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Question of the day
Tuesday, Jan 27, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller * It’s been up for a few weeks now and you’ve had a chance to get used to it. Your thoughts on the Chicago Sun-Times’ new website? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please. online polls
And, just my luck, there’s a typo in the poll. I’ll see if I can fix it, but it’s supposed to say every fiber of my being, not ever.
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- White Denim - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:04 pm:
Every browser I access it on, the site looks like an Angelfire user page from 1996.
- Sandy - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:05 pm:
get a refund from whomever was paid to work on this site. Horrible, terrible
- 47th Ward - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:06 pm:
The new ST site? Meh. I’m indifferent.
Chris Cillizza’s list of the best state house reporters in the country? That’s worth reading. Congrats Rich. Nice recognition.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/01/27/the-fixs-2015-list-of-best-state-political-reporters/
- Chris - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:08 pm:
Can’t find *anything*.
It smacks of Windows 8, which is so bad and so despised that Microsoft is skipping over 9 to hope the stink doesn’t attach to Windows 10.
- Someone you should know - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:10 pm:
I believe this puts it best, if I put it in the terminology of English Soccer Announcers
Dreadful, Awful, Torrid, Tragic………
- Norseman - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:13 pm:
I primarily use the mobile version. It sucks. I scroll through for highlights and then have to scroll back to the top to get to the navigation menu.
- Siriusly - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:14 pm:
It’s good. Anything better than what the Tribune did to theirs.
- A guy - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:14 pm:
It’s not that good. But, it’s not that bad. Spend a couple days in a row stopping in and you get the hang and rhythm of it. With websites today, they’re either really good or really blah. I can get what I need there. It’s ok.
- B-non - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:16 pm:
Terrible. And their iPhone app is worse. It still listed sport stories about the Bears were going to interview Todd Bowles days after they hired John Fox. Wold you want to keep reading an old newspaper? Silly.
- Arthur Andersen - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:17 pm:
What Norseman said.
- William j Kelly - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:18 pm:
Love it, in and out with all the info i need.
- Archiesmom - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:22 pm:
At least it isn’t as bad as the app, which is awful. It could almost make me like the Trib website.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:22 pm:
Can’t find anything anymore… Have seriously stopped visiting it.
- Responsa - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:22 pm:
Hate it. More and more sites are configured for mobile users. They are OK, I guess, IF one is accessing from a smart phone exclusively, (most of us aren’t) AND, if one trusts the site to choose as headline grabbers what is most important and newsworthy to readers (they’ve already proved they usually don’t warrant that trust).
- Gooner - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:26 pm:
I was tempted to go with “hate” but that category is limited to the Tottenham Hotspurs and a very short list of others.
However, for a media site, it is absolutely terrible. The organization is bad. You can’t quickly find stories of interest. There is way too much emphasis on national stuff that I would never go the ST for.
Right now, it is nearly irrelevant. They have a few NFL writers, but I don’t go directly to the ST to read them. Instead, I use links from Twitter.
I don’t know why the ST exists anymore. They no longer do anything well.
- Michelle Flaherty - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:27 pm:
Now I know why McKinney quit.
- JoanP - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:31 pm:
Don’t know about EVERY fiber of my being, because at least it loads way faster than the old one, but it is darn ugly.
I do not go to a newspaper site to see twitter feeds and links to the Apple Store.
I DO hate, with every fiber of my being, infinite loading, and graphics-heavy “news” pages. Also white text on dark backgrounds.
And that font! Criminy. It’s awful.
Okay, maybe I do hate it with every fiber of my being.
- Downstate GOP Faithless - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:31 pm:
somebody is not telling the truth…nobody could possibly love that site
- Wordslinger - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:31 pm:
It’s terrible. Almost as if they purposely made it hard to find anything. Can’t imagine who vetted this.
