A pet peeve about the new media

I've long promoted the excellent content that Jim Romenesko puts together each day reporting on media for the PoynterOnline web site. I go there first thing each morning, and check again throughout the day. I advise my students to do the same, and, frankly, I would hope anyone interested in journalism would do the same. It's the place to find out what's happening in the media world. I highly recommend the site.

Nevertheless, the site was recently redesigned, and its designers fell into the trap of "because we can, we do" with a window that opens as you roll over the "bookmarks" area at the end of each item. It opens a window with 11 choices plus a "more" option button. Because Jim's posts are generally quite short, since he operates a linking blog that serves as a portal to the nation's reporting, the rollover windows obscure the items. Interesting enough, ad agencies have found these rollover popups are not only intrusive but very annoying, and some are warning their customers to ignore this capability.

I wish Jim's designers had done the same since I tend to scroll rapidly through his list with my cursor apparently on the very spot needed for these "blog spam" inserts to annoy me. The more cluttered media gets, the harder it is to easily read, and the easier it becomes to ignore it in favor of leaner, more user-friendly media.