Senneville winery and a page dissection
Here’s a piece on a winery in Senneville from the Gazette.
And here’s what I get on screen:
- At the bottom of the screen, a cookie notice “Notice for the Postmedia Network”. I can make this go away.
- An unrelated video box appears bottom right on the screen. It can be made to go away.
From the top:
- Bar with a link to “Parenting and Advice” at the top of the screen, telling me to sign up now.
- Bar with small sections burger and search
- Bar with main links to other sections
- Banner from the federal government promoting Remembrance Day (French version)
- A bar with four links promoting other stories on the site, with broken graphics showing little question marks
- Conventional row of social media icons
- Headline, deck and byline
- First article photo, caption and credit
- Paragraph 1 of the article
- Second copy of the banner from the federal government promoting Remembrance Day
- Black rectangle apparently containing videos, which intermittently flashes ads and teasers for unrelated articles
- Paragraph 2 of the article (3 lines)
- Blue box with header “Montreal Gazette Headline News” urging me to sign up for daily headline news
- (To the right of the last 3 items, a row of 5 items, under “Trending”. Four have broken graphic links.)
- Paragraphs 3 and 4 of the article
- Third copy of the banner from the federal government promoting Remembrance Day
- Second article photo, caption and credit
- Paragraphs 5 and 6 of the article
- Fourth copy of the banner from the federal government promoting Remembrance Day
- Paragraphs 7, 8 and 9 of the article
- Fifth copy of the banner from the federal government promoting Remembrance Day
- Paragraphs 10, 11 and 12 of the article
- Third article photo box, caption and credit, but there’s no photo, merely another broken graphic icon
- Recommended items (unrelated)
- Reiteration of social media icons
- “Most commented” articles on a carousel
- Box ad from the federal government promoting Remembrance Day
- Latest national stories (6)
- Aperçu of current advertising flyers
- Note about comments, but no comments
- Second copy of box ad from the federal government promoting Remembrance Day (all these federal ads have been the French version – no objections to French, but there should be some coding to feed the appropriate language to any media platform)
- Black footer with links and contact info
It’s a master class in distracting someone from reading an article. And in theory the Gazette’s readers are paying to read it.
Blork 10:37 on 2022-11-10 Permalink
It’s unbearable. Even worse on a tablet screen.
Even worse when there’s a video in the story (CTV stories always have this). You stop the video and then scroll, but a thumbnail video appears blocking half your text. If it’s playing an add sometimes the “x” to dismiss it isn’t even visible, and if you touch it (trying to dismiss) it clicks through to a page for whatever’s being advertised. GRRRRRR!!!
BTW, part of that inability to stop the ad is because they get paid more for having the ad viewed instead of dismissed, and the more of the ad you view, the more they get paid. (It’s called “quartiles.” If you dismiss it after 25% has played they get paid for one quartile; if you dismiss after it’s half played they get paid for two quartiles, etc.)
OK, there’s money involved so I can see why the make us suffer the ads. But why make us suffer the video report WHEN WE’RE TRYING TO READ? FFS, if I’m SCROLLING it’s because I want to READ not listen to someone on a video!
So awful. This is why I avoid any CTV links unless there’s no other source. Same for Gazette.
steph 11:26 on 2022-11-10 Permalink
To be honest, I just don’t click the Gazette links anymore at all. (I always look at the hotlink before clicking).
M 12:04 on 2022-11-10 Permalink
True of so many newspapers these days. So many are unreadable without reader mode. I just set articles to load in reader mode by default now
MarcG 12:06 on 2022-11-10 Permalink
Adblock browser extensions make the internet tolerable. You can even customize them. For example, mine blocks all of the normal ads by default, but the “Headline News” isn’t detected, so I right-click and block it – easy.
John B 13:23 on 2022-11-10 Permalink
Sooo, just FYI, c’est la journée du souvenir demain.
Kevin 20:26 on 2022-11-10 Permalink
I have written to The Gazette multiple times about the unwieldiness of their site, especially the fact that it continually kicks you off if you are logged-in.
I am convinced it is this bad on purpose in order to push users to the e-paper version.
mare 22:20 on 2022-11-10 Permalink
I don’t think the Montreal Gazette has any influence on this, this is the standard Postmedia website ‘design’. It must be awful to try to produce good content and then have it presented in this way. Fortunately they still have a lot of old readers that read printed newspapers.
I actually prefer reading those as well, digital is terrible for quickly scanning headlines and browsing through sections. I used to spend at least an hour a day, and sometimes two, reading my printed newspaper (not the Gazette), reading almost all sections except sports and business. Now I have three digital newspapers subscriptions, but I only read a few articles a day, often following links from emails or other sources.
Tim S. 22:35 on 2022-11-10 Permalink
My father used to get a print subscription, but it was recently cancelled (by the Gazette) due to a lack of delivery people.
Kate 10:44 on 2022-11-11 Permalink
> Adblock browser extensions make the internet tolerable
They do, but I feel I need to see the media sites as they are so I know what I’m linking to. I can’t assume that readers of this blog have their browsers set up with similar blockers. So I like to see what any user, using any browser, will get.
(I use Chrome for my personal browsing, which has Adblock installed.)
Tim S.: That’s bad.
John B: I had NO IDEA.
Blork 10:56 on 2022-11-11 Permalink
Sites can also detect ad blockers, and they pop up big windows asking you to turn them off (and sometimes won’t even let you see the content unless you turn it off).
I use Adblock Plus on Firefox, and it blocks some of the shit but almost always provokes the above pop-up on newspaper sites. It’s so bad that I generally open every newspaper link on this blog by right-clicking and choosing “open in private window.” (My ad blocker extension is disabled in private windows.) This has the dual advantage of not harassing me with the TURN OFF YOUR AD BLOCKER noise and also keeping the tracking cookies isolated from my other browsing. But it means suffering those ads.
Joey 14:26 on 2022-11-11 Permalink
@Blork why not just use a service like Instapaper? Right-click –> send to Instapaper –> open Instapaper –> read text-/image-only article…
Blork 19:55 on 2022-11-11 Permalink
Joey, I’ve used Instapaper for years. I even pay for it to get premium features. But I’m not going to shoot something to Instapaper if it’s just some short local article like most of the links on this blog. Too much clicking! (Also, i often run the French articles through a translator because I’m impatient.)
But it’s fantastic for longer pieces that quietly sit there until you’re ready to read them.
EG 23:56 on 2022-11-11 Permalink
With some news sites when they complain that I’m using an ad-blocker, I can get rid of that notice by typing 12ft.io/ in front of the URL. Works for many paywalls too. Though some news sites like the NY Times have gotten wise, and have forbidden the 12ft.io/ workaround.