Very cool breakdown of news sites and how they could be improved.

cameronmoll:

Andy Rutledge:

Regarding content strategy and mechanism, today’s ‘news’ is rife with irrelevancies and distractions. Part of this is due to the news industry’s abandonment of actual journalism, but much of it is due to thoughtless promotional strategy and pathetic pandering. I suggest that digital news acquire a responsible and more usable approach.

Andy’s arguments and mockups are both very well-conceived — I would love to see online journalism (all of it, not just NYT) head in this direction. His design concepts are fabulous.

I do believe, however, there should be an affordance for social components in news media, as the context of others’ opinions as to what is news and what isn’t, and what is more important news for that matter, can be helpful in sifting through the daily deluge of reported information. Not that peers are more discerning than editors, mind you, but that their voices (ours, that is) should be allowed to influence society’s understanding of the world around us.