TimesReader: Forward into the past

We’ve built TimesReader 2.0 in response to the feedback we’ve received from you, our community of subscribers… Times Reader 2.0 (is) a more efficient way to read today’s news.

via Sneak Peek of Times Reader 2.0 – First Look Blog – NYTimes.com.

This from Rob Larson, NYTimes.com VP of Digital Production, introducing the 2.0 version of the Times’ offline digital reader app.  There’s a lot to like in the new TimesReader: It’s built on the Adobe Air platform, so it runs under Mac, Windows and Linux (okay, so this is mostly a plus for the Times’ developers, who didn’t have to sweat out three separate products — or, more likely, write it for Windows, port it to Mac and ignore Linux); there’s a function that lets you “fly over” the selection of stories, which approximates flipping through the paper in a way that’s both useful and cool; the app downloads up to seven days’ worth of content and archives it locally, so you don’t need to be online to read it. The display is graphically and typographically clean. On the other hand, the economics of the thing still feel half-baked. Print subscribers can get Reader free as an add-on; non-subscribers pay $3.45 a week. In either case, the product includes banner ads across the bottoms of section fronts and some individual stories. (At the moment these mostly consist of in-house ads for the Times itself; they’re sort of the digital equivalent of the “CONGRATULATIONS SENIORS FROM LARRY’S PARENTS” ads that used to fill unsold space in your high school newspaper.) And that’s fine; the web edition, and for that matter the print edition, carry ads too, of course. But readers will almost certainly complain about having to pay extra for a product they can read “for free” on the Times’ web site.

And it’s here that Reader becomes really interesting. What Larson all but admits in his blog post is that reading the Times via the web site is an ordeal. The Times on the Web is visually incoherent and organizationally jumbled. Stories may appear in multiple sections, or  hang around for multiple days. In its attempt to formulate a new paradigm for newsreading — the Times is hardly alone in this, by the way — it’s crafted an experience that satisfies almost no one. The new version of TimesReader feels like a direct reaction to that complaint. “In TimesReader 2.0 you will now see only today’s stories, and only in the sections in which they were published in print,” Larson says. So while it’s true that Reader is a “a more efficient way to read today’s news,” that’s only half the story. The rest is that the app takes all its most important cues, its more linear organization and more strict chronological boundaries, from  – wait for it — the print edition. The real progress the Times is making with its latest digital offering is to go backwards. For me at least, this feels right. It’s welcome. And it works.