The Los Angeles Crimes Published by Unknown - On 4:55 PM - This post haved 0 comments

The Los Angeles Times website is in some serious need of artistic and creative intervention. The website is sparse, unimaginative and boring. So boring, that it is almost unlawful, and a crime. One would think that since this is an online website, more features and design would be implemented-things that would not otherwise be possible in a print edition. But in this case, the creativity seems to be displayed in their print versions.

On the homepage, there is little dominant art aside from the one featured picture which does not, at least, today, have any sort of action or interest.

The rest of the images or graphics lack any kind of artistic or informative context. The layout, although it is very clean, is very simple with just visuals and black and white text. There isn't even any kind of movement to the page, whether it be a slide show or a simple excerpt from a story while hovering over the title.

While it is easy for me to criticize the simplicity of the site, this could be entirely intentional for the times.

It is no secret that printed newspapers are struggling financially, and perhaps in order to lure and entice readers to keep or buy subscriptions to the L.A. times, they keep their online material plain, while their printed editions are much more visual and alluring.


One interesting feature of the webpage is offered at the very bottom of the homepage. The reader is able to download a PDF version of the daily front page only. While it may allow access to see the real visuals and access of the print version, it doesn't give the reader any real push to purchase a physical subscription to the paper.

The Daily Trojan-More than safe sex Published by Unknown - On 4:13 PM - This post haved 0 comments

The Daily Trojan is the student newspaper of the University of Southern California. Written, edited and managed entirely by students at the university.

The DT website itself is a very structured page, one that can possibly pass as a professional newspaper. In some instances, the USC website might even be superior to other papers that are professional.

The website is clean, with the perfect amount of white space that makes it appear to have ample information without being too overwhelming. There is a small advertisement in the top right hand corner that is noticeable but not distracting in any manner.

Sections of the newspaper are divided by category, and from there, a user can scroll over the category and choose a subcategory. For example, news is divided by "crime, politics, government" etc.

There are feature articles directly underneath the switch box and another small side box which features trending tweets and tags.

The only critique I have is the mild redundancy. When the user scrolls down to the very bottom, the news categories are repeated from the top (Opinion, lifestyle, news, sports), granted the titles of the articles are listed under the headers, but maybe if the articles are to be showcased, they should just be included in the featured articles further up. I feel that by omitting this portion the user can guide himself to whichever section he prefers. By doing this, the length of the website will be much shorter.