PoliticsHome was launched today by my former colleagues at 18 Doughty Street Stephan Shakespeare and Tim Montgomerie, along with its editor in chief Andrew Rawnsley. The site has already been reviewed by many others on the web (see below for some links) and each reviewer, in their own way makes some valid points. So let me add my own tuppenyworth.The site was originally billed as a 'Bloomberg for Politics'. It's certainly that and then some. In many ways it's Bloomberg on steroids. The amount of information contained on the front page is impressively breathtaking. Some reckon there's too much to navigate easily and I have some sympathy with that, but I suspect it just takes some getting used to. I'm reminded of the quote from Amadeus: "Too many notes, Mr Mozart, too many notes!"
Comment has been made about the intense blackness of the design. I think it gives the site a certain gravitas but I am not so sure about the two vertical columns down either side of the main content. There are one or two design and technical issues, but the site is clearly billed as being in Beta mode, so those who have made instant criticisms should bear that in mind. However, one substantial criticism I have to make is that the site doesn't work on mobiles. It's exactly the sort of site which ought to be mobile compliant, so that busy people can catch up with what's going on in the political world when they are on the move. At the moment, all you get on your mobile is a list from the blog aggregator. This is a serious failing, but again, not difficult to put right.
Clearly, the most interesting part of this site is likely to be the daily polling of 100 or so politicos in Westminster. I say interesting, but perhaps I mean newsworthy. The aggregated newsfeeds are useful but no more than that. Perhaps the oddest thing of all is that despite the combined talents of Andrew Rawnsley, Martin Bright, Nick Assinder and Tim Montgomerie there is absolutely no original content on the site whatsoever. By using the name PoliticsHome one might reasonably expect the site to follow the successful model of ConservativeHome, which is not only a news aggregator site for the Conservative Party but also has a world view and commissions interesting, relevant and well researched comment pieces by a multitude of authors. PoliticsHome does none of these things and bends over backwards to be seen as politically neutral. Nothing wrong with that at all - indeed it's a prerequisite for a site like this - but the danger here is that neutrality turns into blandness. That's also the challenge which is about to be faced by Total Politics too.
Whenever anyone launches anything new there are always plenty of naysayers who give you twenty reasons why it's bound to fail. I genuinely hope it works not only as a site full of political gold, but also as a serious business proposition. It's not clear to me what the business model for this is as the site has no advertising (yet) and no obvious income stream. Perhaps that's where the polling side of it comes in.
So - a good start, a few quirks and glitches to iron out, but nothing which can't be easily solved. If the launch of the Total Politics Website in early June is as smooth I will be well pleased.
More reviews from Ben Brogan, Coffee House, Red Box, Scribo Ergo Sum, Puffbox, Three Line Whip, Donal Blaney, Hopi Sen
22 comments:
..and no RSS feed which is a big failing.
Yes but you, yourself Iain, have a role in the make or break of such a site, by virtue of your numbers.
Do you feel it fills a niche or addresses a criticism of Doughty?
Say waht you will, ilike the site!! All the political news on one site.
If i am too busy to read all the newspapers i can just visit here.Excellent and already bookmarked
Just to pick up on the mobile point, you're right, but it wouldn't be an easy task as the site uses a lot, and I mean a lot, of JavaScript to make things work. Mobile devices struggle at best with JavaScript and the only way it could work on a cross-platform basis is to re-engineer the whole way the site is built to use code that's a lot more friendly. That's a big job and requires a very tight brief... would cost a lot of money.
Let's leave aside the risible comparison to Mozart and pick up on just one point here.
Comment has been made about the intense blackness of the design. I think it gives the site a certain gravitas.
Anyone with even the most basic understanding of web design will tell you that the colour scheme of PoliticsHome screams out the very opposite of gravitas. It looks more like the work of a 14 year old 'web designer' working from his bedroom.
All-black websites do at least have the benefit of being energy efficient, especially if they get a lot of hits (for visitors they use around 80% of the power taken to display an all-white page) but the design has to be seriously tight to look good... which this one isn't yet. And yes those page borders are dodgy!
How long before this project fails, just like Doughty Street?
