Long-anticipated launch of Las Vegas Sun redesign

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15, 2008, at 12:37 pm and is filed under design, innovation, journalism, multimedia, newspapers, online, usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

13 responses to “Long-anticipated launch of Las Vegas Sun redesign”

chris sinclair writes:

It’s got great things going for it. What I like:
1. first, the URL is logical. it also one a slot on the global nav, which will be sure to generate the attention it deserves.
2. outside the banner, full real-estate was taken advantage of, particularly in the immediate browser-visible space that’s visually driven by the latest stories (for those who have tons of “toolbars” viewable in their browser, which crowds actual browser-visible space) and keeps things viewable without having to scroll.
3. the 3 column, chronological and categorical layout is great. it’s consistent, leaving the user only to click.
January 15, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Steve Yelvington writes:

Nice and clean. But that’s easy when you have no advertising.
January 15, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Patrick Beeson writes:

Their new site also takes advantage of the Ellington CMS, which if used effectively, is the best publishing app in the business IHMO.

I’m glad to see another newspaper taking advantage of Django!
January 15, 2008 at 5:02 pm
JohnofScribbleSheet writes:

Now thats a good news site, other people should take a look.
January 16, 2008 at 5:32 am
Mindy writes:

@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?
January 16, 2008 at 8:32 am
albert writes:

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?
January 16, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Mindy writes:

@albert: Jeff Croft said so. And Zach Wise tells us more.
January 16, 2008 at 1:48 pm
dtr writes:

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.
January 16, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Nicholas Bergus writes:

@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?!
January 16, 2008 at 4:02 pm
albert writes:

Ahh, I’m not as tuned in to the online journalism blogosphere as I could be.
January 17, 2008 at 1:33 am
Tom Altman writes:

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!
January 22, 2008 at 10:10 am
Brandon Mount writes:

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?
February 5, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Teaching Online Journalism » Why the Las Vegas Sun is so great (Part 1) writes:

[...] 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 [...]
September 13, 2008 at 9:11 am