Oh dear. Let's see.

First, you have open space on your header bar, while the menus are sufficiently close that people who have their browsers set to larger type sizes are going to see them running together. Not necessary. Please fix.

Most viewed is at the top right of the page? That's kind of embarassing, isn't it? You've just basically announced that the most valuable real estate on your home page can be freeped within fifteen minutes by pretty much anybody with a handful of sockpuppet blogs. If you're promoting Live, put it there.

Aesthetics vary, but the overall look of the page doesn't work for me. User-friendliness, on the other hand, is a little less subjective. You've created a page with less information on it, which makes it more difficult to get to the information, and which, because of the decision to emphasize negative space over content, actually takes longer to scroll down.

If you want to offer this layout as an option for people who warm to it, that's great. Bluntly, a clunky design would be a disincentive for choosing your site to catch up on the news.

Same state, similar sized towns, comparable markets & demographics and such. Both actually pretty decent papers for their size. But compare the look 'n' feel 'n' squeezability 'n' such of these two papers' layouts:

How not to do it: Greensboro NC News & Record. This was a redesign from a couple of years ago and I've hated it from the start. Notice the clumpiness of the box design. You read the first thing visible, local news: one "lead" story (usually more substantive than BBQ but this a Sunday, probably not the best day for analyses like this), then very very short headlines which require you to scroll. Next thing down is "Multimedia" which is the worst obsession to hit newspapers since deciding to genuflect to Republicans. You are a PRINT medium, dimwits. If we want audio or video there are things things called "radios" and "TVs" which provide this service. Do what only you do, howzaboutit? But better. Like for instance....

How to do it better: the Raleigh NC News & Observer.

It just--i don't know any better way to say this--flows, unlike the N&R which goes clunk-clunk-clunk like a car rolling on square cement tires. Nando just keeps pulling your eyes down and making you want to scroll just because something interesting Might Be Coming Up Next.

I understand WaPo's designers are loathe to make excessive numbers of changes all at once; it startles the reader and annoys them when they can't find what they want where they expect to look for it. But you have to either do it the way grocery stores do--rearrange the whole fucking layout but keep the bread, milk and meat sections in the very-farthest-back area of the store to force people to go down other aisles to get to them. Theory is that this extends the time people are in the store and allows (forces) them to be tempted by other products. You know how much it pisses you off when your regular grocery does this? Yeah, like that--or make it so enjoyable that people actually enjoy the trip. And buy more stuff maybe because they don't feel coerced and manipulated. People are not as dumb as designers sometimes seem to think.

WaPo ain't there yet.

"Minivan Terrorist" Driven Crazy by Press, Friends Say

By Angela Motorman

Associative Press (ASP)
Published: April 1, 2007
Filed at 4:20 p.m. ET

Pataskala, Ohio -- Family and friends of the man who crashed his family's minivan into the lobby of the Washington Post on Saturday morning after an all-night drive from his home in this Columbus suburb said today that he had expressed growing anger in recent days over the way national news organizations cover both domestic and international issues.

According to his wife, 58-year-old Alfred Cater had been spending most of every day watching and reading news since being laid off last year from his position as managing editor at The Buckeye Banner, a 40,000-circulation community weekly acquired in 2005 by Dallas-based PressCorp. Sandy Cater said her husband had become obsessed with what he considered the failure of the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN and other major news outlets to inform Americans of the causes and consequences of government policies.

"He just couldn't believe the reporting could be so superficial," Mrs. Cater said. " He was staying up half the night reading internet sites, trying to fill in the gaps. It was making him crazy."

Lance Ryder, a Columbus State Community College professor who has known the accused since they both attended the OSU School of Journalism in the 1970s, said his old friend had become extremely agitated over the past week as details emerged implicating various Bush administration officials in the decision to fire eight United States Attorneys last year, allegedly for refusing to follow partisan political direction from the GOP.

"I think the last straw was watching Karl Rove rapping and dancing at the Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner last week," said Ryder. "At last year's performance by Stephen Colbert [during the White House Correspondents Association dinner], the audience sat on their hands like there was nothing funny. This year, the sight of all those reporters and editors laughing along with this criminal Rove was more than Al could stomach."

Ryder added that Cater had been an early opponent of the US war in Iraq, and a frequent participant in weekly candlelight vigils held in his old neighborhood of Clintonville, on the north side of Columbus. "Just last week, Al was with us for the fourth anniversary of the start of the war, holding the same sign he always held," Ryder recalled. "The sign was starting to look pretty tattered, but he wouldn't give it up. The sign said 'Trust the People', but Al was running out of patience."

Lawyers for Alfred Cater entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity during Cater's arraignment yesterday in District of Columbia Superior Court on multiple charges, including assault with a deadly weapon. Attorney Leon Karg cited extreme emotional distress caused by exposure to propaganda, a defense never before used in American courts. "This man was fed a steady diet of toxic disinformation," said Karg. "It's no different than if he had consumed rat poison. Sooner or later, your system can't filter out the junk, and you lose control of yourself."

