New Formats for Freep and DetNews websites

[sirrealone]

Watch: Next time they change it, people will be whining wanting it to back to the way it is now.

[poobert]

Aside from the weird, sliding, "featured content", it isn't bad.

After a several minute look-around, I could find zero - yes, zero - international news.

France just struck ISIS, which we are about to get deeply embroiled in, Scotland just voted to remain part of the UK, and Putin has been ass fucking Ukraine for the past 6 months, and you're going to put up zero international content?

Oh, but there is a picture of some broad on a pony in Brighton. What the fuck?

This troubles me especially because I find Metro Detroiters to be unbelievably provincial. We're not going to solve the incredible problems facing this region and state if we just keep turning inward and rah-rahing "Pure Michigan", whatever that means.

[1953]

The new design is terrible. Just some fluffy pictures and twitter feeds, no news.

1953

[cjd]

If it looks like it was designed for phones and tablets, it probably was. Why wouldn't you design your website specifically for the devices that most internet traffic comes from?

Because 2/3 of traffic still comes from non-mobile devices, at least as of the end of 2013. See, e.g., here.

[Novack]

Yep the new site still sucks. I thought I would give it a day or two. But the navigation on the site is....well really crappy and it is actually worse to navigate on the phone. Not sure who beta tested this, but if they do a test group they will definitely find that this was a huge fail. The old site was much easier and user friendly this looks and feels like less and I am now inclined not to go to the page.

[Smirnoff]

Glad the newspapers know MORE than it's potential subscribers [[paying customers)......blown-up photos of bald head writers is just what we needed - thanks!

[RO_Resident]

The layout is spreading like a virus. Lots of online papers have adopted it.

[Detroit500]

It is probably a default Gannett template that has to be used. For a while, the News has been spared that as they are owned by MediaNews Group. Looks like now Gannett is making them use the format too.

[douglasm]

Detroit500 is correct. I looked at the KING 5 TV website [[Seattle) which was recently purchased by Gannett and it uses the same template.

I was trying to figure out why the News would use the Gannett template, but as I understand it, Gannett [[Free) is the managing partner in the JOA.

[Islandman]

Fom a ROI perspective, this is saving Gannett a ton of money. One universal web template for all of their newspapers online.

You can thank the popularity of sites such as FB and YouTube for this change, and the use of Python, PHP, and Ruby languages. Gannett is conforming to what the majority of internet users have shown, by usage, the types of layouts they like, as well as the advent of phablets, tablets, etc.

[mtburb]

For those of you who don't even want to bother going onto either site ever again, here's screenshots to show what has changed.