
The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996) - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/22/business/the-new-york-times-introduces-a-web-site.html
======
danso
The oldest snapshot on Archive.org is from November 1996:
[http://web.archive.org/web/19961112181513/http://www.nytimes...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961112181513/http://www.nytimes.com/)

Back then, they even had a low-bandwidth version of the site:
[http://web.archive.org/web/19990117023050/http://www.nytimes...](http://web.archive.org/web/19990117023050/http://www.nytimes.com/info/contents/textpath.html)

The website included various tutorials on how to use it, including a guide
that covers the different browsers. None of the browsers listed are actively
developed today:
[http://web.archive.org/web/19961112182937/http://www.nytimes...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961112182937/http://www.nytimes.com/subscribe/help/browser.html)

edit: A couple of other observations:

\- How many other content websites have published for nearly this long and yet
have their oldest articles remain on their original URLs? Most news sites
can't even do a redesign without breaking all of their old article URLs.

\- I like this Spiderbites feature -- a sitemap of a year's worth of articles
(likely for webcrawlers at the time):
[http://spiderbites.nytimes.com/free_1996/](http://spiderbites.nytimes.com/free_1996/)

~~~
lukasm
That awkward moment when website you made 20 years ago is better to read
articles.

~~~
criley2
>"That awkward moment when website you made 20 years ago is better to read
articles."

Am I the only one who thinks that the whitespace heavy and well designed NYT
modern site is better? Good line height, good type choice, very good
readability.

As opposed to times new roman at 1.0 line height, is that really the pinnacle
of readability? Eight grade book report format?

~~~
fsck--off
I use a low brightness setting on my laptop because I am uncomfortable looking
at bright screens for extended periods of time. I prefer the body text to be
#000 on something close to #FFF (this website uses #828282, which is fine for
me.) The Times uses #333 for their body text which is probably enough contrast
for bright screens, but it is noticeably poorer on the dimmer screen that I
use. I don't see a reason to make the text more difficult for the people with
poor vision, especially elderly, who on the whole have poorer vision, to read.
I can use extensions and overwrite their CSS to change this, but I shouldn't
have to.

The fixed headers are very annoying on small laptops, where vertical screen
space is already limited. It makes no sense to stuff the main navigation menu
into a hamburger bar on the FRONT PAGE of a newspaper web site so that a tiny
amount of white space may be added to the sides.

A navigation bar shouldn't scroll down the screen with me and steal screen
space when I'm reading an article. I would rather hit the back button, change
tabs, or scroll to the top and click on a different section when I'm done
reading an article. And the layout is just ugly when Javascript is turned off
because there is no spacing between the full size images and the body text.

------
morgante
It's pretty impressive how good a job the NYT has done of maintaining
historical articles.

You can even find quite old articles from key historical times and they're
presented just like articles today. For example, the famous Crittenden
Compromise is at [http://www.nytimes.com/1861/02/06/news/the-crittenden-
compro...](http://www.nytimes.com/1861/02/06/news/the-crittenden-
compromise.html?pagewanted=all)

~~~
kristopolous
There's so much opportunity for Orwellian abuse in this new archival model.

Sure there's archive.org - but in the old model, you'd say something in print,
copy it a million or so times, then distribute it on paper around the world.

If an evildoer wanted to change a claim from say, 20 years ago, they'd have to
create a forgery that looks like it's 20 years old, then secretly swap out all
the archival copies in libraries and get large-scale mass obedience from
librarians or manually make the swap at each library individually.

These days, you need to add an exclusion to the archive.org bot in robots.txt
and then flip a few bits. It's a different ballgame.

In the traditional model, someone could find say, an original copy of the 20
year old newspaper and present that as evidence. Forging that document would
be sufficiently hard for a single individual. But in the new model, claiming
something is an "original copy" of a web page can be easily disputed because
such a forgery can be trivially crafted.

Think about the implications in places with large civil unrest, very little
free press, and mostly state-owned media. What's the solution for _those_
societies?

It's a problem.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> in the old model, you'd say something in print, copy it a million or so
> times, then distribute it on paper around the world.

> If an evildoer wanted to change a claim from say, 20 years ago, they'd have
> to create a forgery that looks like it's 20 years old, then secretly swap
> out all the archival copies in libraries and get large-scale mass obedience
> from librarians or manually make the swap at each library individually.

It has happened: [http://www.unz.com/plee/india-v-china-border-
games/](http://www.unz.com/plee/india-v-china-border-games/) (the relevant bit
begins at "India’s claim to AP is complicated in an interesting way.")

You're correct, of course, that it's become easier in the modern model. But
people who feel strongly about the more adversarial issues of the modern day
already archive enemy publications themselves, lest they mysteriously change
in the future. The climate change issue is full of this sort of thing.

Even the fact that forged "original copies" are easy to create can be
overcome; you just need to contemporaneously deposit a copy somewhere that
creates records of when you make deposits and withdrawals. Again, the amount
of adversarial forethought required has changed enough to make a significant
difference.

