(Bunder disclosure: I have 200 shares in Trinity Mirror, owner of The Mirror)
Last week The Mirror relaunched its website. At first glance, it’s a bit of a shock to the system compared to other tabloids that are online.
Lots of black bold text with a very grey steel coloured framework around it.
At first glance, it looks very cold and not very welcoming. It actually reminds me of many Joomla templates.
It has some flaws with it, no copyright notice or date at the bottom of the home page. Indeed, no notice on any of the content pages, other than on its blog.
It looks like a work still in progress with its templates that still need to be fine-tuned. Maybe this is really a “beta”. But it doesn’t have any notification that it is a “beta”, rather worryingly, it has a strapline claiming: “The best newspaper on the web”.
But if you are “the best”, then why all these flaws?
Some commentators have been critical of it, especially use of video which has a distinctive American tone as opposed to British.
Former Mirror editor and now MediaGuardian blogger/columnist Roy Greenslade said: “Indeed, American accents dominate the much-hyped video content. This has to be the most embarrassing content any British newspaper site has ever featured. It consists of bought-in material from the US and it’s, like, totally appalling.”
He further added:
“So what are we to make of this pathetic response to The Sun’s altogether more professional website? According to the Mirror’s Steve Purcell, in his blog posting yesterday: “We have just re-launched the site with a fantastic new look and an exciting new feast of content.” Feast? He cannot be serious.”
And to a certain degree I agree with Greenslade. What was The Mirror thinking when they decided to relaunch? By all means add the video content, but why is is US-centric? Far better to have waited to try and source local video content that its audience would want to view.
A possible reason could be the lure of a potential US audience to the Mirror site. Maybe, The Mirror gets a lot of traffic from the States?
I’m not sure as to the reasoning behind the new site.
It has taken some time to get used to the template. It does grow, but that has taken several days from first seeing it.
Aside from the blogs, it’s not obvious how people can interact with the paper. There’s no comment on this story, rather just a print this, email a friend, Digg this and Add to del.icio.us.
Time for The Mirror to really take a closer look at itself if it wants to live up to its own marketing strapline.
No Comments Yet