Comments on: Long-anticipated launch of Las Vegas Sun redesign

By: Teaching Online Journalism » Why the Las Vegas Sun is so great (Part 1)

Teaching Online Journalism » Why the Las Vegas Sun is so great (Part 1) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 13:11:59 +0000

[...] that journalists CAN find ways to make journalism relevant to audiences. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of what they’ve done out there in Las [...]

By: Brandon Mount

Brandon Mount — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:56:50 +0000

The events search is at the bottom of a huge long list of events, and the current implementation does not allow for user submitted events.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/events/2008/jan/29/

as well this calendar placement is really weird… (note it’s appearance at the bottom of column 2.)
http://www.lasvegassun.com/events/ongoing/152/

Basically this is a web 1.0 newssite with hd video and flash photo galleries.

There is no UGC, you can’t even post your own photos? I am sure the ugc will come as the site evolves but they should have launched with those features.

Maybe it is really hard in Ellington to do user submitted multimedia?

By: Tom Altman

Tom Altman — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:10:47 +0000

It’s definitely “OK” design - very good, when you look only at newspapers.

I often wonder what some of the “modern” web designers would do with a media site if you left them go crazy with it. It seems like we (myself included) tend to gravitate towards 3 column layouts.

It will interesting to see if the plan is to build traffic then monetize it with ads later.

Great Post!

By: albert

albert — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:33:58 +0000

Ahh, I’m not as tuned in to the online journalism blogosphere as I could be.

By: Nicholas Bergus

Nicholas Bergus — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:02:42 +0000

@Mindy

The lack of advertising is accounted for by the Sun’s JOA, at least per Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive’s Rob Curley. His thoughts on the people and the site are worth skimming, BTW.

Dave Toplikar, The Sun’s managing editor for new media, said “I actually got to do everything I wanted to do.” The ability for someone in charge of a newspaper’s online operation to say that has to be rare.

The site’s home page is redesigned every day! By real designers! How cool is that?!

By: dtr

dtr — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:05:56 +0000

The first thing I noticed was the absence of advertising, and I have to admit I enjoyed it. It’s difficult to design for the screen when animated gifs or other banners need to be wedged in, and more difficult to find content sometimes.

I wonder if the wider page makes it possible to accommodate advertising in a manner that still gives the space impact?

And I wonder how necessary advertising is at all on the lead page? The notion that everything has to be contained in a single first glance, and that no one ever clicks again, seems counter to what we know about most web sites.

So many newspaper web sites are designed the same that it’s nice to have something to compare.

Just a thought.

By: Mindy

Mindy — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:48:05 +0000

@albert: Jeff Croft said so. And Zach Wise tells us more.

By: albert

albert — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:30:44 +0000

Patrick, how are you able to tell what CMS the site is running? Are you just familiar with Ellington and recognize certain features of it?

By: Mindy

Mindy — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:32:35 +0000

@Steve: You’re right, and I considered pointing that out. I couldn’t find any advertising on the site. So how are they supporting it? And with the design as it is, if they do get advertisers, are they prepared to just swap out editorial modules and replace them with ads?

By: JohnofScribbleSheet

JohnofScribbleSheet — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:32:56 +0000

Now thats a good news site, other people should take a look.