- Rich Miller - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:32 pm:
Regularly crashes my Firefox browser, doesn’t render properly on Safari and Firefox, difficult if not impossible to find older stories, ssslllloooowwww loading, too many graphics, not enough content, and for a while it was weirdly sending me to a site with all its media properties and didn’t have a link to editorials on the “opinion” tag that doesn’t show up on my Firefox browser, but does show up on Safari, but Safari until recently wouldn’t display the stories properly, forcing me to paste the link into my Firefox browser.
Other than that, I love it.
- Amalia - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:37 pm:
what Gooner said. and special tip on the Tottenham Hotspurs part! (No more FA Cup competition for them!)
- VanillaMan - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:38 pm:
It is a complete disaster.
Looks like instead of using Bootstrap, they used Bootcrap.
- Gooner - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:40 pm:
Speaking of Tottenham, Amalia, Google “lackadaisical.” It seems like there are Gooners at Google.
- Wabash - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:44 pm:
Voted Hate It With Every Fiber In My Being. Too difficult to use. Paper will be gone soon anyway probably.
- Oswego Willy - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:48 pm:
Between - Noresman - and Rich’s comment, it really covers my experiences, but to add;
I don’t go in the site anymore unless I can get a link to the specific article I want. I don’t go, rarely I don’t go, just to see the news of the day.
“Hate…”
To Rich Miller, - 47th Ward - & - Norseman -’s links,
Congrats to you Rich. Well deserved earned accolades. Way to go.
OW
p.s. Congrats to Amanda Vinicky and Rick Pearson as well. Solid Crew the three of you.
- Chicago Cynic - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:49 pm:
Sucks sucks sucks sucks. But why are you only picking on the ST site. The new Trib site is equally awful. It was a horrific “upgrade” that I hear killed their traffic.
- Bobbysox - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:53 pm:
Don’t like it. Baseball is lumped together so that articles on the Sox and Cubs are next to each other. That’s just plain wrong.
- Left Leaner - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:55 pm:
Looks like a cheap tabloid designed someone who hates the Sun-Times.
- Commonsense in Illinois - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 1:56 pm:
Can’t really find anything. If it isn’t on the page, forget it.
- Ron Burgundy - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 2:05 pm:
Bad layout and color scheme. And the weird clickbait type stuff at the bottom is bad. I find it very weird that that section on the Sun-Times site has links to multiple Tribune stories. What’s up with that?
- Robert the Bruce - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 2:06 pm:
Indifferent/neutral.
Seeing anything but the top story is difficult, search bar is odd, and what’s with the big section devoted to health&wellness - sponsored content?
On my desktop, I really like the top navigation - makes it easy to find things. That’s its saving grace. But there’s a popup that covers the navigation graphic on my droid phone!
- haverford - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 2:09 pm:
Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.
I couldn’t believe anything could be worse than the Tribune redesign - but kudos guys, you did it.
- Rich Miller - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 2:11 pm:
===The new Trib site ===
We did a question on that site weeks ago.
- CircularFiringSquad - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 2:15 pm:
Not as bad as Trib site
Guessin’ it won’t be around long
- Former Ad Ops - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 2:18 pm:
These newspapers want to be responsive…keep “developing” new products, pain for employees every several months, pain for consumers…
- ??? - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 2:25 pm:
I read the print version almost every day, so I didn’t know they’d changed their site until you mentioned it. I visited it. Dislike.
- ??? - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 2:26 pm:
Oops. I didn’t explain my vote. Too many ad pop-ups, not very easy to navigate. Generally not aesthetically pleasing.
- vince glothor - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 2:31 pm:
What Wabash and haverford said.
Can’t navigate, slow, but ads pop up real good!
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 2:32 pm:
Discombobulated … can’t find anything on it. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack.
- OldSmoky2 - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 3:01 pm:
It’s just awful. As Rich alluded to, with Firefox at least, the buttons for different sections under headings like Opinion are hidden behind an ugly black banner. The old site looked dated, but the new one looks like they downloaded some $9.99 “Build your own website in less than an hour!” software and told an intern to come up with something. Ugh.
- Rich Miller - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 3:13 pm:
===told an intern to come up with something===
The most depressing part of this is the parent company fancies itself as an innovative multi-media firm.
