What Newspapers Still Don’t Understand About the Web is a short article by Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 on, you guessed it, how newspapers fail online. As a test case, Karp uses The Washington Post and a recent storm in Washington D.C.:

This is the WASHINGTON Post, right? So where’s the news about Washington? We just got pounded by a nasty storm — but it’s not homepage worthy.

Despite his initial difficulty in finding information on his first go, he did later find it in the Metro section, but not before heading to Google and getting it there. A few readers lambasted Karp in the comments for being a “stupid user”, but Karp makes a good point in a rejoinder post.

Here’s the problem — my failure to find the information I wanted is not MY problem, because I went to Google and found it. I succeeded. The failure is the site’s problem, because I abandoned it and went instead to a site that would help me succeed without having to be smarter.

Basically, the solution to Karp’s difficulty finding information on the Post website is logging in (or digging deeper through the website). He logs in, customizes his homepage, and bam! local news is the first thing he sees. But who cares about how smart users navigate? If any users are leaving your website to find information that is ON YOUR WEBSITE, something is wrong.

Karp addresses his criticisms to the newspaper industry, but it is hard to not to generalize them to any type of website. The web is a new beast, and users are expecting more-and-more to find information nonlinearly (or, you know…hyperlinearly). Having navigation that forces users to traverse the website as if it were comprised of sequential pages is wrong. This isn’t print.

So what is the solution? It differs on a case-by-case basis, of course, but the bottom-line is that newspapers (specifically) need to bring more focus to their web-only content, while still allowing easy access to the traditional news that is their bread and butter. Basically, as Karp says, good content is no longer enough. Websites also need to make that content accessible to users at all levels.

I’ll sign off by saying Karp has a lot of good ideas in the above links, but they are drowned beneath nitpicking and cat-calling. Kidiot.

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