The Post also has begun running native ads on mobile, a nod to readers’ shifting behavior to the smaller screen. New ad units are only starting to come, though; first among them is one called Infinity, a full-page unit that can run across desktop, mobile and tablet without the advertiser having to change the creative.
User experience The paper announced a website redesign, but it’s a long way from being completed. Chief among the goals is improving the article experience; article pages are cleaner, and photo galleries have better resolution and sharing features. But article pages are still marred by Google AdChoices and take too long to load – four to five seconds to load – which the Post wants to cut to two to three seconds. “Speed is something we need to get better at,” Prakash said. “We’ve made progress, but we’ve still got a long way to go.”
Content managementExplaining his decision to leave the Post for Vox Media, Klein criticized the paper as lagging in technology and for being tied to a daily-journalism publishing model. Here again, the Post is just getting started. Its new blog Storyline allows for storytelling in different formats and to be told over days and months. A new CMS that will build in analytics to inform and guide news staffers as they post content is still in the works. And the holy grail of being able to personalize content to readers based on their point of entry and interests is still a ways off – as it is for most publishers. (Lucia Moses)