I wish archive.org wouldn't delete old material based on new robots.txt
policies, though. :/

------
esaym
And thanks to them, we have the world's greatest Perl debugger/profiler:
[https://metacpan.org/pod/Devel::NYTProf](https://metacpan.org/pod/Devel::NYTProf)

------
aaronbrethorst

        The electronic newspaper
        (address: http:/www.nytimes.com)
    

hilarious, but—then again—the colon-double slash still isn't clear to most
people.

~~~
DrScump
Remember when people coming from the DOS/Windows world would say "reverse-
backslash"?

~~~
err4nt
Remember? I almost never hear people refer to it as anything other than a
'forward slash' which makes me ask them: 'so what's a regular slash look
like?'

------
jedberg
It's funny because this is the digital version of an article that was printed
in a newspaper about that newspaper going digital.

If only they had any idea of the pain they were about to cause themselves. :)

~~~
jethro_tell
The pain would have come either way. Probably did better by understanding it's
evolution then just ignoring it.

------
ChrisArchitect
some behind-the-scenes from those days
[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/insider/1996-in-gamble-
new...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/insider/1996-in-gamble-newspapers-
push-into-on-line-publishing.html)

------
briantmaurer
I would love to see the complete evolution of the home page.

~~~
nhf
Scraped from archive.org: [http://imgur.com/a/PlCfX](http://imgur.com/a/PlCfX)

~~~
briantmaurer
wow, surprisingly consistent layout!

------
Haul4ss
> "The market is booming for newspapers on the World Wide Web," Mr. Kelsey
> said.

Not anymore. :)

------
jcoffland
I find it interesting that they explicitly excluded reporting that appears in
the news paper. They were on the web early but with caution.

> The New York Times on the Web, as the electronic publication is known,
> contains ..., reporting that does not appear in the newspaper, ..."

------
mc32
My impression is the mercury news from san jose had an earlier, if paid,
presence.

Funny how the NYT wanted to charge nearly two dollars to allow you to print
older articles. Asking people to pay for the own digitization.

~~~
epc
I'm pulling this mostly from my decaying memory but nando.net (Raleigh? News
and Observer) was neck-and-neck with the SJ Mercury with a web presence. Many
of the early newspaper web sites were simply HTML variations on existing
online presences (CI$, Prodigy, AOL, etc).

~~~
honestcoyote
You're correct. News and Observer (nando.net I think) was a daily visit for me
back in the mid 90's. It was the first one I found which provided a full
newspaper without being hidden in a walled garden and without needing monthly
fees. AP & Reuters were available online but locked behind a very expensive
paywall.

Nando was the first time I read of breaking news online. The story on the
Oklahoma City bombing jolted me awake one morning. Reading Nando over coffee
on my tiny 12 inch screen of a Macintosh LC.

I've often wondered if they could have leveraged their very early lead into
something else.

------
spacefight
Who had their first website online back then in 1996 as well?

 _raises hand_

Good memories... Claris Home Page!

------
hackuser
After 20 years, they still are adapting to the 'new' platform. Look through
their site with fresh eyes: If you were designing a news website (rather than
moving a newspaper to this new platform), how many design, UI and
functionality choices would you make differently?

A quick start:

* The separation of different forms of content: They don't really mix text with video, images and graphics, even though most web-native bloggers will do it. They seem to lack fluency with mixing media; it's a project for them. They'll staple a video and decorate text with images and graphics, but they don't really commuicate with it; they don't say, 'here's how Clinton responded to Sanders:" <video>, or, 'here was the scene when the earthquake struck' <video>, or even in a movie review, here's what the scene looks like: <video> or <image>. Instead, they try to describe the visual with text. Even explanatory graphics are a separate, special production, on a separate page.

* The font in their title: Back when printing fancy fonts was a technological feat, this font communicated that they were serious and sophisticated. Now, if you step back and ignore the history, it looks like a kid playing with fonts. (Look at it this way: would you _ever_ use that font on a website you were designing?). It says, insists even: We're anchored to the paper age and will never let go. We're the old, dying generation. If you want something new, go elsewhere.

* The discoverability of content: Obviously mimicing a newspaper, but a bad choice for the web. How many links are on that home page (scroll down)? And even more content doesn't even appear there. All that hard work and content, unlikely ever to be found, buried and lost forever. It's tragic. But that's what they did in the hard copy newspaper so I guess it's ok.

* Also, where are stories updated since I visited a couple hours ago? Oh look, if I look at every link a red 'updated' indicator is next to some links (just like the web 20 years ago!), which I see if I examine every one of them (and how do I identify brand new links in this massive page of links?) - but where in this multi-page story are the new parts? I guess I'll just re-read the whole thing.

I say this all out of love. They are an very important institution. The news
business is hard enough; stop handicapping yourselves! From the outside they
look like they still, in 2015, haven't fully embraced the new technology. What
would you say about another business' web team (that was not adapting a
newspaper to the web) that produced a site that looked like this? Egads. [1]

EDIT: Some minor edits and additions

[1] I'm not blaming the web developers; I assume they are working within the
general constraint of: Make it look like the newspaper.

