Good and Worse Websites
For me, the New York Times website is easy to read, has good content placing and is easy to navigate. The website has an appealing look, much like that of the paper version. If you open the screen shot, or go on nytimes.com itself, you will see that every article is easily separated from the rest with white space and usually a light grey line that does not distract. All the titles of the articles are written in one font and all the subtitles are written in another. No one article glares out above the rest. All the articles are also segregated according to relevance (notice all the ISIS articles are placed together) and section of the newspaper (videos are on the bottom, editorials on the right). The website is also very easy to browse with easy to access sections and a relatively good search option.
New York Times screen shot
On the other hand the website of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica is somewhat annoying to use. At first glance, it would seem that there is more space devoted to each article. However, each space actually has links to number of related articles. There are virtually no subtitles to further explain what the articles are about. The font of most of the site is a Arial, a Helvetica offshoot. It can be seen very well from far away and therefore is a favorite of the yellow press paper newspapers (among which La Repubblica is generally not counted). The font also tends to really stand out above the rest, which can make reading difficult. The article placement is also unfortunate. Between a discussion of ECB policy and ISIS there are a series of articles (highlighted in blue) about the death of a bear and the rage of ecologists.
La Repubblica screen shot
