L.A. Times vs. N.Y. Times

I began this post intending to talk about just one of the two or three news sites I visit daily (no love this week, Statesman), the L.A. Times. I started off just visiting for the free crossword puzzles, but I've started to realize that the LA Times site is better than the N.Y. Times site in some ways, so I'm going to try and contrast LA with NY.

Intended Audience:

As with probably any site that offers constant world and local news updates, the intended audiences are news consumers of all kinds. Because both papers are so huge, I would guess that both sites attract a large number of international readers, as well.
Other intended audiences would include job seekers, blog posters and readers, potential customers of classified ads, visitors seeking information on art/culture reviews (books, theatre, movies, etc), local readers who need weather or sports information, and puzzlers like me who aren't going to shell out $40 a year to get NY Times puzzles online.

Usefulness of Content

Unlike some other 'fluff' sites I've written about before, the content on these pages is useful in a variety of contexts to a variety of users. Going by the potential users I've posted above, useful content includes local, national, and international breaking news, job posting pages, journalist blogs, classified listings, media reviews, weather and sports information, and calendar listings of local events. Both sites also offer video stories, which allows access to users who find it easier to watch and listen, rather than read, their news.

Consistency of Design:

Both sites, as befitting their reputation as respected news organizations, have consistent, simple, and effective design. On both sites, headlines are shown in blue, since they're usually links, and the leader lines or article summaries are in plain black text. Red text on the NY Times shows the latest time stories have been updated, while on the LA Times red text links you to photos and video. Whenever you go to an article, the papers' mastheads are represented in the upper left hand corner, and the menu bars to the rest of the paper remain on the page (the LA Times in a sidebar on the left, and the NY Times spread out across the top). All in all, both sites are consistent in their design, and both are laid out simply and effectively to reach both daily and first-time visitors (like students doing a classroom exercise or international readers).

Ease of Navigation

This section is where I see the most differences between the LA Times and the NY Times. It isn't that either site is particularly hard to navigate; since most, if not all, users are familiar with the way a newspaper is laid out physically, it's an easy task to locate the section you want, ignore those you don't, and peruse the articles for one that catches your interest. However, I find that the LA Times has a much less cluttered, simpler interface, and with so much content on the page, makes it superior to the NY Times in this regard.
The menu bar of paper sections on the left of the LA Times page means you simply choose your heading and browse all the stories in that particular section, from the homepage or whatever other section you're in. When you read a story on the NY Times, however, the menu bar across the top doesn't stand out very well, and the side menu bar from the home page disappears, so I image most people would just use the back button on their browsers to navigate.
For those who don't want to use the menu bars, both sites list 3-4 headlines for each section if you scroll down to the bottom half of the page. I don't mind this so much on the LA Times; the text is streamlined and unobtrusive, and the side menu works easily for navigation, anyway. This feature bugs the hell out of me on the NY Times site, though - you have to get through that bulky "Inside NYTimes.com" picture bar first, and then the headlines under each section are so spread out, and take up so much space, that they're actually kind of hard to read at a glance. Then you have more (and incidentally, tiny) links off to the side that take you to the crosswords, comics, classifieds, etc. I think it's just needlessly redundant and crowded.

Both sites face the challenge of displaying a huge volume of content and making it accessible to every user; while they're equal in most aspects, I think LA has NY beat when it comes to concise display and ease of navigation.