I decided to head back to the Midwest today to review Indiana’s largest newspaper, The Indianapolis Star’s, Web site. I thought it would be especially interesting since this is the second Gannett newspaper site that I have reviewed (previously I reviewed the Cincinnati Enquirer’s site).
As a first impression, I really liked the blue color palette on the site’s home page. The layout was pretty typical in that there was a dominant picture in the left-hand corner with more top news located to the right of the main image. The navigation toolbar is located on the top and includes local news, opinion and multimedia, among others. I particularly like the multimedia section because it includes recent videos, as well as photo galleries. The headlines for these also were very accessible, so it was pretty clear what I would be watching a video of.
I also like Indy’s Data Center more than the Cincinnati Enquirer’s. This page is good because the headlines are large and are broken down into interesting topics such as real estate and education. There’s also a sidebar on the right that includes links about the Indiana public’s right to know laws.
Overall, my impression of the site is pretty good. I think it’s one of the more visually appealing sites that I have encountered in my critiques of local newspapers. It’s accessible, interactive and visually pleasing. My biggest gripe is one that most news Web sites seem to fall prey to: not including links to other articles and sources within the news stories.
1 Comment
December 5, 2007 at 5:45 pm
One thing I’ve noticed with some CMS that major newspapers use is their inability to actually include the hypertext links in the articles. This seems really regressive since that was the initial point of allowing a graphical text browser, but some sites have removed this feature to streamline their engine.