JS tries to pull us in with new entertainment site

You might want to check in with the Journal Sentinel's newest website, TapMilwaukee.com. The site is the product of a lot of thought in an effort to build another destination for visitors. Jill Williams, who heads the entertainment area, says in today's paper that "communicating with readers and hearing from them in real time are what we're all about."

First impression is that the site suffers from the problem of "too much." There's an awful lot going on in a design that seems overly-complicated (not to mention the incredibly annoying ad hanging over the page whenever you access it, even if you are using the back-click after reading something -- which you must use since the site migrates you to pages rather than opening up new windows when you try to burrow into it).

The blog list appears to have a couple of new blogs that might be interesting, but both "The Foolishness Corner" and "Tuned In" didn't exist Monday morning, my click leading me to that wonderful "Page Not Found" notice that we've all come to love so much (it's really hard to be sarcastic online, isn't it?).

Anyway, the site has promise and, like with a new restaurant, I'll keep an open mind until all the kinks are worked out. The staff is good, and I hope the company is willing to put necessary resources into it. A cleaner look would help (see the problems with the Gawker.com sites for the importance of design), but a site like this will live or die on its content.