29 Apr 08 Dissecting the NYTimes.com with design director Khoi Vinh

Despite what Craig Ferguson says, the NYTimes is still leading the charge in many areas of journalism, most notably in the online world. The Times has been continually improving their online user experience and things seem to have really moved ahead since they took down their pay wall, something that all newspapers should do right now.

The NY Times is running week long, Talk to the Newsroom segment with Khoi Vinh, design director of NYTimes.com. What’s great about the interaction is that the questions are reader questions and not bland interviewer questions. It’s really a great chance to look behind the curtain and see what’s really going on in Oz.

Now, while not every paper has access to the resources that the Times does, the interview does offer a window into the type of thinking that most papers should start gravitating toward in their online strategy. One of my favorite answers of Vinh’s is the answer to the first question, which concerns the overall success of the NYTimes.com and what drives their design:

We’re trying to create something that’s true to this medium, that borrows the best of what works in print and that takes advantage of the unique aspects of digital media.

This means we pay a lot of attention to how people use our content online. That is, not just how they read it, but how they make use of it: how they might scan the page haphazardly rather than diligently reading from top to bottom; what parts of the page they look to first and last; what they expect to change from visit to visit; which visual cues are meaningful for them and which design flourishes they find useless.

Sounds like sage advice to me.

There is something else worth noting about this and the entire ‘Talk to the Newsroom’ section of the NYTimes.com. This is something every newspaper Web site should be doing. No longer is it enough for the paper to publish ‘Letters to the Editor’ and a column from the public editor every week.

Readers want to feel engaged, listened to and not like the plebes being told what to read. For too long the editor-in-chief, publishers and other senior editors at papers have been viewed as elitist media types that rule from on high. This wall needs to come down. People want to feel closer to their local paper and that they are being listened to.

In order for the respect to return to journalism, something that has been in steady decline for decades, the wall needs to come down. People want to know how the sausage is made. The greater understanding people have of the process and why a newspaper went with a particular story, printed a particular picture or even, as in this case, the rationale behind their design process, the greater amount of respect readers are going to have for the newspaper. It’s a way for an organization to hang on to their local readers in an increasingly globalized media landscape.

Open the curtains on the wizard and make your paper a welcomed part of the community again instead of a tolerated annoyance.

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Tags: new media, online journalism, technology

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