Hey, my own site redesign was horrible. But I did it myself, and at least I admitted my mistake within hours and killed it off. And my current site isn’t the most beautiful thing in the world, but it’s functional, loads pretty fast and is chock full of info - none of which can be said about the Sun-Times’ site.
- Precinct Captain - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 3:15 pm:
It’s absolutely awful. Hard to navigate, has poor consistency across browsers, hard to find stories more than a couple of days old.
- Rich Miller - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 3:18 pm:
I’d really like to hear from the three “Love it” voters.
- Chicago Cynic - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 3:31 pm:
Sorry Rich - didn’t see the Trib Q. How do the ST answers compare?
- jerry 101 - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 3:45 pm:
*clicks on link to new suntimes website*
“Internet Explorer has stopped working…”
- OldSmoky2 - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 3:47 pm:
==I’d really like to hear from the three “Love it” voters.==
They’re busy meeting with the editor to discuss redesigning the website again.
- Tom - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 3:56 pm:
they used to have a tab for columnists–about the only thing the paper is good at–and they disappeared. I hate it. I really don’t bother with it any more. They have made it a pain in my rear to get around.
- Rich Miller - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 4:04 pm:
===and they disappeared===
They’re back now, but maybe your browser isn’t displaying the tab.
- Cheryl44 - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 4:09 pm:
I can’t read the ST anymore. It’s just too sad.
- CLJ - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 4:15 pm:
Just terrible. The new digital strategy of the Chicago papers must be to make their websites so bad that people will pay for the printed version.
- Wabash - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 4:18 pm:
CLJ: I seriously think the same thing. Both sites are nearly impossible to use adequately. No other explanation is plausible.
- Jeanne Dough - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 4:27 pm:
I still want a newspaper site to look like a newspaper. I want to read text, not view video and see what’s trending. Guess I’m a dinosaur.
- Amalia - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 4:39 pm:
@ Gooner, fun!!!!! now if they put Arsenal up when one googles speed, we can know they associate Lewis Hamilton with the Gunners….fun appearance on Men in Blazers!
- Wisconsinite - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 5:00 pm:
The two stories I clicked on from the “Milwaukee” page (coming from the Suntimes.com home page) each contained multiple punctuation or grammatical errors. I guess that’s what you get when you use interns and no editors.
Not to mention the design makes my head spin.
- Joe M - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 5:49 pm:
I don’t like the new format at all. And on a side note I don’t like the way they still break the News out into Chicago News - Nation/World News - and do not have a heading of Illinois News. It makes it appear as if the only news happening in Illinois is Chicago News.
Chicago News - Nation/World News, which one does one click on to get Illinois news?
- Anonymiss - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 8:23 pm:
No worries about the typo, Rich. I hate with every fiber of my being ever.
- Excessively Rabid - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 9:41 pm:
The one fiber of my being that cares, hates it.
- Chicago Bars - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 9:58 pm:
That absolutely awful interface has got to be a bust out strategy by the current owners so they can say they tried their best before filing for bankruptcy.
- P. - Tuesday, Jan 27, 15 @ 10:04 pm:
The story selection is embarrassing - their attempts at being nationally relevant via stories about Chris Brown’s bday party shooting is laughable. The STNG yellow and black (get it, STING … a bee? or something) whatever … It’s just that much harder to find the local stories, of which it seems there are a whopping four or five a day and more like three a day on the weekends - the site is stagnant Friday through Monday a.m. More happens on a high school newspaper websites on a weekend. So stupid. It’s just awful.
- Anyone Remember - Wednesday, Jan 28, 15 @ 9:02 am:
Sad to say, the St. Louis Post Dispatch and nearly every other Illinois newspaper website is better than the CST or Trib web sites.
- Chicago60609 - Wednesday, Jan 28, 15 @ 5:29 pm:
Even if one wanted to read a story, it takes 4 to 6 clicks to actually get there. If the owners paid for this, they deserve to go under. Maybe a new, better product will rise from its ashes. The great Chicago Daily News was absorbed by this paper. Sidney J. Harris must be rolling over in his grave.