Round up, Monday 26 July 2010
Post categories: round up
| 17:13 UK time, Monday, 26 July 2010
Over on the Radio 4 blog Feedback's Roger Bolton talks to Steve Herrmann about the redesigned news homepage. "...Garish, poorly laid out" says one listener and "I can't believe someone actually designed it to look like this...vile" says another. If you haven't seen it already creative director Paul Sissons blogged about the changes to the 91Èȱ¬ News site on the Internet blog and the reasoning behind the redesign.
The About the 91Èȱ¬ blog has got the details behind the launch of the World Music archive. The archive is on the Radio 3 website and includes an interactive map for those of us whose geography is better than our musical sensibilities.
The 91Èȱ¬ launched their first mobile app having secured 91Èȱ¬ Trust approval following a false start earlier this year. :
"The 91Èȱ¬ Trust has given plans to deliver content through dedicated smartphone applications (apps) the green light, after ruling that they were not a significant change to the 91Èȱ¬'s existing public services and did not need further scrutiny."
Not surprisingly the Newspaper Publishers Association who helped trigger the Trust review were disappointed with the outcome. David Newell, director of the NPA, is :
"The launch of 91Èȱ¬ mobile apps represents a significant change to the 91Èȱ¬ Online service, and we believe it will have a significant and negative market impact upon the viability of the business models of commercial news organisations in the app market."
Martin Belam of The Guardian and previously of the 91Èȱ¬ wonders if the 91Èȱ¬ Trust should have done a Public Value Test before allowing the 91Èȱ¬ News app into the Apple store.
You can read the research commissioned by the 91Èȱ¬ Trust (and ) to help assess whether to give 91Èȱ¬ apps the go ahead. The report by Mediatique (PDF is here) says:
"The 91Èȱ¬ would be entering a market that is already trending toward free apps (in news, sport and long-form video content) and is likely to trend further in that direction over time, irrespective of the 91Èȱ¬'s entry."
The Daily Mail has on Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's appearance on Sunday's Andrew Marr Show:
"Viewers who watch television on their computer could be forced to pay the licence fee as early as next year. Those who do not own a TV but watch programmes on services such as the 91Èȱ¬'s iPlayer do not have to pay the £145.50 annual charge."
Paul Murphy is the Editor of the 91Èȱ¬ Internet blog.
Comment number 1.
At 26th Jul 2010, Greg Tyler wrote:RE Daily Mail story, isn't this already the case? Watching iPlayer requires no license but live streaming does. I don't see where the change is...
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Comment number 2.
At 27th Jul 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:Greg Tyler - this blog post from a couple of years ago may be of interest.
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Comment number 3.
At 27th Jul 2010, John99 wrote:Paul,
The Andrew Marr's Show has starting at about 42 minutes into the show with main 91Èȱ¬ Licence Fee comments after about 49 minutes.
After listening twice, and after glancing at the Daily Mail link I am not sure I can find the exact quoted phrase:
"Viewers who watch television on their computer could be forced to pay the licence fee as early as next year. Those who do not own a TV but watch programmes on services such as the 91Èȱ¬'s iPlayer do not have to pay the £145.50 annual charge."
either being spoken on the iPlayer stream of the Show, or in the main body of the Newspaper story.
One comment the newspaper story actually contains is "Jeremy Hunt yesterday hinted that this exemption could be stopped."
Is the "Quote" in this Blog article the 91Èȱ¬ spin on the comment, or is the iPlayer stream somehow edited differently from the live Broadcast for some reason.
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Comment number 4.
At 27th Jul 2010, Paul Murphy wrote:#3 Hi John99,
The quote was taken from the Mail piece as it stood at the time this post was written. It was copied and pasted into this piece and was the Mail's reporting of the Andrew Marr show not a Jeremy Hunt quote taken from the iPlayer. Apologies if that wasn't clear.
Looking at the Mail story now I see that it says "Last updated at 5:53 PM on 26th July 2010" so I would conclude the Mail copy was updated after we wrote our story. There was no intention to spin anything.
Thanks for highlighting this,
Paul
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Comment number 5.
At 28th Jul 2010, Ampersand2 wrote:It's disingenuous, to say the least, to quote just two negative comments about the 91Èȱ¬ news site redesign when at the time of your round-up there were around 4,000 negative posts on Steve Herrmann's Editors blog. From the aching silence in response to the overwhelmingly hostile response to the changes, it seems clear that the 91Èȱ¬ isn't going to make any alterations to the site, fix any of the bugs or, indeed, reply to or comment on any of the suggestions and comments people have posted.
While some of the posts have been of the "I don't like change" variety, vast numbers have been from people who are IT-literate, with constructive comments about layout, coding, functionality, etc - indeed, some commenters have even written new browser scripts to fix some bugs and made them available for anyone else who needs them. It's a great shame - and will do real damage to the 91Èȱ¬'s reputation - that there's absolutely no sign of a constructive rapport with the end-users of the site. The Paul Sissons link you give is a good example of the stonewall approach; that and Steve Herrmann's posts take a "we know best" line that appears patronising at best and dismissive at worst. The only logical conclusion is that 91Èȱ¬ blogs invite comments solely to dissipate viewers'/listeners'/users' frustration or anger, keep comments away from the formal 91Èȱ¬ complaints system and hope that criticism (even when constructive) will eventually disappear when it runs out of steam, while the Corporation simply keeps silent.
