#NewYorkTimes – Lillian W Eden

The New York Times newsletters are a way to get highlights of the news delivered straight to your inbox. The general newsletter arrives six days a week, every weekday and one for the weekend. They’re particularly convenient if you’re in a rush or don’t have time to read the full newspaper. The format suits both desktop and mobile, with none of the translational issues sometimes seen when something is available on both.

Credit: New York Times Morning Briefing Newsletter, captured on desktop at 10:44 AM on October 21, 2019.

For the general newsletter, each one typically consists of multiple sections, just as the actual paper would, in manageably readable chunks. The top stories each have a few hundred words, sometimes a picture, and often hyperlinks within the blurbs relevant to the article. For particularly important topics, especially in politics, there will also be brief sections following the blurb. Today, for example, for the blurb about Turkey and nuclear weapons, there is a related link, about Trump, another angle, from the Kurdish, and a link to the podcast The Daily about a relevant topic.

Credit: Morning Briefing from the New York Times, phone screenshot captured at 10:40AM on October 21, 2019.

Additionally, because so much of the newsletter would have been taken up by news of the impeachment, the NYTimes decided to create a separate newsletter for all those already subscribed to the regular newsletter. It can be unsubscribed from easily, but it keeps the regular newsletter feeling less dominated by contentious politics in the U.S.

There are other sections in the main newsletter, including, wonderfully, ‘Now a break from the news,’ which I always enjoy, because I really feel like I need it these days.

Typically seen here are recipes, gallery recommendations, book and TV recommendations, and sometimes a fluffy interest piece, like today, ‘here’s how to clean your sneakers.’

A daily newsletter on the top stories isn’t the only thing on offer, however. At nytimes.com/news, one can view the full list of just how many newsletters the New York Times offers, a brief summary, and how often they’re sent to you. You can even click to see a sample of what you can expect to see. There are so many they’re separated by section, such as News and Politics, and Opinion. It looks like there’s only one in a foreign language, but hopefully they’re working on that.

Credit: New York Times, Captured on desktop at 11:00 AM on October 21, 2019.

This is a great thing that they’re offering, a little sample of the kind of news you’d like to see, delivered right to your inbox.

The NY Times website gives you a lot of information and takes full advantage of how big your computer screen is. The layout does feel a bit busy, but in an understandable way. Main stories on the page have one or two full sentence blurbs on their articles. It’s a very text heavy layout, but by using different sizes of font, bold text, and graphics, it still feels pretty varied. The mobile site changes format to be more vertical, with more content accessible via scrolling.

The mobile website is more vertically oriented for scrolling on your phone. Photo: Credit nytimes.com accessed 9/23/19 at 10:07 EST

The desktop website is much wider and takes advantage of your whole screen. Photo: Credit nytimes.com accessed 9/23/19 at 10:29 EST

In addition to listing when the article was published underneath the blurb, the website also has the number of comments listed there as well, so you could find out just by looking which articles are creating more buzz and are getting more feedback, and stories that are live have red labels beneath them to make them stand out from the other stories on the main page.

The website for the NYTimes is pretty accessible, with options to access news in English, Spanish, or Chinese located in an easy spot right at the top of the page below the banner ad but above The New York Times header. It’s helpful that this function is so accessible when the website is first viewed.

Languages available for the website are easily noticeable above The New York Times banner. Photo: Credit nytimes.com accessed 9/23/19 at 10:08 EST

Also the categories bar at the top scrolls with you, so if you get to the middle of the front page and decide you’d actually just like to be looking at Tech news, you can easily navigate to that. On the mobile sight, the categories and language options are available once the list icon on the upper left hand side is clicked.

Also easy to access is the button to give the NYTimes a confidential tip. Once clicked, you get a page with various options for how you would like to transfer the information you may have to the NYtimes.

Overall, the NYTimes website gives you as much information as it can on a single screen.

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