Cleveland.com, Rated the 15th Best
Newspaper Website, Gets Only a C-

'Cleveland.com has a very low ratio of online readers to paid subscribers which almost certainly makes it harder for the internet site to contribute a great deal of revenue. The homepage is a bit jumbled, but the navigation is not difficult. The editors put their picks at the top of the page and then each major section is presented in order with headlines and photos. A column called "real time news" runs down the right side of the page and is confusing. The priorities of the editors are unclear as the two columns of news headlines compete with one another. The navigation tabs for each inside section do have a drop-down to show the readers what is in that section before they go there. This is a helpful guide to finding stories without having to wander around the website. Cleveland.com is another example of editors taking something that works well, the homepage lay-out and navigation, and abandoning it in the inside section. The local news page begins the confusion and the confusion continues in the entertainment section. Cleveland.com does a better job sticking to its easy-to-use pages in sports. But, a reader could go through the major sections of Cleveland.com and never know that they came from the same website. Grade: C-'
--from an article published today on 24/7WallStreet, an online news and information outlet about the stock market and investments. I thought it rang true about the PD's companion website, which would have come in considerably lower before a recent redesign. Only one major surprise in this top five (the NYTimes, LATimes, NYDaily News, NYPost and Washington Post, in that order) The WaPo website is easily better than those two non-Times New York papers. Chalk it up to the usual New York parochialism. The LAT has to be happy, since its site was universally panned before a recent overhaul. It's gone from very bad to very good.