New York Times launches a new way to read news on the web

The New York Times eagerly tries to keep up with the changing technological environment - it even has a research and development department. Now it has rolled out a product that tries to recreate online the experience of reading a physical newspaper with the Times Skimmer.

The Skimmer is quite similar to its Times Reader application, but on the web. It features the visual effects readers experience when they are reading a newspaper. It sorts its articles into sections including "Top Stories", "World" and "Opinion" as well as "Week in Review" or "Most Emailed", and presents them all on one screen, with no scrolling. Except the first one, all the articles play an equal role and come with headlines, pictures, and short summaries in a grid layout.

In this way, Skimmer introduces an element of chancing upon a story – a piece might get your attention, wiithout you actively seeking it out. Also important is the lack of visible links. With the trick of seeing only one story, the Skimmer focuses your attention on one article. This means readers feel as if they are being informed rather than overwhelmed by information.

The NYT is attempting to focusing on what is important under the logic of the web rather than print by making blogs and topics as important as the sections. In addition, it offers a very visible introduction into shortcuts that help navigating the Skimmer.

The newspaper business - busy with fighting its online counterpart – is not doing enough to reinvent itself. While most newspapers thought their news was attractive enough for the reader as it is, Google knew that a lot of additional information that runs in the printed paper is getting lost. In the summer, their project Google Fast Flip made an attempt to create a new user interface for news – but since the headlines are barely readable, the project has a slim chance of success.

The Skimmer takes another approach to presenting news online. Readers can customise the layout and test seven different versions.

As Scott Karp, an expert in online journalism, put it recently: "Focus on the package. Whoever controls the package wins." This rings true not just for news, but for advertising as well - another big mistake news organisations made in the past was believing that wherever they put their news, their clients would follow. For Skimmer the New York Times has a client. It is Blackberry.