Today's Papers is dead.
UPDATE: I've checked out the new news-aggregator feature, The Slatest, that Slate launched today. I'm sure it's a fine news aggregator, but it's not a replacement for TP. Several things made TP great. One: its simplicity. Just white background, black text, and blue links. No divided page with multiple features; just an ad or two and the regular Slate sidebar. It published once. Easy on the eyes, and also easy to read. Which brings me to Two: its style. The beauty of TP was that it wasn't a news aggregator. It was a news summary. I didn't have to click through to the original article to get a fairly good understanding of what the article said. There are enough sites that provide the "link plus one sentence description" service for headline news. What I loved about TP was that it talked in paragraphs instead of sentences. And finally, Three: it was well-written! I know Daniel Politi is still around writing the morning issue of The Slatest, but will we still get the great narratives? Will he be able to compare coverage between newspapers? Will he pick out that one idiosyncratic story to stick at the bottom of the page? Oh, I'm grieving here. It's taking willpower not to start bawling right here in the library.
Slate. Please, pretty please, with a cherry on top. Do whatever you want with this Slatest thing, but have mercy on us--bring back Today's Papers!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment