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NYT.com Redesign Rocks, May Herald Dawn of Paperless Newspapers

The recent redesign of The New York Times’ website is so good that consumers would be better off going online for the Times than forking out the $621.40 a year for home delivery of the print version, writes Slate’s Jack Shafer.

Though readers may miss the print version’s use as a great morning bathroom read, the online version may be a better fit the way consumers live and work.

The spiffy new design is the tipping point consumers have awaited and may ease users’ transition to a paperless newspaper, Shafer writes.

The Lost Remote blog agrees that the redesign is sharp without going so far as to call for cancelled subscriptions. According to the blog, the new NYTimes.com includes “a 1024 layout, new fonts, simple navigation, embedded video player (!) and a customizable page called ‘MY Times’ that will aggregate content from across the web.”

In a letter to readers, editor in chief Leonard M. Apcar wrote that the goal of the redesign was to make experiencing The New York Times online simpler and more useful. He is particularly excited about the MyTimes section, which lets users organize their favorite web sources of information from NYTimes.com and elsewhere and view them at a glance. “Personalized pages aren’t new on the web but ones offering the guidance of Times editors, reporters and critics are,” he wrote. “More than two dozen Times journalists are offering their picks of sites that should engage you, whether you’re interested in baseball or climate change, politics or recipes.”

MyTimes is currently under development but will be opening to a wider audience later this month. Visitors can sign up now to be among the first invited to try it.