16 February 2012

New Look Canberra Times (SMH template) site!

| martyo
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“The Canberra Times is about to unveil an exciting new online experience with a new-look website at canberratimes.com.au

Exciting to whom I wonder?

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Gungahlin Al7:07 am 19 Feb 12

damien haas said :

Annoyingly, all links to news articles from the olden days (pre this week) no longer work. I am aware of this as a person looking at CT articles linked from the ACT Light Rail website http://www.actlightrail.info/ emailed me about it.

Very annoying.

+1

Every link to everything broken. So every GCC article on the Facebook page or the GCC website now has dead links. Every RA article busted. Un-freaking-believable.

And site owners get pissed when people copy their content over in entirety instead of just linking to the content owner’s site? This is why. Seems you can’t trust any site other than your own to maintain continuity.

So CT are you going to fix this almighty screw-up, or do you expect every other linking site to rebuild their links to wherever the old article now resides (if anywhere)?? All that audience reach/advertising exposure gone.

I am thinking the local ABC people will now have to ‘pull their finger out’ – the ACT news on its website is hopeless and only seems to get updated once or twice a week, and even then, seems mainly to be about about ‘sport’ (which IMO is not actually news).
The CT website used to be comprehensively local. Now it’s not, and it’s visually untidy and ‘busy’ to boot. I wonder what prompted the change.

Annoyingly, all links to news articles from the olden days (pre this week) no longer work. I am aware of this as a person looking at CT articles linked from the ACT Light Rail website http://www.actlightrail.info/ emailed me about it.

Very annoying.

The format is unreadable, and despite claiming the site to be more interactive, it seems as though there is no way of commenting on, or interacting with the content. Epic fail

I-filed said :

VAST improvement over the old CBR Times site.

Er, no point launching an improved site, CBR Times, if the signup facility doesn’t work…

VAST improvement over the old CBR Times site.

Gungahlin Al5:18 pm 17 Feb 12

Cripes my Canberra Times RSS feed has gone totally over the top. Hundreds of posts…
Try pick the ACT-relevant stories out of that mess.

So is there a new RRS feed for the ACT News section? Nope.
Just Top, National and World.

Brilliant move CT. Delete.

Snarky said :

SnapperJack said :

…Sadly, the Fairfax papers show no sign of abandoning their hard left editorial policy and better reflecting the current public opinion so this is probably the last gasp from a terminally ill media empire.

[grin] Fairfax’s hard left editorial policy? I do believe you may be lost, sir – you should be making your valuable contributions over here, not RA.

I guess he thought he would go for a short troll.

SnapperJack said :

…Sadly, the Fairfax papers show no sign of abandoning their hard left editorial policy and better reflecting the current public opinion so this is probably the last gasp from a terminally ill media empire.

[grin] Fairfax’s hard left editorial policy? I do believe you may be lost, sir – you should be making your valuable contributions over here, not RA.

yes yes jolly good what

welcome to the new canberra times. welcome autostart videos. welcome the annoying noise they make alot.

welcome autorefresh that reloads the page 40 times and chews up your downloads and make it looks like you viewed 40 ads when you did not. (advertisers think this function is absolutely super!)

welcome butchered aap stories that while better in their original form, must be changed a bit to put a local hamsters name on them.

welcome id & ip tracking. welcome datamining. welcome dataselling. privacy? what what? that went out of fashion years ago, old chum

jolly good

welcome!

Fairfax lost more than $400million during the most recent audit. The Canberra Times lost 6.6% of its circulation and advertising revenue is way down. Cost cutting has become necessary, especially since Fairfax has dropped the ball regarding putting their online content behind a paywall. So merging the CT site with the rest of Fairfax is a logical progression and might keep Fairfax out of receivership for a few more months.

Sadly, the Fairfax papers show no sign of abandoning their hard left editorial policy and better reflecting the current public opinion so this is probably the last gasp from a terminally ill media empire.

dtc said :

Well, I actually like it. Then again, I am used to the SMH site and thought the old CT site was terrible contentwise, so spent most of my newspaper time on SMH. The CT sitw now seems to give most of the SMH content plus local news, so works for me. Sure it may not be Canberra centric, but the Canberra news is hardly ever worth more than 4 or 5 articles per day anyway.

