For Position Only: The New Yorker’s Dot Bomb

Anita Dennis

7

When I was a kid my mother used to say, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” These days I espouse an updated version of that philosophy: “If you can’t build a Web site right, don’t build it at all.” And the first site I apply it to is “The New Yorker,” which quietly launched newyorker.com a month ago.

The site, whose home page prominently displays “The New Yorker” masthead in all its timeless glory, does little more than disappoint. It’s ironic that the launch comes just as so many publications are scaling back their online investments, and the magazine’s parent company, Conde Nast, clearly doesn’t want to sink millions into a marketing venture that it must think won’t pay off. But the indisputable fact is that print publications — even venerable old stalwarts that would rather bury their heads in the sand than accept the benefits technology has to offer — need healthy Web presences. A half-baked site — one that fails to enhance the value of its print counterpart and to capitalize on what the online medium has to offer — can do more harm than good.

Meet E-Tilley
One might think (hope) that “The New Yorker’s” late online arrival would mean that a lot of thought, time, and energy were put into doing it right, and to learning from other publications’ experiences. That would mean that the first thing a print publication’s Web site should do is reflect and build on the print brand. Granted, “The New Yorker” is caught in a Catch-22 on this score: The print publication is known for being conservative and traditional; the Web by its very nature is modern and revolutionary. That doesn’t have to mean that the two are incompatible, however; good design and site planning can and should bridge the two worlds. In this case that could mean bringing some of the print magazine’s classic, clean design online, so that visitors to the site are imbued with a sense of its style, culture, and history.

Unfortunately, the site misses the boat. Sure, it mimics the print publication’s table of contents down the left side of the main page, with Eustace Tilley peering imperviously down on the proceedings and with the familiar typefaces for “Goings on About Town” and “The Talk of the Town,” all caps, of course, like the masthead. And from those links you can access some highlights, plus some original content (more on content later), of the current issue.

But that’s as far as it goes. The rest of the design falls down flat: from the gray background border that surrounds and clashes with the white background behind the main contents, to the illegible serif typeface used for body text (didn’t anyone tell these guys about the problem with fonts and the Web?), to the amateur system of underlining text to indicate URL links (and the fact that clicked links don’t change color, which clues visitors in on where they’ve been and helps them understand site structures). Egads: There’s not even an About Us page, a Site Index, or a search engine in any way, shape, or form.

Aside from the GIF images used for header typefaces, about the only thing that’s reminiscent of the print publication is the intimidating length of the articles: Click on “Fiction” this week, for example, and you’ll get a John Updike story — that you can scroll, and scroll, and scroll, and scroll… Just like in the print publication, where you turn, and turn, and turn, and turn the pages. At least in print, the story is broken up by cartoons; online, you can click the “Cartoons” rollover to access “The Cartoon Channel,” which pops up a new browser window that cycles through a few cartoons independently of the main window, or “The Cartoon Bank,” which opens a browser window to a site with a searchable database of more than 85,000 single-panel cartoons, including all of those ever published in “The New Yorker,” most of which are for sale.

The Walk of the Web
David Remnick, editor of the 76-yeard-old magazine, says he had to push this site through the Conde Nast bureaucracy, and he boasts that it was done without hiring any staff, but that’s hardly something to be proud of. I’m not advocating that the publication should have gone out on a limb to make this a destination site — a companion site to the print publication is fine — but the site fails miserably to excite anyone about “The New Yorker,” not just because it looks bad but because it doesn’t offer the basic functionality that visitors will expect, and that will bring them back and draw them into the world of “The New Yorker.” Since this publication is all about editorial content, and since the Web does such horrible things to typography — the publication’s Holy Grail — why not have some “Click here for printable version” buttons; why not some downloadable PDFs? You can’t even e-mail an article to a friend.

Publications shouldn’t give away all of their content online; I actually think “The New Yorker” has a good balance of tantalizing tidbits from the current issue and a nice sprinkling of On-Line Only content. (I would argue for a searchable archive, however, even if visitors have to pay to read the articles they find.) But since they’re not going to dish out lots of free articles, it’s especially important to leverage the Web’s capabilities to foster community, which adds tremendous value to sites. Not to sound redundant, but newyorker.com fails on this score as well: There are no forums for literary debate or links to other literature and publishing sites (the Forums and From the Archive buttons are deceiving; they actually link you to content, not a discussion forum or a searchable archive of past content). Just think: If surfin’ site visitors stumbled on a lively intellectual discussion about an article in the print publication, they might want to go out to the newsstand and buy the issue — or hey, better yet, click the Subscribe button!

Shouts & Murmurs
I could go on, but you get the point. Newyorker.com is suffering from an identity crisis: Perhaps its goal is to appeal to its traditional readership, but if that’s the case, it’s bound to fail, because there’s little content, the typography looks bad, and you can’t print pretty, stylized versions of the stories. Or perhaps the site’s goal is to attract new readers, the sort who embrace technologies of the current century instead of the last millennium; but here again the site seems destined to fail. Its half-hearted execution will turn these potential customers off, and they’re not terribly likely to give the site another chance next week, next month, even next year. There are plenty of better-done Web publications to visit instead.

The puzzling thing is that Conde Nast clearly knows how to make a good Web site. Epicurious is one of the best, for example, and The Cartoon Bank obviously has some resources behind it. I know times are tough, but that to me is all the more reason to create basic, well-designed sites — nothing extravagant, just functional — that don’t require a lot of maintenance but do serve their purpose as effective marketing tools. Because a good Web site should not only help a print publication succeed today, but also help prepare it for tomorrow, when saddle-stitching becomes just one of many ways that a magazine is published.

(Oh and by the way, there’s another adage my mother used to share: “Do as I say, not as I do.” That pertains to the topic at hand today, as attested by any of you intrepid readers who have managed to find the Web site of, ahem, a certain freelance writer.)