Abbett.org
Simply News: The Plain Herald
Since my youth, I've been interested in news media design -- juvenile neighborhood newsletters, teen youth group newspapers, college magazines, blogging -- but I've gotten out of the habit lately, especially in non-digital form.
These days, I mostly just debate the merits of print journalism with friends and look with admiration at Jacek Utko's newspaper redesigns.
So, when the Boston Globe launched a haute new premium website, it got me thinking:
- Why should clean design be offered only to paying customers?
- Could I take local news sources' RSS feeds and design a handsome site I'd use every day? A site that didn't look like it was automatically generated by a computer?
- Could I use responsive design techniques to have a single adaptive site for desktop and mobile devices?
- Could I leverage existing web services to rapidly build a purely client-side implementation?
- How long could it last before the C&Ds arrive?
So I spent an evening, and I built it. I used it for a few days and realized it should be pretty easy do this for any metropolitan area. So I spent a few more evenings, and implemented eight other locales.
One domain registration later, and we have The Plain Herald.
Here's the design strategy:
- Focus on the local content. Metropolitan news and sports, plus my town, at the forefront.
- National news from a serious source. By and large, local papers don't have their own national reporters anymore, so I chose a source that does.
- World news from world newspapers. Get your news from the locals, not from some American reporter who phones his work in.
- Remember me. Remember my town, and my country of interest, and show that news when I come back.
Sure, there's a lot I don't see since I'm not visiting Boston.com anymore. But I feel like I'm being informed now -- and not pandered to, shouted at, or advertised. It's just enough to remain an effective citizen.
Critique encouraged.