~~~
volaski
Just because something is in vogue doesn't mean it is the right answer in the
long term. Their mission is NOT about generating more pageviews in the short
term to rack up ad revenue but stick to being a reliable source of
information. Outlets like Buzzfeed have their own place but that doesn't mean
New York Times need to "adapt" to become one of those. That's the worst
decision they can make. People who go to New York Times are not there because
they're bored and want to read the next "what sex and the city character are
you?". They are there because they want to stay on top of _only_ what matters
_today_ , which means not everyone will appreciate it if the front page is an
infinite scroll page of links. Also your opinion about their font is your
opinion. I am fond of it. Lastly, there are tons of articles with embedded
media, here's one: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/nyregion/bronx-school-
embr...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/nyregion/bronx-school-embraces-a-
new-tool-in-counseling-hip-hop.html)

~~~
hackuser
> Just because something is in vogue doesn't mean it is the right answer in
> the long term. Their mission is NOT about generating more pageviews in the
> short term to rack up ad revenue

Nothing I mentioned was abouut trends or short term page view revenue. It's
about making their site more functional, improving their content by taking
advantage of multimedia (hardly a trend by now) and making their excellent
content more available to their readers.

> there are tons of articles with embedded media, here's one:
> [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/nyregion/bronx-school-
> embr...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/nyregion/bronx-school-embr..).

In that article, the photos are what I meant by 'decorative' media (I'll agree
it's not a perfect choice of word). the not integral to the story - you could
skip the photos and not miss anything. The video is separate from the text of
the story; they are not integrated; from reading the story, There is no
indication that the author of the text knows that the video exists.

What I see many amateur bloggers do is tell one story and use the right tool
for the right moment. Where text tells the the story best, use that; switch to
video/audio/whatever when that does best. The story is what matters, not the
media used. As one possible example:

 _At New Visions Charter High School in the Bronx, here 's how one innovative
class starts its day:_

<video of segment class> Click <here> to watch the full class (45 min.)

 _What you just saw is a new school program that seeks to use hip-hop music to
reach teenagers who may not respond to more traditional counseling. Called
hip-hop therapy, it encourages them to give voice to their day-to-day
struggles in neighborhoods where poverty and crime are constants, and provides
a foundation for school leaders to engage directly with them in a way that
seems more enjoyable than intrusive._

~~~
volaski
Video is popular nowadays not because that's what users want but because
that's what generates more ad revenue for media. There are certain cases where
video storytelling is better than textual/visual storytelling but very rarely
so. In case you have forgotten, there's this thing called "TV" that has been
in the video space long before Internet came along. That didn't mean NYT had
to turn themselves into CNN. I would _never_ visit a NYT article if they start
autoplaying videos on their website, for the same reason I never visit college
humor anymore (they used to be a nice fun site but at certain point they
started only serving videos, and nobody has time for videos)

~~~
hackuser
Separating mediums, text and video, is I think an archaic perspective on
communication. Convergence happened long ago (for bloggers, as I've mentioned
a few times).

We should be fluent enough to use whatever medium best gets across the next
idea in the article.

------
plg
come on NYTimes, update the iOS app for iPad Pro --- it currently is gigantic
(I presume because the screen design is just a scaled-up version of the iPad
Air)

~~~
ChuckMcM
It is a valid concern and an excellent bookmark to their original challenge
with multiple browsers. Today people read the web on phones from 4" diagonal
to tablets 12" to laptops 12" to desktops 37". And designing something which
is consumed comfortably across that range is not a trivial task.

~~~
plg
I agree it's a challenge

I am also a paid subscriber and so I have a vested interest in seeing them do
this right

------
briandear
"..the Web as being similar to our traditional print role -- to act as a
thoughtful, unbiased filter and to provide our customers with information they
need and can trust."

Unbiased? Some quality reporting to be sure, especially when politics aren't
involved, but they jumped the bias shark a long time ago.

------
VeilEm
I like to call the incognito window my nytimes reader. I paid for the nytimes
for a bit but it costs more per week than a monthly netflix subscription and
it feels stupid to pay for not knowing how to use the incognito window. It's
like a "I don't know how to use software" tax.

~~~
Nelkins
> it feels stupid to pay for not knowing how to use the incognito window

That's not what you're paying for. You're paying journalists to research and
fact check important news stories, and for developers to build interesting and
novel ways to display content, and about a million other things that I'm not
going to list here. It's one thing to get around the paywall because you don't
read NYT often or don't have the money and wouldn't pay anyway, but if you've
got the means to pay then you probably should.

And before someone says something to the extent of "the NYT is a rag, they
print misinformation all the time!" I'll preemptively say that every writer
has their own internal biases and you should ready multiple news sources if
you want to distill some semblance of the "truth." I don't think there's any
denying that NYT is at the very least in the upper tier of news organizations
today.

~~~
briandear
However it costs something like $37 per month. I've been a long time
subscriber but that's very steep considering that barely cheaper than the
print version.

~~~
whyenot
It's $15 a month (3.75/wk). I don't know why you believe the cost is $37, but
that is not accurate.

~~~
joe5150
It's $3.75 a week for Web and smartphone access only. For Web and tablets it's
$5 a week, and for both it's $8.75/wk.

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
Tablets have web browsers too :)

