As I was taking notes and thinking through my Slate.com analysis for this week, I felt compelled to create a post, partly because the problems with these three sites have been on my mind for a while and partly because I wanted to play around with screenshots and captioning. Most of what I have here is rather cynical because I have—and this isn't even really an exaggeration—felt betrayed by each of these sites in some way. So there's my disclaimer.
Huff Po is a content farm posing as journalism. "The Internet Newspaper"? Hardly. Its bias is extreme, though perhaps laudably obvious, and the strength and fervor of the commentariat is somewhere between the liberal back patting of Mother Jones and the inane arguing of Yahoo! News. And rating users into categories, while it probably encourages repeat visitors, is puzzlingly hierarchical. Why value some comments more, to increase reader head-nodding? That kind of kow-towing to one’s readership is the wrong direction to take journalism. On an aesthetic level, the site itself is messy in design and highlights sensationalism rather than sense.
What I don’t like about Salon (and Slate, to some extent) is that the point of each piece is almost always to serve as a platform for writers to hawk their latest project or book. I’m glad they’re experts on their topic, but I don’t appreciate such bald promotion. Indeed that feels like the entire point of the website—a place to advertise. I’m not saying good content doesn’t come from that. I also think it’s kind of cool that you can read about interesting topics while also keeping track of upcoming books. It just doesn’t seem like enough and, coupled with their design, doesn’t keep me coming back.
Salon’s design is downright annoying and not user friendly—having comments, “letters,” on a separate linked page (without a reply function) is beyond irritating, as is their ever-malfunctioning “continue reading” feature. I stopped reading Salon because of that stupid little link—it brings me away from my reading place and back to the start of the article every single time. Maybe this is a cookies or security issue on my end. If so, I bet you they know about it and are hoping I’ll adjust my settings so they can harvest my info and I can have the "benefit" of reading the story more seamlessly. Sorry, Salon, I’d rather read elsewhere. (Yes, I tend toward conspiracy.)
I’m interested by the Open Salon section as democratizing their site, but it feels a little HuffPost-y in that they're asking writers to contribute free content. That doesn’t seem fair, beneficial to the website as it may be.
Slate’s articles, my favorite of the three sites, almost always strike me as interesting—they take news of the day and spin it into a general interest or a question like “Why Would Anyone Go to Burning Man?” or how HBO changed TV. The deceptive thing about their site is that they repeat links to their articles under different section headings, thus making it seem like they have much more content than they actually do. I’m not a fan of this misrepresentation, but I suspect it’s a strategy that gains them more clicks, much like tweeting a blog post several times (“in case you missed it!”) gets more readers. On the plus side, I like their cartoons.
As far as their comments section goes, I just plain won't sign in with another website's information (as in through my Facebook or Google account). Though it seems to be an ease of use issue, I don't need my random, probably inane, comments linked back to my actual identity for people to search through. I know there are arguments that decreasing anonymity leads to more responsible actions online, which presumably leads to better quality, but if I wanted to comment as myself, I'd put it on my own site and do the subject justice. The reaching power Facebook is achieving kind of freaks me out.
(How serendipitous that someone at Slate just addressed the third-party login issue, not to mention the email client I'm about three seconds from switching away from.)
Actually, I regularly get the previous two brands, Slate and Salon, confused. They generate similar content, have a similar viewpoint and tone (though Slate is slightly more politics-oriented and has more journalist-y articles), and their red-hued color scheme doesn’t encourage differentiation. I see Salon has a “grid” beta version in the works, but I haven’t been able to load the page. Maybe their redesign will make them stand out more.
What I see happening in all three is that they want to be newspapers, or perhaps more accurately, to compete with newspapers. Their content is more popular interest, aggregation, and commentary than journalism, though. It makes me nervous that newspapers might shift (are shifting?) in response to the popularity of these kinds of publications.
Huff Po is a content farm posing as journalism. "The Internet Newspaper"? Hardly. Its bias is extreme, though perhaps laudably obvious, and the strength and fervor of the commentariat is somewhere between the liberal back patting of Mother Jones and the inane arguing of Yahoo! News. And rating users into categories, while it probably encourages repeat visitors, is puzzlingly hierarchical. Why value some comments more, to increase reader head-nodding? That kind of kow-towing to one’s readership is the wrong direction to take journalism. On an aesthetic level, the site itself is messy in design and highlights sensationalism rather than sense.