Karg associate counsel Amy Cuscuria noted that Cater had not only lost his career of 30 years, but was also about to lose his dream home after being unable to refinance the mortgage for the fourth time. "He blamed Dominion Homes," the attorney said, citing the development company under investigation for its lending practices. "But what made him really furious was the lack of warning the press had given homebuyers over the likely result of all those subprime loans."

Cater's suburban neighborhood just east of Ohio's capital city has been devastated by mortgage defaults over the past year, leaving only a handful of owner-occupied homes along empty streets in the once-busy development known as Shelter Ridge. Cater's next door neighbor, Dennis Menimen, said he and Cater were "the last fools on the block."

"We thought we were okay," Menimen said, "because we were able to keep up payments after everybody else defaulted. We didn't understand what all those empty houses would do to the value of our own homes." Like Cater, Menimen blames the national press for not explaining to consumers the dangers of what he called "time-bomb" mortgages.

"You'd think the media would want people to know how this stuff works," Menimen said. "Instead, these newspapers act like their business and real estate sections are just advertising flyers. No wonder nobody pays for those bird cage liners any more."
Menimen, a former supervisor at the shuttered Plastech Engineered Products plant in nearby Circleville, now works as a landscaper during the week and runs a flea-market booth on weekends. Menimen said he "can understand Al's rage", and agrees with his neighbor's decision to target the Washington Post.

"I wouldn't have the guts to do what he did," Dennis Menimen said, "and I'm sure glad he didn't hurt anybody. But it's time those [expletive deleted] got a wake up call, and if it takes a guy plowing an Aerostar through the lobby to get their attention, I'm all for it."

Cater's college friend Lance Ryder added that he can't disagree with Menimen's assessment. "The way news is produced these days is a real scandal," he said. "Al Cater and I studied journalism back when it meant speaking truth to power and holding the government accountable. We worshipped Woodward and Bernstein," he said, referring to the Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story. "But today, it's all bread and circuses and blondes in rehab. Our alma mater, OSU, doesn't even have an accredited journalism program anymore. It's a school for PR flacks."

The executive editor of the Washington Post bristled at accusations of collaborationism levelled at the national press by Cater and his defenders. Speaking on condition of anonymity, Leonard Downie said, "These nutcases are getting all hyped up on blogger juice and spewing facts and analysis like they have some right to credibility."

"Look at how they've treated poor Debbie Howell, not to mention Joe Klein and Michael Kinsley," he continued. Downie was referring to his newspaper's ombudsman and two online columnists for Time Magazine, all of whom have suffered the wrath of readers in the last year for alleged lapses in journalistic ethics and fact-checking. "It's not like we tried to sell them Judith Miller's stenography," he added, citing the New York Times reporter whose credulous accounts of Iraqui military capability are thought to have influenced Congressional acceptance of the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003.

"If they have facts they think we should be reporting, if they have analyses they think we need to print, let them try out as interns for three months," Downie offered. "Or let them use a damn typewriter for once and mail us an actual letter. I just don't believe we're failing our audience," he concluded. "If they really think so, I say to them: Bring it on."

Contact reporter Angela Motorman at mediacenter [at] ix [dot] netcom [dot] com
Copyright 2007 CMI/Associative Press. All rights reserved.
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NOTE You can find more from Angela here. --Lambert

Suspecting that "Angela Motorman" is not perhaps your actual name--or accustomed handle on the Innertubes, your "nym" as the kids put it--I sure wish you'd make something up and sign this piece with it.

You've got the tone down dead-straight perfect. Except for being about six times longer than any such piece would ever be, even in the Post, even when it was their own building playing a role in the story. But aside from that--and the notion that they would/could make the effort and expend the time and money to track down all those sources connected to our perpetrator Mr. "Cater"--it sounds just about perfect.

Cheers. You ever go looking for a real news job (not that i would suspect you might already have such employment and just be snarkin' 'n' slummin' around wit us here on this high holy day of Hilaritarianism) be sure to put us down for a recommendation, y'hear? :)

A pretty rudimentary one, so far, but ya gotta start somewhere.

Thanks for the kind words. I certainly prefer those to being called a concern troll (on another thread earlier).

You're right about what I do for a living -- or would, if there were any such jobs still worth having, or gettable by someone who actually knows how the world works and what the rights of workers are.

In a truly depressing development, almost all the colleagues who read that swallowed it whole, right down to expressing surprise that the "anonymous quote" promise was apparently violated by the reporter in the next breath. I treasure the few friends who read it carefully enough to notice the names.

BTW, you should Google the reporter's name. See, esp., the second item that comes up.