Two weeks ago BBC News came out with a new interface for their online news service. The most noticable change is that the neater interface displays only about twenty-percent of the stories that it did previously. It is somewhat interesting to have a look at the number of stories that are presented to the reader on various major English language news site homepages; in order of most to least:
New York Times nytimes.com/ ~200 news links
Reuters reuters.com/ 100+ news links
Fox News foxnews.com/ ~85 news links
Alex Jones infowars.com/ ~80 news links
UPI upi.com/ ~65 news links
CNN International edition.cnn.com/ ~60 news links
Al Jazeera English english.aljazeera.net/English ~45 news links
BBC News news.bbc.co.uk/ ~45 news links
AP via News Day newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/ ~40 news links
AP hosted.ap.org/dynamic/fronts/HOME?SITE=AP ~10 news links
It is not likely that the similarity in the interface and number of news links on the homepage of Al Jazeera English and BBC News is a coincidence; Al Jazeera was born of a Saudi BBC World Service station in 1996; and in 2003 the BBC “signed an agreement with Al Jazeera for sharing facilities and information, including news footage.”
But what this means for a reader of BBC News is that after the anti-Mugabe headline story that BBC has run every day now for many months on end is that only one story per continent is actually shown on the main page; those looking for more information are lead into a hypertext-labyrinth without begining or end (I can potentially reach over one million different pages in three clicks from the main page); stories that may be from a decade ago appear in “BACKGROUND AND ANALYSIS”, “RELATED INTERNET LINKS” and “SEE ALSO” boxes next to each story.
“MOST POPULAR STORIES NOW” which are generally of nearly zero significance: "Bond car plunges into lake " or some such fluff appear on every page. Geography and user popularity are the only principals by which news items are sorted and ordered. Sadly, the BBC News internet site is often the source for their televised news broadcasts; footage of the website is frequently shown on their cable channel, particularly for breaking stories, and not so breaking stories. BBC News has less idea what is news, and has less idea of what it means. Breaking stories on their site are often brief and end with,
As for analysis, readers are better off turning to “HAVE YOUR SAY”, essentially a chat forum not unlike this one, as there is little in the way of analysis or commentary provided by the news service itself.
When BBC News asked readers today what they think of the new interface they were lambasted,