okay, so there are a lot of reports this morning about a certain memo about making things shorter, etc for the nytimes. and there are varying angles of analyses about it. one is that even the times is getting caught up with the fast news, straight to the point, etc reporting style. one theory floated on some blog somewhere is that it might be a reflection of web users hating to click to page 2 for the story lead (after a page of some anecdote to contextualize the story).

now i don’t have a problem at all with the current times’ layout, but this bit of information got me to thinking about my biggest problem with the internet which centers solely on one of my favorite sites: espn. why oh why did they move to a multipage format for stories. i mean fine some are long, but does it save that much load time? does it generate that much more ad revenue to have an extra page to place ads on? some stories are literally 2 lines post break. check out the article by len pasquerlli about TO – 3 pages, the 3rd page is nothing. and it’s annoying nonetheless. on any story, my first move is always find and click “single page view” if it’s an option.