Why NYTimes.com is a pleasure online
Khoi Vinh, design director of NYTimes.com, was answering readers’ questions online for the past five days.
What he looks for when hiring a new employee:
[A]n ideal applicant would have very strong traditional graphic design skills; in-depth training in usability and interaction design; practical experience coding XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and Flash; a commercially viable comfort level with database and application programming; and last but not least sound news judgment based on a deep understanding of current affairs.
Mind you, almost nobody possesses this exact combination of skills. If there’s a school or curriculum somewhere that’s turning out these kinds of candidates regularly, I’d be very interested to know.
On serving many masters:
… we have to achieve a delicate balance between the concerns of our newsroom, our business, our technological infrastructure, our brand and, most important, the people who use the site. Just about anything that appears on any given page is tied to some intricate combination of editorial judgment, revenue, technical restriction and user behavior. …
There’s no magic formula for this, unfortunately. In some cases we do find it better to design a feature so that people are required to click through it. In other instances, we find scrolling or simply presenting all of the available options up front is the better course. And at times there are design solutions that everyone feels are the simplest and best, but that can’t be implemented due to some pragmatic constraint imposed by any of the many interdependent factors driving the site.
On working with editors and reporters:
[B]logs are a great example of how we work together. Each blog we create begins as a conversation between editors and designers. Because they’re so highly focused on specific subject areas, we really try hard to create the right design solution for those particular editorial needs.
… Over the past two-plus years, as The Times newsroom has embraced blogging with tremendous alacrity, we’ve created over 150 blogs, and over a third of those remain active today.
More at the source.
Good stuff. I like that Vinh doesn’t expect anyone to meet every single category - not looking for an Internet Jesus.
I guess what I don’t get - isn’t the NYT losing money and instituting layoffs? I understand that they’ve had a great deal more innovation than most newspapers, but given they’ve still been slipping, do we really want to take our cues from them? Or do you feel they’re going to turn it around at some point?
I’m not a ‘train for print, pray for print’ dinosaur. I just don’t know if taking cues from businesses still in a slow decline is advisable. I mean, these are the kind of skills you’ve advocated for as long as I’ve read the blog, Mindy - I just don’t see why saying the NYT agrees with you validates your point. Is it to show there are jobs out there for the skills you talk about? I can see that, but given the NYT hasn’t been doing so hot lately (along with everyone else) I don’t know if they’re the best example of a potential job for J-School grads.
In other news, congrats on the Asia trip! Have fun!
April 28, 2008 at 12:56 pm