Andy Rutledge takes digital news to task, specifically over the cluttered, distracting design of news sites.

Besides the design notes, though, are some key points for conceptualizing news vs. opinion, comments vs. social media, and sections vs. content types:

• “Featured” sections are irrelevant, opinion-shaping editorial promotion; not news.
• Headlines matter and can be scanned; intro text does not and compromises scanning.
• Author, source, and date/time are important.
  Opinion or Op Eds are distinct from news.
• Article ratings or “likes” are irrelevant in the context of news.
• Comments are not contextual to news, but to social media.
• Media types (video, gallery, audio) are not sections. These are simply common components of each story.

For the record, I think Rutledge is wrong about paywalls (remember TimesSelect?) but dead on about site design and the role of comments/social media therein.

More like this:

• The elephant in the college town: university news and communications