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| Seriously, how am I supposed to sort through all that misaligned, barely categorized content? |
What I don’t like about Salon (and Slate, to some extent) is that the point of each piece is almost always to serve as a platform for writers to hawk their latest project or book. I’m glad they’re experts on their topic, but I don’t appreciate such bald promotion. Indeed that feels like the entire point of the website—a place to advertise. I’m not saying good content doesn’t come from that. I also think it’s kind of cool that you can read about interesting topics while also keeping track of upcoming books. It just doesn’t seem like enough and, coupled with their design, doesn’t keep me coming back.
Salon’s design is downright annoying and not user friendly—having comments, “letters,” on a separate linked page (without a reply function) is beyond irritating, as is their ever-malfunctioning “continue reading” feature. I stopped reading Salon because of that stupid little link—it brings me away from my reading place and back to the start of the article every single time. Maybe this is a cookies or security issue on my end. If so, I bet you they know about it and are hoping I’ll adjust my settings so they can harvest my info and I can have the "benefit" of reading the story more seamlessly. Sorry, Salon, I’d rather read elsewhere. (Yes, I tend toward conspiracy.)
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| Forget you, click-enhancer! |
I’m interested by the Open Salon section as democratizing their site, but it feels a little HuffPost-y in that they're asking writers to contribute free content. That doesn’t seem fair, beneficial to the website as it may be.
Slate’s articles, my favorite of the three sites, almost always strike me as interesting—they take news of the day and spin it into a general interest or a question like “Why Would Anyone Go to Burning Man?” or how HBO changed TV. The deceptive thing about their site is that they repeat links to their articles under different section headings, thus making it seem like they have much more content than they actually do. I’m not a fan of this misrepresentation, but I suspect it’s a strategy that gains them more clicks, much like tweeting a blog post several times (“in case you missed it!”) gets more readers. On the plus side, I like their cartoons.
As far as their comments section goes, I just plain won't sign in with another website's information (as in through my Facebook or Google account). Though it seems to be an ease of use issue, I don't need my random, probably inane, comments linked back to my actual identity for people to search through. I know there are arguments that decreasing anonymity leads to more responsible actions online, which presumably leads to better quality, but if I wanted to comment as myself, I'd put it on my own site and do the subject justice. The reaching power Facebook is achieving kind of freaks me out.
 |
| No thanks. |
(How serendipitous that someone at Slate just addressed the third-party login issue, not to mention the email client I'm about three seconds from switching away from.)
Actually, I regularly get the previous two brands, Slate and Salon, confused. They generate similar content, have a similar viewpoint and tone (though Slate is slightly more politics-oriented and has more journalist-y articles), and their red-hued color scheme doesn’t encourage differentiation. I see Salon has a “grid” beta version in the works, but I haven’t been able to load the page. Maybe their redesign will make them stand out more.
What I see happening in all three is that they want to be newspapers, or perhaps more accurately, to compete with newspapers. Their content is more popular interest, aggregation, and commentary than journalism, though. It makes me nervous that newspapers might shift (are shifting?) in response to the popularity of these kinds of publications.
Wish I'd seen this post before our discussion last night -- as you already know, I agree. A concern that I didn't mention last night: I worry that up-and-coming writers idealize these publications and feel some urgency about writing for them. The sites provide a home for writers, and perfectly credible writers certainly have written for all three, and are writing for all three (particularly Slate), but for me, their presence mitigates nothing. W/r/t Slate, it's the overall spirit/construction/tone of the site that often gives me pause, but then I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to presentation, story selection and rigorous editing; readers take cues as much from the locations of stories and the heading/decking/subtext as from the actual content, and so a digital mishmash has the power to misdirect. Slate, as I may have mentioned last night, started out with solid intentions and attracted the real deal in terms of talent -- for comparison's sake I'd be interested to see the early days of content juxtaposed what they're running now. As for your worries about newspapers: Ditto. It's unbelievably rough out there.
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