Regular visitors to the homepage BBC News website were in for a surprise on Monday as they fired up their browsers. The site has had a facelift and feels rejuvenated.
Much of the navigation hasn’t changed but it is wider and uses white space so that stories have room to breathe. This is how editor Steve Herrmann described the changes:
So our designers embarked on a mission that they have called a “site refresh” – they say it’s “like gardeners doing a bit of pruning and weeding, but not digging it up and starting from scratch” ie it’s not a fundamental redesign of everything – many of the basics stay the same, because we know they work.
The refresh certainly sparked off a healthy discussion on the BBC Editors blog, with more than 500 comments in response to Steve’s post.
Overall, it is a welcomed change and work is still continuing. But there are some aspects which rankle. The content on the site is pushed down the page by a wide BBC banner, followed by a BBC News banner. This wastes valuable space on the front page.
The audio/video box is now a permanent fixture, under the top three stories. It is understandable that the BBC would want to promote its broadcast material. But visitors should be given a choice, rather than have the AV content foisted on them.
Another minor niggle is the amount of white space between the headlines on the bottom half of the page. This could be tightened up without creating too much clutter.
The most popular stories box is now more prominent. This offers an interesting insight into what people are reading. But it would good to also have a way of showing what stories are being discussed in blogosphere, recognising the the BBC is part of a network of information.
Filed under: BBC, broadcast, internet, journalism , BBC, BBCNews.com
hi there
there are some reference readings and posts on this web site with full intention for a good discussion on the journalism practices at BBC as it appears to the general audiences.
the web site is a domain for collectively individual opinion of all angles from various political and cultural background, which hopefully may serve as a good feedback for the editorials of BBC. Good or bad, right or wrong… it is all comparative and depends on the values of the commentators’ own cultural backgrounds, which may or may not be the same as the editors or the executives at the BBC
If BBC sees itself as an established international journalism institution as i presume it does, then we challenge BBC to provide a link on its own site to this web site dedicated to serve the BBC. It may even work out as a good advertising mechanism for the BBC that is not our own intension but we do not mind, if the ultimate result is to help keeping the BBC ’s news coverage balanced for impartial truth through collective angles from all sides of news events.
We believe the misunderstandings come from misinformation
and one value system is placed by its own bearer high above another and so to judge the latter is definitely wrong and potentially dangerous if practiced long enough at a public journalism institution that produce clear impacts on public opinions.
Since freedom and democracy is what the BBC is advocating as we presume, we dare the BBC to show the public that some dedicated watch dogs are here that the BBC is not afraid of.
Of course, we would understand if the BBC opts not to publicize the critiques, just as it accused the Chinese government of
a very serious BBC news reader