Reading the front page now shows me how good that kind of interface is. I can scan with my eyes for what's interesting to me, and then I can immediately start reading. Something about the haphazard grid too makes the process of searching a lot easier and more satisfying.
When I compare it to their digital front page there's really no comparison.
For the scan, the size of each item on the grid naturally draws your eyes to what are the most important things of the day. The text preview of the articles are a lot bigger. Just in general the actual newspaper uses the available space a lot better. It's huge! With that space they can do so much more. I love how the "snippets" aren't blurbs, it's simply just the actual article, along with an index to keep reading. That lets me read a little bit of all the important stuff before theoretically continuing.
The digital front page has huge empty margins on my monitor. There's much less indication to what is important from an editorial standpoint, because everything is the same size. I guess stuff at the top is supposed to be the most important, but it really seems to be what is just happening "live", so most recent.
Seeing them side by side really makes me think that maybe the problem with news isn't that people don't want to pay for it, but that the product just isn't there yet. It's honestly garbage in comparison to the analog newspaper. I would love for something digital in the same format as their actual news paper if there were hyperlinks, and it was no more than $5/mo.
When I compare it to their digital front page there's really no comparison.
For the scan, the size of each item on the grid naturally draws your eyes to what are the most important things of the day. The text preview of the articles are a lot bigger. Just in general the actual newspaper uses the available space a lot better. It's huge! With that space they can do so much more. I love how the "snippets" aren't blurbs, it's simply just the actual article, along with an index to keep reading. That lets me read a little bit of all the important stuff before theoretically continuing.
The digital front page has huge empty margins on my monitor. There's much less indication to what is important from an editorial standpoint, because everything is the same size. I guess stuff at the top is supposed to be the most important, but it really seems to be what is just happening "live", so most recent.
Seeing them side by side really makes me think that maybe the problem with news isn't that people don't want to pay for it, but that the product just isn't there yet. It's honestly garbage in comparison to the analog newspaper. I would love for something digital in the same format as their actual news paper if there were hyperlinks, and it was no more than $5/mo.