Also probably worth mentioning while on the subject all my research and experience added up to designs that are very close to Al Jeezera.
Perhaps I just favor it because it resembles my own thinking but I believe they have one of the best designed news sites out there: http://english.aljazeera.net
Clean, crisp, clear, all gridded up nice and tidy. Handling information overload well.
Being a new kid on the block, no legacy systems or clients to contended with, learning from every one else's mistakes I assume play a huge part in why Al Jeezera looks so good.
If I can remember the worst news site I've seen I'll post it. Its a state level TV station from America somewhere, shocking abuses in design. It was like trying to read at a pocket dictionary from 10 feet away, total text chaos.
One of the best online newspaper designs I've seen recently is the Indian paper The Hindu (http://www.thehindu.com/). While most Indian newspapers will give you eye-cancer just by looking at them (ex: The Times of India, which is one of the oldest newspapers in the country also has one of the most horrible online editions, plastered with spammy ads and horrible layout). The Hindu has always been a bit of a boring (some might call it lack of sensationalism) but it's got an excellent new redesign. (The original design was like a 1995 webpage)
Also up there in my list is NPR (http://www.npr.org/) and PBS (http://www.pbs.org/). Not technically newspapers, but their pages are mostly about news delivery.
The Hindu looked bad too, a couple of years ago. They started testing a new interface at beta.thehindu.com for sometime before using the new interface for everyone.
The Hindu has always been a bit of a boring (some might call it lack of sensationalism) but it's got an excellent new redesign. True.
I love having images to scan instead of just headlines (which Andy seems to detest), so when my local newspaper redesigned their page, I fell in love http://www.sydsvenskan.se/ (Swedish)
Breaking news at the very top, then a top story, then the other top 4 stories. Then a simple scrolling list of the latest news by time descending (great when you check in a few times a day).
Of course, as a local paper they have a lot less content making it a much easier job than something on the scale of the NYT.
Yep, I'm working on a political community lobby site ATM.
Essentially I am planning on creating a build your laws site. More or less a wiki with better forum support and auditing control.
A major talk back radio station in my country is prepared to support it if I finished it. I also looked after them as my role was looking after the "current affairs" suite, which included radio as well as TV.
But I have to build it myself. I have to many features that using a turn-key solution would be more harmful than helpful, and a wiki isn't really that hard to build. But some of the features I want I have never seen implemented else where so it may be a trial by fire with lots of problems.
I can easily get funding for it because of its ability to be high profile, but a conflict of interest arises taking money. For it to work I need to be able to take a stance against other lobby groups, takings a stand for the community, make the user feel like they are changing the world. And TBH if it can make noise in the talk back crowd then hot topics will probably end getting shunted into politicians faces.
Taking money corporates instantly devalues my only assets however. I'll work that out though, lots of talk still to be done, and I need a web concept up. Current all my work has been at a database level handling versioning, commenting within comments, hierarchy structures and stuff. Designing a living document is quite fun :)
I also own a really decent domain name which I plan to launch political satire off. Basically many journos I know I want an outlet to say things that the eat at them every day. You could say something along the lines of Stephen Colbert but done news/blog style. Thats on my back burner though, I'll get to it when I get to it, which maybe never.
Perhaps I just favor it because it resembles my own thinking but I believe they have one of the best designed news sites out there: http://english.aljazeera.net
Clean, crisp, clear, all gridded up nice and tidy. Handling information overload well.
Being a new kid on the block, no legacy systems or clients to contended with, learning from every one else's mistakes I assume play a huge part in why Al Jeezera looks so good.
If I can remember the worst news site I've seen I'll post it. Its a state level TV station from America somewhere, shocking abuses in design. It was like trying to read at a pocket dictionary from 10 feet away, total text chaos.