MSNBC hates me

After fiddling with MSNBC's recent redesign, I'm convinced that they care more about themselves than they do about me.

Up until a few months ago, I did most of my news-foraging from MSNBC, DrudgeReport, Google News, and WorldNetDaily (Not to mention several news discussion boards plus whatever we talk about here on the blogosphere). With the exception of Google News, I looked to these sources to discover what the establishment and the independent press thought was important that I read in my areas of interest.

On the home page, which is my typical point of entry, the navigation I usually like to access quickly was pushed below the fold in favor of whatever stories MSNBC thought I should read, as in the example below.

What's worse, when I try to access the flyout menu system as I did in its previous design, my desired selection constantly disappears before I've even had a chance to select it!

My conversation with the interface goes something like this:

"U.S. News... That looks interesting... Damn! Let me try again..."
"U.S. News... There's my story... Damn! Let me try again..."
"U.S. News... There's my story... Damn! Let me try again..."

And so on. Only through blind persistence do I finally get to the story that captured my interest, only to find that I read it before through a link I found on the DrudgeReport or Google News.

So let's review. MSNBC.com's new design:

1. Hides the navigation below the fold
2. Broke the navigation to make it difficult to use, and only through consistent, belabored effort

I have no idea why they did this (except that they hate me, personally), but they might be forgiven if we could attribute their decisions to simple ignorance or a lack of resources. But no. As this blog post indicates, they put a lot of thought energy into this.

Did they not think to test it?

Did they think more people are more interested in their new navigation that features "news" from

• Today Show
• Nightly News,
• Dateline
• Meet the Press
• MSNBC TV?

Those items as content buckets mean something only to those who watch those programs. If I want to find news about the latest on technology, which do I go to?

I have no idea, either. That's why I scroll down to access the news categories that tell me more than the ones above.

If you frequent MSNBC, how do you like its new design? - Cam Beck

Comments

[Lewis Green]

Cam,

They obviously hate you (and anyone else expecting to determine what is important to them, not MSNBC). I continue to use Yahoo as my home page, which is agreeable to my choices for news, sports and weather.