Commenting on Courant.com (Alliteration is Awesome)

When I first started snooping around www.courant.com, I immediately found myself asking "where the hell's the comics page?", mostly because that was the first page I would snatch up when I was a kid. I realize now how much additional effort that would take, if it were even legally possible, to get the web-published versions of each and every strip that the Courant runs daily. Sadly, this means that I can't turn my blog into a rant about how I desperately miss brilliant strips like Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side, while certain comics devoid of any humor whatsoever land book deals, movie deals, merchandising, etc.

Back to the website though, I have to say that I am impressed , mostly because I didn't expect the site to have as much as it does. The layout is simple enough, even though it was easy to hover over the wrong section with my mouse on the bars immediately underneath the Courant's logo. All of the stories are easily accessible, and the breaking news section is pertinent and up to date.

One thing I didn't like though was how far down the Blogs seem on the front page. The plain list of links makes the Blogging section, which I believe allows the webpage to offer an entirely different news experience from the typical newspaper, feel extremely limited. Only when I clicked on "More Blogs" and it took me to blogs.courant.com was I able to see how much content there actually was.

I ventured over to the Sports section to see if maybe the individual pages had better advertising or page location for the sports blogs, but it was again a plain list halfway down the screen. While I doubt they will ever find themselves atop the News Media world, I think Yahoo! Sports does a much better job in packaging, production, and presentation. Everything is compact, but the blogs are intertwined beautifully with the "actual news," while the Courant's sports site is spread out, the blogs confined to that small little box, "More Blogs" sitting there begging to be clicked to allow you to see the rest of the available content. Yahoo! has an obvious advantage here, because they are not a newspaper's website. They are everything combined in one really, and kind of do what they want mixing blogs and news stories, since they don't have their reputation at stake in the same way that the Hartford Courant does. Is the Courant afraid to make blogging a primary part of their news, thinking it could tarnish its reputation (Yes, you are allowed to laugh at that question)? Yahoo!'s sports blogs often resort to profanity-laced team bashing when user comments are allowed, but I still think they encourage a unique experience that the newspaper of yesteryear cannot provide. The Courant would be wise to present their own blogs in a stronger fashion, making the website a completely different experience as well.