“She’ll never find me here…”
No one will ever believe me, but I had nothing to do with this.
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Author Archives: Matt Thomas
The Times Picayune Dies When We Needed It Most - New Orleans Tragedy
The Times Picayune is dead.
Allow me to rephrase. The Times PIcayune will produce a “more robust” expanded print version three days a week. Many staff members who won’t “have the opportunity to grow with the new organization” will be fired. Those remaining staff members will be offered much smaller salaries, and will be expected to work more hours, for less benefits.
Making History: Air Force Academy Graduates First Openly Gay Cadets
Via Getty Images
Devin Dwyer at ABC gives us a fantastic story about the first openly gay cadets graduating from the Air Force Academy.
“It’s just been really open, a lot of acceptance. I haven’t heard anyone say, ‘I hate this. I can’t serve in the military with this,’” said 3rd Class Cadet Kevin Wise, a second-year management major. “It’s a sense of ‘OK, this is their lifestyle, but they’re still the person I’ve spent 21 credit hours a semester next to or I’ve gone through this with,’” he said.
Slideshow: Post-Katrina T-P Front Pages
The reporters and editors at The Times-Picayune did some of their finest work in the days and weeks following Hurricane Katrina. They won a Pulitzer for it. Here are some of the eye-catching and emotional front pages published, in order of publication.
This kind of editorial design will be a thing of the past for the cities of New Orleans, Mobile, Birmingham, and Huntsville soon. Will companies like Newhouse/Advanced realize the importance of design and editorial and bring this to the web, or is it an art that will die along with the printed paper?
That's my president, changing hearts and minds. "The Obama Effect: Growing Number Of African Americans Come Out For Marriage Equality"
Via Think Progress:
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– 54 percent of African Americans support Obama’s position on same-sex marriage: A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that since Obama declared his support, “54 percent express a favorable viewof his position on the issue,” compared to “just 41 percent of African-Americans supported gay marriage in ABC/Post polls in mid-2011 and early 2012.”
That's leadership.
Texas Caviar
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One of the best parts of my job is that I stumble across awesome blogs on a daily basis as part of my work routine. While working on the Reader earlier this week I found a recipe for something called Texas Caviar, and oh my NOMS am I glad that I did. I made mine with Splenda and it’s fantastic, but you can use sugar if that’s the way you roll. Find the recipe at Becoming a Mrs., right here on WordPress.com.
Like this:
It Gets Worse
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The state of web design in the news business has always been bad, but it seems to be getting progressively, demonstrably worse. It’s not just that the designs are bad. It’s that the people making the designs don’t appear to have any desire at all to make the experience pleasurable for the reader — how likely you are to click an advertisement (intentionally or not) is clearly the only measure of success in this type of design.
NOLA.com recently “redesigned” their site — I use air quotes there because the design of articles has not changed at all — they’ve just added a terrible webfont, a lot of yellow, and a bunch of extra links in the header. Once you get beyond all the yellow, the article still looks exactly like it did 10 or so years ago when the site first launched, Verdana body text and all. They did add a “responsive” stylesheet — one so responsive that it’s been broken ever since the day it launched (prompting this initial reaction from me):
That design is responsive. Its response is "fuck you."—
Matt Thomas (@iammattthomas) May 10, 2012
How bad does the business of publishing free news articles in exchange for banner clicks have to get before something fundamental changes? Hard to say — even NYTimes.com, which now requires a subscription to read regularly, still hasn’t even attempted to use the design talents of their staff or modern web technologies to roll out a site more focused on article readability than ad visibility. But looking at the example above, I’d like to hope that we’ve almost hit the bottom.
UPDATE: On May 23, Advance Digital rolled out this new design to al.com, home of the major Alabama newspapers. There’s a great roundup of reaction to the redesign at Wade on Birmingham.
UPDATE 2: On May 24, the news broke that the New Orleans Times-Picayune will cease daily publication, scaling back to a thrice-weekly schedule. I’m sure I’m going to have more to say on this later, but for now, it’s just sad. I don’t know who at the Times-Picayune is being laid off as a result of this decision, but I have a feeling it’s a pretty safe bet to say it includes their entire design staff.
Like this:
Infographic of the day
Via NPR’s Planet Money team, this is very cool:
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know to look for Medicaid/Medicare down at the bottom undergoing massive growth. And as for defense, there’s clearly something to be said for ending the cold war (though, we could probably cut further still).
It's kind of shocking to see that Social Security hasn't really budged as a proportion of the federal budget in the last quarter century. International Affairs is exactly where you'd expect it, though.
FANCY BUILDING - DEAL WITH IT
So hilarious. Where is this building?
Harvey Milk Street is a go!
With all the stress of the North Carolina Amendment One vote today, we have some good news.
After a uninamious vote by the City Council Tuesday, San Diego will become the first city in the United States to name a street after Harvey Milk. Blaine Avenue, the street leading to the San Diego LGBT Community Center in Hillcrest, will be renamed Harvey Milk Street…
"Harvey Milk Street" sounds so great.
