading. And by logically, I mean according to clear, usable, undistracted organization and filtering.
It’s hard to say whether Rutledge is angry about the state of the news industry, or the state of design in the news industry, but one way to avoid a fight is to not pick one. Perhaps I’m beating a dead horse, here, but Rutledge could have avoided most of the ensuing fallout by simply being a bit more magnanimous, throughout.
For example, putting the word content into quotes is nothing more than a smug insult. I picture him finger quoting the word as I read it, and that’s just unacceptably annoying.
At this point, Rutledge finally gets around to his comps as well as some text that is centered around his opinions about how to improve the usability of the NY Times website.
It is, of course, all highly debatable and opinionated. It’s pie-in-the-sky utopian design, but that’s what blogs are for, right? The phrase “in a perfect world…” comes to mind, and that’s the sort of scenario which can open up a great dialogue, providing you don’t immediately trip up your audience with rude and unhelpful commentary.
My initial suggestion that Rutledge acknowledge his lack of experience in designing for the news has the overall benefit of padding his opinions with a sense of humility. Instead, we’re served up a heaping helping of ego which, apparently, everyone was supposed to overlook, or just swallow whole.
In the end, there’s no point in telling someone what opinions to have, but Rutledge seems to need a primer in “how” to have opinions, if he’s determined to express them in a reaction free environment.
I would add one thing, right at the end: Rutledge goes to great lengths to dismantle someone else’s work, and he does so in an fairly dickish tone. It seems a bit cowardly to provide no real mechanism for feedback and, if anything, that’s what led to the public drubbing he’s now facing. Having a strong opinion almost always means others will, as well. Better to face it in on your own turf than to have the fight erupt elsewhere.
Comments aren’t generally necessary on blogs, but they are if you want to crap all over someone’s work AND later complain that detractors then took to their own outlets in response.
Did Apple’s Response to Antennagate Work?
The short answer: Yes.
The evidence:
This is a chart of 4 popular tech blogs, and their daily coverage of the iPhone 4 antenna issue by number of articles in the days leading up to and following Apple’s press conference on Friday.
I wish I had a few more days of data, but I didn’t start tracking the content with my feed reader until the Tuesday prior to the event.
Gizmodo and Engadget post more content overall (on all topics) than Ars and BGR. Gizmodo posts more than Engadget. The average number of articles posted on the days I tracked:
Ars Technica: 11 articles
Boy Genius Report: 11 articles
Engadget: 30 articles
Gizmodo: 44 articles
My chart represents articles that specifically address the antenna issue and the iPhone 4. (Articles about Apple on other topics weren’t included.) The totals over ten days:
Ars Technica: 5 articles
Boy Genius Report: 14 articles
Engadget: 20 articles
Gizmodo: 37 articles
The spike on the Friday is obviously based on the fact that Apple gave their press conference in the middle of that day. Leading up to the event, a total of 6 articles are posted on Tuesday, 13 on Wednesday, 18 on Thursday and finally, 26 on the day of the event. (Half of which belong to Gizmodo.)
The first full business day after the event, the total falls to 3. (All Gizmodo.)
Notably, most of the weekend activity (and several of the articles which have popped up this week) discuss the responses and press releases of competing companies which were called out during Apple’s press release. Not only are there less articles, there’s a distinct shift in focus.
I don’t have the numbers, but my reasonably informed guess (I follow these sites) is that the days prior to the first Tuesday I collected figures for would show each blog averaging somewhere between the Tuesday and Wednesday numbers, with Gizmodo continuing to lead the pack.
I expect the numbers to flatline starting tomorrow. If blogs stop writing about the issue, mainstream outlets aren’t going to bother and if mainstream outlets don’t bother, the “issue” goes away for most people.
I think it’s clear that we won’t know for sure how well Apple’s “solution” went over until we see the the current quarter’s numbers, three months from now. Still, given that analysts, pundits, and “experts” were demanding that Apple issue a total recall of a flagship device—reporting that it would cost over a billion dollars to do so—and that blogs were posting multiple stories merely to mock the iPhone’s attenuation issue, it’s hard to argue that Apple hasn’t at least successfully (and finally) managed the message.
My bet: That’s all that matters.
