Irish newspapers (and their journalists) have long had an uncomfortable relationship with the web. One very interesting aspect of this is how they portray their brands online. While American papers (below) have the confidence to use their actual brand names, Irish papers (above) still feel they need to dissociate the “real” paper from the less “real” online incarnation with an online version of their brand.
My advice to Irish newspapers: cut the crap. For better or worse, paper newspapers are dying and the future is online. Follow the lead of your US counterparts and embrace the web (with your brand and with your content). Change is coming and it’s better to be part of it than to be left behind.
8 Comments
http://thestar.ie/ Another absolute gem embracing the digital world.
What is interesting, is http://www.herald.ie/ . They also make a big point of the DOT IE, but their website is actually better designed than their newspaper.
Posted by Des Traynor at 11:49 am on 7 October, 2008.
I’ve been writing a fair bit about papers and the web as of late ,and make the same point. It’s the same in the UK (we have guardian.co.uk, timesonline etc.)
iA wrote a really good article about on/offline newspapers.
You’re right to say that the relationship is uncomfortable. I don’t think newspapers trust their online readers to click through to content, which has resulted in some pretty poor design.
(Apologies for the links to my blog — feel free to strip them out).
Posted by Leon Paternoster at 12:07 pm on 7 October, 2008.
What’s quite interesting is the weird typography on the Times and the Examiner… the dot-com sits very oddly on both, particularly on the Times.
Posted by David Barrett at 2:40 pm on 7 October, 2008.
The Irish Times and Examiner should definitely drop the .com’s. Although, in defense of The Independent and Business Post their domain names aren’t obvious choices which gives the branding some merit. Most people still type the url directly into an address bar when going to news sites. For example, where does http://irishindependent.com/ take you?
Posted by Dave Jeffery at 1:58 am on 8 October, 2008.
Leon: Nice posts. Newspaper sites are very interesting because there’s still nothing close to the “right” way to do them. Conventions are definitely appearing but there’s so much room for innovation.
Dave Jeffery: Fair point Dave, I suppose. But surely this goes for every mainstream site? Should every site use their domain instead of their logo if it’s not .com? And going to irishindependent.com will tell you that irishindependent.com isn’t the Irish Independent newspaper and that you need to keep looking… While agree this is a relevant consideration, I don’t think it’s important enough to start splitting your brand like the Irish papers are doing.
Posted by Eoghan McCabe at 2:48 pm on 9 October, 2008.
Eoghan McCabe: “Should every site use their domain instead of their logo if it’s not .com?”
Not necessarily, I think RTE should drop the .ie for example. The Irish Independent have a domain that is not at all obvious to readers of the offline newspaper. Your argument makes sense though and I can see both sides of the coin. Perhaps I’m lenient towards the indo because they have managed to do it somewhat gracefully and I prefer short URL’s.
I know an awful lot of people are going to simply google it nowadays so perhaps this is a bit of a backwards way to looking at things but I still think of my Dad who will try and guess the URL time and time again before he turns to a search engine.
Posted by Dave Jeffery at 3:15 pm on 9 October, 2008.
Indeed, have to agree. The NY Times is by far the best out there. In Ireland The Irish Times is better than the rest. Thankfully they moved from ireland.com and to a free system like they had in the early 2000s. I assume the current branding is a step to re-introduce the Irish Times as the most visited Irish website and refocus the brand and spin ireland.com into whatever they are trying to do.
Now if only The Irish Times would create an iPhone app just like the NYT.
Posted by Luke at 10:41 pm on 13 October, 2008.
i can see a couple of problems; most newspapers use different companies for their online activities which prevents the online company from using the traditional company’s logos etc., the other problem is the ongoing problem with dns, its important to get the actual domain used in the advertising. This isn’t a problem with NYTimes because americans would assume the .com tld, but with the less popular .ie tld, i think it would be important, otherwise my mother would try .com on the assumption that all addresses end that way
Posted by graham at 6:42 am on 27 October, 2008.
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