Rick wrote about it last week in LEO.
Now the Courier-Journal’s new look is live and we think it sucks. Drab colors, doesn’t at all feel like a newspaper, difficult to find breaking news as it’s all subdued under a pastel “LATEST HEADLINES” section – and speaking of headlines, only the headlines of stories (the few that are actually written by locals) are the featured bit of information on the main page – gone are the days of a brief summary.
Could someone tell me how much this redesign cost Gannett Company, Inc?
Feels kinda like the increasingly syndicated “news” paper has gone back in time.
11 responses so far ↓
1 rick // Mar 18, 2008 at 5:28 pm
There’s good and there’s bad. It’s certainly an improvement. I just got my 1st e-mail alert in the new format, and it’s so much easier to read. I think most folks will ignore all the social networking crap and use the site to find news and information. It’s all a mix of good and bad. They’re doing a lot of good video, but the blogs suck. The new alerts are good, but it’s hard to find breaking news. Searching is much easier, but local news is more difficult to find and read.
I’m surprised they got it going so quickly afte rthe beta testing period. Gannett’s done it in so many markets, though, that the kinks are already worked out.
2 Yellow Dog // Mar 18, 2008 at 6:30 pm
All questions, complaints, etc. about the Courier can be answered with one simple phrase:
Gannett sucks.
3 KYJacob // Mar 18, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Awful.
4 Steve Magruder (I, not D or R) // Mar 18, 2008 at 7:56 pm
I’ll repeat what I said at The ‘Ville Voice:
The colors do feel a bit subtle, but what’s worse is that they don’t reflect any of Louisville’s colors, whether in the city seal/flag or its major university.
While the functionality and layout may just involve getting accustomed to, I don’t feel like I’m on a “Louisville site”. I somehow get the notion that this is a Gannett cookie-cutter design. Corporations do indeed have this penchant for trying to make everything the same, in this case, apparently including cities they serve. We’re all the same to them — we’re mere consumers (not citizens who need the information that citizens are supposed to get to make citizen-like decisions and take citizen-like action).
Also, I wonder what they’re going to do with the old forums, full of discussions about various subjects and previous articles. I don’t see any linkage from the new site to the old forums, or any movement of the old content into the new format. Is the C-J going to lose this content (and thus search engine hits) forever, giving local blogs and discussion boards the chance to seize those search hits?
Last, they didn’t migrate old forum accounts into the new one. That’s not really nice to ask people to create new accounts, nor is it practical — The C-J just lost a lot of forum users with this migration. As a forums administrator, I can state that it will take a looooong time to get the previous numbers back. If they don’t plan to migrate the forum users, methinks they’re screwing themselves.
5 Daniel // Mar 18, 2008 at 9:12 pm
I hate the new look
6 Steve Bittenbender // Mar 18, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Louisville has colors? Didn’t know that. Were they approved by Metro Council or did one of our state lawmakers file a bill designating official colors for the city?
For as long as I can remember, green has always been the C-J’s color. It’s the color of the nameplate on the building. It was the color of the old masthead when the C-J first went to spot color, and you still see the color green in the C-J’s classified advertising.
I haven’t visited the new site enough to register an opinion, but I just hope they don’t bury their blog links like they used to. It took me forever to find the C-J’s blogs, unlike the Herald-Leader or even Cincinnati.com.
Speaking of the C-J, has anybody received a copy of the digital edition? I actually read it online today and I came away impressed with the ease of use.
7 Steve Magruder (I, not D or R) // Mar 19, 2008 at 12:16 am
The city’s colors, as observed in the seal and flag, are what looks to be royal blue and gold.
If they’re in the seal and flag, which were likely approved by the Metro Council, they’re official.
8 Steve Magruder (I, not D or R) // Mar 19, 2008 at 12:19 am
Also meant to say that just because the lettering on the side of the C-J building happens to have been done in green, that doesn’t mean it’s the newspaper’s colors.
Note that even with the printed, partially color newspaper today, “The Courier-Journal” is printed in black ink, not green.
9 Anony Mouse // Mar 19, 2008 at 1:37 am
It’s terrible. I had trouble finding several of the categories that used to be dominated on the old (and much more aesthetically pleasing page).
Gannett= downfall of print media
10 Thomason // Mar 19, 2008 at 11:40 am
Design, ‘look & feel’ comes in 2nd place to useablility and navigability. The old CJ website was the worst, major newspaper website in the U.S. It was slow, poorly-organized, and just overall minimally useful.
The new version is an improvement, but it’s still way behind most of the other major U.S. newspaper (if the CJ is still in the ‘major’ category).
11 tbrauch // Mar 21, 2008 at 12:16 am
Who cares about the website. Maybe I’m one of the few people who still read the print version but I want to know what the heck happened to it? The comics are all f’ed up. There’s no headings on the columns anymore. It just looks unfinished to me.
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