I'm probably an old grouch, but I find the site irritating and I don't like the way it jumps with refreshes just as I'm trying to read something.
Also find it irritating when people don't get their links right eg:
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centrerigh%20t/2008/04/brian-paddick-a.html
will get you nowhere fast. Should be:
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/2008/04/brian-paddick-a.html
But I'll stick with it for a while :)
The Jumping thing has to be solved.
I don't know about anyone else but my list of political bookmarks was getting a bit unwieldy. This site helps considerably as a source of live bookmarks, but it also duplicates what Google News does. By the way, was I alone in thinking that the successor to the "successful" 18DS would be another web TV effort?
So, team, here are my points.(positive first)
The site loads quickly.
I found it easy to navigate.
If I was a news editor who lacked initiative I would find the statistical information about occurrance of stories useful.
The site is appealing in a geeky sort of way.
Areas for improvement:
The site "jumps" just as you are about to click on something.
A lot of my questions about this were answered on the "About" tab, but that seems a bit too tucked away for my liking.
I don't know why 18DS failed, but almost certainly, one reason was that it was not breaking stories. Any media worth mentioning must break stories and since this appears to be a digest of what's already in the public domain, I don't know how it is going to get any heat under it.
I suggest that there should be some editorial/generated news content, on the front page. Somebody should be out there filing stories and getting exclusives. Otherwise, I suggest it might go the way of 18DS.
"Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete."
Oh dear!
And even when it does work, this new place will have its work cut out trying to keep up with you and Guido.
Yours is one of maybe four or five political blogs I bother with regularly; saturation point has been reached with me at least, and only places with swift original content get attention. And I suspect that's true with a a lot of folk these days.
Lawrence Auster has an article The decline of journalism continues
... CBS is in negotations to outsource some of its news gathering functions to CNN.
... There is a huge demand for primary news: raw information, carefully and reliably reported by knowledgeable and objective newspeople. The proliferation of media outlets, including the internet, has increased that demand, not reduced it. It is ironic, and unfortunate, that news organizations are increasingly willing to abandon the function for which they are uniquely qualified, primary news reporting, in favor of news presenting and commentary, fields in which they have no advantage over a host of competitors. ...
Oh yes, and one more thing. The site saps computing power better than Green Kryptonite in Superman's tights.
However, one substantial criticism I have to make is that the site doesn't work on mobiles.
It works pretty well on Opera Mobile. You can download that to most phones now: www.opera.com
Wrinkled Weasel 12:03 "By the way, was I alone in thinking that the successor to the "successful" 18DS would be another web TV effort?"
No you were not alone. As I remember, there was even stuff on the old Doughty St site about 'relocating to a new studio in Westminster'.
The Politics Home logo is identical to the colophon for Phaidon Press (which may also be a trademark). I imagine that the latter are even now consulting m'learned friends. Someone should change it pdq.
In reply to Wrinkled Weasel at 1246...
The site uses a lot of JavaScript, which pushes the processor requirements on to your machine instead of the server. Essentially, your computer is being used to do the hard work for them.
Mike H, that was indeed the original plan. A location had even been found. However, the plans then changed, which was a big part of why I left the company at the end of November.
Thanks Mike Rouse.
I am not up on the mysteries of Java, but this explains why my pc slowed down while I had the PH tab open. I can mitigate this on firefox, using "no script", but then all that statistical stuff disappears.
wrinkled weasel: Sadly that's the cost of bad design. More money will have to be thrown at it to put it right. Some people never learn.
as i pointed out before, it just doesn't work with Opera Browser. it looks terrible, scrolling the top bar far to the right and overlapping tonnes of text on the rest of the page.
when will designers start making sites multi-browser compatable?
as i use Opera as standard, i will not be visiting it.
Hendo: "Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete." means that you have cookies (sensibly) switched off.
The site is designed to work only if you have them switched on.
The site is not designed to be used in Opera, although it does work up to a point.
I have had a good look at it and I really think it is absolutely pathetic.
After 18DS this is an absolute cop-out. A lot of people were waiting for something substantial.
Why on earth there is a big team working on this I don't know - what do they do all day?
Really pathetic effort - looks like it was cobbled together by some kids playing around with Dreamweaver for the first time.
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