It is a bit crowded, but not impossible and there are often articles that never appear in print scattered around.

+1. I’m used to that format I guess. I find it easy to navigate and it’s an improvement on the other site, which was rats***.

Well, I actually like it. Then again, I am used to the SMH site and thought the old CT site was terrible contentwise, so spent most of my newspaper time on SMH. The CT sitw now seems to give most of the SMH content plus local news, so works for me. Sure it may not be Canberra centric, but the Canberra news is hardly ever worth more than 4 or 5 articles per day anyway.

It is a bit crowded, but not impossible and there are often articles that never appear in print scattered around.

If Rioters are anything to go by, I suspect an inundation of ads is the way of the future, judging by how many tightarses complain about ads but won’t support content by paying for subscriptions.

Myles Peterson2:16 pm 16 Feb 12

no comment … for now

markus_k said :

I’ve always hated the Sydney Morning Herald website.

Bah.

The SMH has the best-designed news site in the world.

Gungahlin Al2:10 pm 16 Feb 12

Wow. I guess the Canberra Times is now completely irrelevant.

Apart from @davpope’s great cartoons.
What a visual mess. Trying to squeeze an entire newspaper onto one web page?
So the page just goes on and on. It’s bigger than a broadsheet!

Thoroughly Smashed1:44 pm 16 Feb 12

Well at least I don’t have to make a custom style sheet for CT.

ad filled POS of a website. It hurts my eyes

miz said :

Yuk, I hate it – I don’t think I will be looking at it anymore as it is not local. Also can’t find the letters to the editor, which was always the most interesting bit!

Hmmm. The SMH version of the Text site has it, right at the bottom, in “columns”. But all the CT has, so far, is the editorial under that heading.

Dare I suggest writing a letter to ask them?! (runs away quickly).

There’s a secret little site appended to most Fairfax newspaper sites, where you just get the stories without the flashy blinky ads and rubbish. You just get the main url and stick /text/ after it. Seems to work for the CT:
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/text/

it’s a mixture of CT stories and other Fairfax stuff, but I just did a side by side comparo with today’s SMH version, and it’s quite different. If you scroll down past the sport, there’s the opinion articles, too.

Yuk, I hate it – I don’t think I will be looking at it anymore as it is not local. Also can’t find the letters to the editor, which was always the most interesting bit!

Yep. Another cluttered news paper site, nothing new.
Rather than inventing, it remains the same as the others. More traffic for RiotACT? Save the date in Google Analytics!

Staying on topic, one of the more user friendly news sites I have seen recently seen is CNN http://edition.cnn.com/

Rawhide Kid Part312:03 pm 16 Feb 12

Crap.

markus_k said :

I was wondering why the Canberra Times website appeared to have been hijacked by the Sydney Morning Herald. This is unfortunate, as I’ve always hated the Sydney Morning Herald website.
The page layout is now a cluttered mess (just like the SMH), and 90% of today’s content is just SMH articles re-badged under the Canberra Times moniker.

Same as The Age, Brisbane Times, WA today…..

They may as well just do an ‘ABC’ and have one website with the option to choose your local content.

I was wondering why the Canberra Times website appeared to have been hijacked by the Sydney Morning Herald. This is unfortunate, as I’ve always hated the Sydney Morning Herald website.
The page layout is now a cluttered mess (just like the SMH), and 90% of today’s content is just SMH articles re-badged under the Canberra Times moniker.

I used to really like the CT website’s detailed coverage of the Raiders and Brumbies, but both sections now just link to the SMH’s standard Union and League pages, which are of course Sydney-centric.

Given the CT website is now not even the CT website, I can’t see any real reason to actually visit it anymore.

CrocodileGandhi11:09 am 16 Feb 12

I don’t know whether I’m just unable to find it, but it appears as if there is no longer a section for local sport. Very disappointing if true.

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