New look news
Perth readers will no doubt be aware that the West Australian has undergone a makeover. It reminds me of a cross between the Financial Review and the Guardian — but with the same old West content.
Elsewhere, The Age has implemented a new, standards-compliant design. Joseph tells us it’s the work of Peter Ottery and Andrew Coffey.
If only the West Australian would engage them to fix up its website, which is one of the worst news sites I’ve ever had the misfortune to visit.
Same old West content? You can’t be reading too closely …
perhaps. Gareth, anything that’s not “old left”, isn’t read all that carefully by some?
What chance, by the way Gareth, of some NEW comment on your “old” site?
(But you’re right, the website is a pile of trash).
There’s a few new columnists, but I don’t think they’re earth-shattering. The news content hasn’t changed, as far as I can tell.
I’m inclined to wonder whether theres some fairfax involvement here. I just noticed there was an *awfully* large number of Age (I *think* the age is fairfax?) articles.
I gotta say, I dont like the new look of the West at all. Reminds me way too much of east state papers and most of those are shiet.
Now I note theyve upped the font from 8.something to 9.something. Supposed to be easier to read. Watch that space. What they MEAN to say, is “less content”.
Its that old undergrad observation that 11 point fonts and 1.5 spacing adds a few more pages to that 2K word essay without a greatly noticable change in visible density.
And where the hell has Alston gone?
The west has lost the plot imho. From a newspaper that was once praised by Media Watch as the closeset to an ‘unbiased’ paper as Australia had on offer (based on Media watches assesment of most being pro war in GWar 2 , SMH being anti war, and the West sitting on the fence) to a complete govt mouth piece.
Gerald Henderson? Boo! Reds under the bed.
As one Journalist wag once said , to the expense of his career.. “Bring back Mooney”.
The West has had some kind of content-sharing deal with Fairfax for a while now. Henderson’s columns are also run in the SMH and the Age, but we’ve been getting them since before the redesign, so that’s nothing new.
Re: the fonts. The easiest way to improve readability is to increase the space between lines. They could have done that without increasing the font size. So yeah, looks like we’re getting less content now.