Sunday, September 11, 2011

USAT | A dramatically different homepage today?

Either USA Today has done a very deep dive into the land of Sept. 11 anniversary griefdom, or there's something wrong with my browser.

I can't navigate to a conventional all-color usatoday.com URL; instead, typing in that address, I land on usatoday.com/news/911. That page shows story headlines and links against a mostly black background -- a major shift in USAT's famously colorful design. (Other sections, such as Money, retain their traditional look.) Even more confusing, there's no editor's note to readers, acknowledging a change.

The following screenshot is what I'm seeing; what about you?


20 comments:

  1. If we use color, the terrorists win.

    Great design people. The events of that day weren't dramatic enough, let's see if we ramp it up and give the National Guard ad a little more umpf for its dollar.

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  2. It's a redirect.

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  3. Understood. But as such, the impact is the same: A reader is greeted with a very unfamiliar page, yet without any specific explanation.

    I generally like the idea; I just wish there was a note telling readers: No, you're not crazy. This is, indeed, the home page today.

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  4. USAT sets a somber tone...meanwhile, CLICK ON THIS COLOR AD!


    PLEA$E!

    Dunno if their photo galleries do it, but the local Gannett-owned newsletter's galleries have popup adds that come up from the bottom OVER each and every photo. How annoying!

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  5. It looks very nice.

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  6. Apparently, this now passes for innovation at USAT. What a pathetic effort led by an even more pathetic group of managers who have driven the brand right off the cliff.

    USAT continues to become more irrelevant by the day in the news world. It lacks creativity and journalistic urgency. How many times can usat.com get beat on big national or international stories?

    In a way, USAT is getting what it deserves. Lots of ghosts and bad karma haunting the Crystal Palace. Been that way almost from day 1 in the new, obnoxiously over-the-top building. Hell, three longtime sports staffers were fired for touching the "blue ball" -- a pretentious piece of artwork on the corporate side that represents how Gannett overspent and then eventually had to layoff thousands to make up for all the waste. No one, not even their boss, stuck up for the fired staffers or spoke strongly in their behalf. That's the way it always is at USAT. No one has the balls to speak up about anything. Brother turns against brother. Everyone plays nice to an extent but will stab you in the back if they get the chance. A lot of good people have been hurt as a result.

    Terrible environment, terrible product.

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  7. I thought it was a brave effort. But it would have helped to have run it past others not immersed in the project before going live with it.

    Sometimes people get so involved and excited that they don't realize that it's not instantly clear to others what they are trying to accomplish. Think back to when Michael Moore was hired to cover the Republican convention and Ann Coulter was hired to cover the Democrats. It was an interesting idea, but out of context, it caused a lot of confusion, anger and hard feelings.

    I like that they tried this. And it looks good, sets a dramatic tone. But the National Guard ad in a place where there should have been an explanation threw me off -- especially when you consider that a lot of people who joined the National Guard before 9/11 ended up on the front lines in faraway lands, which most likely wasn't what they signed on for. And that made me feel kind of queasy.

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  8. Another grand vision that appears short sighted when it comes to engaging readers. the braintrust is as insular as ever; applauding itself in self aggrandizing manner. Not popular among readers.

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  9. Adults wanted for key editorial and advertising positions. hurry before all else fails.

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  10. Let's start another vertical.

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  11. It's 9/27 and it is still re-directing me and I'm not sure how to fix it other than change my homepage to some other site

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  12. 11:56 Even when you type www.usatoday.com into your browser?

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  13. Yes, I type www.usatoday.com or usatoday.com without any extension and it changes the URL to
    http://www.usatoday.com/news/911
    and i see the picture of Obama at Schwenksville every time. I also have had www.usatoday.com as my homepage for the last 10 years. I'm using Firefox 7.0 but it also happens on 6.x.

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  14. I'm still being redirected to the 9/11 page and I've deleted cookies from my browser cache. This idea has gone completely off the rails. Any idea how to fix this, or should I just replace USAToday with the NYTimes online?

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  15. I just fixed my problem, I'm the one using FireFox. I wound up clearing all history in firefox, cookies, etc, everything and now it doesn't re-direct me anymore. I like having usatoday as my homepage, it's the best site I know of to have for that, unless they keep mucking with it.

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  16. Makes me wonder how many hundreds -- or even thousands -- of other USAT readers had this problem, but didn't go through the steps you took o resolve the situation.

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  17. There was at least 2 on this thread that had the problem, hopefully these postings will help others but usatoday should be able to fix this on their end and not do it again.

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  18. I am still having this issue in IE 9 and I have clear everything and restarted the browser and the computer multiple times. This is an invidious problem.

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  19. I'm still having this problem with one of my users. If they go to usatoday in IE9 on win7, they get redirected to the 9/11 page.

    The user has tried clearing cookies and cache; I tried forcing IE9 to always check for an updated page as well as running it without extensions... I can't figure this one out.

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  20. Right after I posted, I think I found the fix:

    In IE9, at least, when you click the "Clear data" button, the top box that's checked is "Preserve my data if the sites are in my favorites." So, if you have usatoday.com as a favorite and you don't un-check the top box, it will preserve your usatoday.com cookie/cache/etc.

    I unchecked it, deleted everything, restarted the browser. The first time I went to usatoday.com it redirected to the 911 page again, but on refreshing the page, no more problem. I can click the favorite button and everything.

    Hope this helps someone else some day!

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