28th
CNN WTF
Since CNN launched its redesigned site this past weekend, I’ve been struggling with something: Everyone seems to love the new design. Except me.
I’ll concede a certain lusciousness exists in the top 300 pixels of the home page. And some of the deeper, interior pages have been scrubbed clean of irrelevant nonsense and made more readable, more usable, in the process. And yeah, yeah, Jon, the rollovers in the main navigation are satisfying - insofar as a rollover can satisfy anything of consequence.
What bugs me is that a data set requiring the sophisticated handling of multifaceted hierarchical structures has been subjected to a sophomoric, absolutist policy of extreme reduction whereby only a very shallow, linear information hierarchy can be allowed to survive. The site allows for no nuance in the structural expression of editorial convictions. Am I seeing this wrong, or does such reductionism simply not sound the alarms of declining quality anymore?
My friends would have me believe either A) I’m wrong because HUGE did the redesign and HUGE is really really awesome and not to be questioned, or B) Maybe I’m sort of right but it’s really no big deal and I should have a drink with them on Friday.
After all, CNN is only the #1 news source in the U.S. And we’re a relatively insignificant nation with little need for an educated or sophisticated public. Who cares what the information architecture and design of our country’s #1 news site reflects about - and thereby provides - its viewing public?
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
