I’ve mentioned here and there how The Economist has been — really, really, honestly, totally, prove me wrong! — entering the internet era. 😉
Well, you should finally start to see some changes.
Our new home page will go live at the beginning of July. You can see a mock-up here, and you can take tell the web designers what you think about it here.
Hannibal and Me: life lessons from history 
Too busy. Already busy from many advertisements, but those are probably unavoidable. Less is more – I believe users will not have a problem with navigating to the content they’re interested in. Don’t overload the front page – we’re spoilt from Google’s 42max.
Agreed. It’s not quite how I envisioned it….
The Economist has entered the Internet era indeed. I am following them on Twitter now. Here’s they’re latest tweet:
Failure to stem the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico spells trouble for BP
Oh really?
Unfortunately, their tweets have no bylines, so it is difficult to assign credit to a particular individual for the incisiveness of observations like this.
they’re … their … there … oh well
Now that’s what I call foresight. Founded in 1843 and they knew Twitter would come. Stopped adding bylines.
Unshaken PP.
New Economist tweet:
Males can take many routes to reproductive success
That’s swell, but don’t they have anything on financial success and how to make a living? (I don’t need many routes. Just one.)
For some stories it’s hard to tell from the headline if it’s worth clicking and waiting an unkown amount of time for the underlying news page to load.
For instance, for the triply-stacked headline:
The secret life of ants
It’s a bug’s life
A Harvard myrmecologist is not just the Darwin of the ant world, but its Homer too
(with an accompanying picture of ants transporting leaves in the wrong direction: further up the limb)
there is nothing to say that the underlying news page is a book review of:
Anthill. By E.O. Wilson. W.W. Norton; 378 pages; $24.95 and £17.99.
The review is excellent all round, and the stacked headline will amuse readers of the paper edition who can see it’s a book review of Wilson’s new book, but these clever headlines are annoying on a webpage where one needs to know ahead of time if the underlying story is worth waiting for.
In short: the traditional Economist headlines/teasers don’t translate well onto the webpage.
I’ve long argued that we get rid of the print headlines/teasers on the web. It’s worst in the RSS feeds, which are pure confusion.
But the problem with book reviews applies to other newspapers too: I’ve never understood why a review should have a title (of the review), author (of the review), and THEN the title and author of the book being reviewed.
The book’s title should be the title of the article.
I have an iPad (yes, me, long story). I find it very difficult to read, much less enjoy reading any magazines in e-form. I can never find Bagehot, Lexington, etc. On paper, I always fall for the article with the pithy photo and caption. That’s lost in e-form. Are there any magazines/papers that look the same electronically as on paper? Why not the Economist?