Journalism design: 100 years back to the future
As the Guardian celebrates its 50,000 edition
I noticed that the 100 year-old version (see left) is very different to its current paper version in design, but curiously similar to a RSS feed aggregator page.
It has the same level plane which allows the reader to decide what is the most important story, simply assembling news on separate pages which you have to filter and organise for yourself.
In that sense it highlights how online functionality is in some ways still behind the old technology. As I discovered trying to read the new one-section Independent on Sunday, newspapers are brilliant for flicking through until you find something you want to read. Unfortunately, the Sindy has nothing I wanted to read and so I quickly returned to my PDA and my Netvibes RSS aggregator page….
Online journalism has many advantages over its paper version, but it still needs to work much harder at usability. Newspapers took a century to work up the ultra user friendly objects we now have. News websites and blogs will have to work a bit quicker than that if they are to celebrate 50,000 editions.
June 12th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
[...] Contemplating the Guardian’s 50,000th edition, it occurs to Charlie Beckett that early newspapers were a lot like RSS: It has the same level plane which allows the reader to decide what is the most important story, simply assembling news on separate pages which you have to filter and organise for yourself. [...]
June 12th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
[Pulls out electron scanning microscope, prints page, inserts page under microscope]
“Hey, you’re right, those two things *do* kinda look sorta similar.”
Um, would you mind linking to a larger version of those two images, pretty please?
June 12th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Hi Jim,
There is now a link to the Guardian’s gallery of historic editions which is remarkably hard to find on their site!:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2007/jun/08/1?picture=329997379
June 13th, 2007 at 2:26 am
[...] Journalism design: 100 years back to the future The design of this old newspaper is curiously similar to a RSS feed. (tags: web news newspaper design history rss) [...]