So, as I'm therefore not anticipating a response to this comment any time soon, why not surprise me by posting a constructive reply?
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Comment number 6.
At 28th Jul 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:Apersand2 - to say there has been an "aching silence in response" is wide of the mark.
Steve Herrmann has blogged five times on this subject and answered specific points (e.g. here). Paul Sisson's post explains some of the reasons the design decisions were made, and today we've published a post from John O'Donovan explaining some of the technical underpinnings of the new site.
I'm not sure if you will regard this comment as "constructive". But isn't true that the 91Èȱ¬ has not engaged with end-users.
Thanks
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Comment number 7.
At 28th Jul 2010, Tiggs wrote:6. At 12:53pm on 28 Jul 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:
- Apersand2 - to say there has been an "aching silence in response" is wide of the mark.
Oh, I don't know. Apart from acknowledging (and then, only in alter posts) the huge amount of criticism, all of the subsequent posts have been basically "This is why we're sticking with it anyway".
It's all justifying the changes, and absolutely no actual responses to the overwhelming negativity aimed at the new site.
In fact, silence would be better. As the actual responses have come across (even if unintentionally) as highly patronising.
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Comment number 8.
At 28th Jul 2010, Hatenewnewssite wrote:@ 6 Nick Reynolds
True, Mr Herrmann has blogged 5 times, but none of his blogs is responsive or honest - they all essentially say: "We have explained the reasons for the change and we intend to ignore all you thousands of loyal (ex?)users of the site who dislike the new version."
And the true reason for the change is never admitted.
I believe the real reason for the change is the 91Èȱ¬ hope to make US advertisers, instead of UK licence-payers, fund the site. They may possibly succeed in this but they will lose their hard-won reputation for excellence and impartiality in the process.
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Comment number 9.
At 29th Jul 2010, Ampersand2 wrote:Nick - Thanks for acknowledging my previous comment.
Steve Herrmann's last blog post was on 21 July. In the 8 days since, there have been nearly 900 comments on the news site redesign, all but a very few of them critical, to add to the 3,000-odd already submitted - and no reaction at all. Despite a few hysterical posts, almost all have raised real points that need to be dealt with: there are bugs with video, site loading, margins, scrolling, navigation, automatic Facebook links; there's design criticism (the "most viewed" box and the big grey "local" box slap in the middle), dumbing-down (relevant news story links replaced with plugs for other 91Èȱ¬ programmes) and, most of all, of the vast amount of blank space on the UK site which skews the design completely and is only there to allow for ads on the US version.
4,000-odd comments are not nothing - and the commercial rule of thumb is that, for every one person who actually complains, 10 more agree but don't say so. But to none of these points has Mr Herrmann responded; he has never acknowledged that the user experience is now manifestly worse for a great many people. In fact, it was Miranda Creswell of 91Èȱ¬.com who gave the game away - on a non-91Èȱ¬ site - by revealing that the redesign was driven by 91Èȱ¬ Worldwide's ad sales policy (.
What I, and I imagine all other contributors, want is visible acknowledgement by the 91Èȱ¬ that the redesign has caused significant problems, with details of how they're going to be fixed, and an admission that the change has been commercially-driven rather than editorially inspired. All 91Èȱ¬ posts so far have taken a defensive "we like it and it's tough if you don't" stance, while specific issues have not been acknowledged at all.
Blogs are billed as a two-way conversation, but, given the lack of engagement by Steve Herrmann and your other colleagues, I’d stand by my previous comment that there's been an aching silence on the real problems the redesign has caused.
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Comment number 10.
At 1st Aug 2010, Hatenewnewssite wrote:@ 9 Ampersand2
As an update to your post, in case you are unaware, the total comment count on Mr Herrmann's five blogs is now over 5000.
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Comment number 11.
At 2nd Aug 2010, Hatenewnewssite wrote:Second update: comments now closed by the 91Èȱ¬ on all five.
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Comment number 12.
At 2nd Aug 2010, brian192 wrote:So the "aching silence" has been re-activated then! (refers to the response from Nick in 6 before the mods rule this out)
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Comment number 13.
At 19th Sep 2010, Hatenewnewssite wrote:Another thread:-
/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/07/bbc_news_redesign_telling_the.html
now closed for comments.
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Comment number 14.
At 20th Sep 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:Hatenewnewssite - if you have a complaint about the 91Èȱ¬ News website please use the complaints website reather than leaving a comment on a blog post that dates from July.
Thanks
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Comment number 15.
At 20th Sep 2010, Tiggs wrote:Nick,
What would the point of that be? Several people (myself included) have complained via the official channels. Both about the actual redesign and about Steve's absolutely abysmal blog posts.
Complaints via a page that said "you will receive a response within X days".
I registered complaints myself in that first week. Pretty much two months on and I didn't get a single response. Not one.
If you are going to insist that we complain via the complaints website, can you please at least make sure that complaints sent there are addressed? Or at least replied to.
Because otherwise, you might as well just be telling us to go away and shut up. Because right now, the coplaints website is about as useful as being told that.
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Comment number 16.
At 3rd Oct 2010, Gaz wrote:All this user's posts have been removed.Why?
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