
Text-only news sites are slowly making a comeback. Here’s why - bigato
https://www.poynter.org/tech-tools/2017/text-only-news-sites-are-slowly-making-a-comeback-heres-why/
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spectramax
Why can’t we have a text only newspaper with text only ads?

Advertisement in modern world is so insanely rotten to the core, it is
disgusting. These people have made the web unbearable.

I really think there is a place for text only ads on a sites such as
text.npr.org, even though they’re not as “eye catching”. Where is the
innovation in advertisement? It’s the same bullshit banners, eye catching gifs
and insanely long loading times with custom fonts and what not. Yes, it is
“eye catching” but I am also convinced that there is a place for text only ads
(such as on Google.com). Visual bandwidth of the human brain is obviously much
higher than auditory (language and reading) pathways, but I might just click a
text only ad if it’s relevant and “vetted” - I.e. no shady companies, no
scams, etc.

May be we could see a growth in independent journalism with text only sites
and ads: low startup costs, low bandwidth and server infrastructure and high
click rates on their ads.

Just thinking about the advertisement industry, the people that work in it and
the kind of dark patterns they employ makes me infuriated. You know, I don’t
want to be friends with these kind of professionals.

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okaleniuk
I'm really glad to hear that. This lightweight design is great.

Maybe it shouldn't be for the news sites only. I make
[http://wordsandbuttons.online](http://wordsandbuttons.online) in this spirit,
too. It's not text only, it has interactive plots, and quizzes, and
everything. But the core idea: give people only what they come for, - works
well for it as well. Since the pages are in tenths of KB, I pay for the
cheapest hosting possible and it still holds "slashdot effect".

~~~
stephen82
Very clean and elegant website, well done.

Question: how are you producing the code, with a static website generator such
as Hugo or Pelican, or are you typing it manually?

~~~
okaleniuk
Thanks! Mostly manually, but I write Python scripts for menial jobs. It's
surprisingly easy when the site is that simple.

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1011_1101
I recently made the switch back to firefox and discovered their reader view. I
tested this with some articles but wasn't impressed. Then a few days ago there
was some interesting inuit article about child education from npr and I chose
that plain text option. I remembered the reader view and used those two
features in combination and it synergizes perfectly. Also the narrate feature
within that view (previously missed that completely) works flawlessly without
the usual clutter.

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growlist
Good news. I've been looking for text news for years now in order to be able
to access a purer news source than what is available ( and the tired old 'all
news is biased' argument doesn't change the fact that most MSM long ago gave
up any pretence of impartiality on particular topics), and even thought about
writing my own aggregator. Even text + careful use of images would be
preferable - I remember the BBC news website circa 2001 which was a reasonably
sensibly presented and objective news source, and contrast it to the
absolutely disastrous (both in presentation and content) pseudo-news
destination it has become in 2019.

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zikzak
It would be nice to have a media query like "@print" that a browser could
prefer ("@accessible" or "@text"... Is this a thing?).

This runs counter to bring able to easily display ads, perform cro tests,
collect analytics, etc.

I think offering full, text only, RSS feeds that a browser could check for
first if in "text mode" is a better approach that would also use existing
channels. If bandwidth was limited, check for /feed.xml, or something.

~~~
reaperducer
On Safari you can set individual domains to always open in reader mode. That
helps me eliminate most of the noise when I visit news sites that are out of
control. (I’m looking at you, mercurynews.com)

Also, it helps to never _ever_ visit a local TV station site. The ads on those
things get approved by the same type of people who approve shouting local car
ads on television.

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deca6cda37d0
[https://text.npr.org](https://text.npr.org) is a good example

~~~
ksaj
I use that and [http://lite.cnn.com/en](http://lite.cnn.com/en) for a good
chunk of my daily news. Very Raspberry Pi friendly, whereas CNN's regular site
crashes it much too often, and the speed is unbearable.

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propter_hoc
I really liked [https://legiblenews.com](https://legiblenews.com), but they
haven't been updated since Jan 15. Wish I had some way to help them or get in
touch.

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meeby
I've built and been running
[https://dailypopulous.com/](https://dailypopulous.com/) for the last year or
two for precisely the reasons mentioned in the article. It generates a static,
downloadable "edition" every 4 hours from what's popular on social media as a
snapshot. Small images, no video, summary content and no JS.

~~~
reaperducer
Seemed good until I got to the memes section. Then I was completely turned
off.

If you have time, maybe add a version that is news only, without the social
media stuff.

~~~
meeby
Well, it's automated based on what's most popular over the last 6 hours. The
meme stuff is what people vote for. I could start curating it, but then it
would lose the original point. The news articles are usually pretty good, the
odd stupid thing goes viral and sneaks in but it's generally real news. Just
ignore the pictures if that bothers you. A core concept of it is to preserve
an unedited snapshot of opinion from a point in time, news articles can be
deleted or edited, plus the top reactions to them as a historical record, like
[https://dailypopulous.com/2018-03-19-morning/](https://dailypopulous.com/2018-03-19-morning/)
\- it's an unedited newspaper based on what people actually read, which
unfortunately does include memes these days.

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bookofjoe
I like this. It got me to thinking about creating a text-only version of my
website, but so much of what I publish relies on pictures that without them
there wouldn't be a whole lot of interest left.

~~~
moreira
Publish it with lower-res versions of the pictures, perhaps clickable if
someone really wants the higher-res version. The no-frills, no-JS, no-bloat
reading experience is still useful even if your content is mostly picture-
centric.

~~~
bookofjoe
>Publish it with lower-res versions of the pictures, perhaps clickable if
someone really wants the higher-res version.

Already doing that

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irq-1
FYI, if you use uBlock Origin you can style plain text websites like:

    
    
        text.npr.org##html:style( background-color: palegreen; font-family: sans-serif !important; margin: 5% 10%; )

~~~
woofcat

        text.npr.org##html:style(margin:40px auto;max-width:650px;line-height:1.6;font-size:18px;color:#444;padding:0 10px; )
    

Is my preference.

