MAKING NEWS ILLEGIBLE

Google news is so COOL, it is illegible to most of us. Their font is thin, blue and unchangeable. News sites where I can enlarge the type keeps down my eyestrain. Now Slate.com has decided that cool graphics are more important than older people reading their site.

The neatest thing about iPhones and iPads is the "making it bigger" option. I am told that you actually have to specify that the website works with the "make it bigger" stuff.

Two months ago, I saw that politics might heat up so I signed up for the New York Times. What I got was a website where I could not make the typeface bigger. When I complained, they told me that the articles would have bigger type if I wanted. This was not true. Like a book, the typeface only had two sizes. And naturally, the typeface was thin and hard to read. They promised me I would be able to read articles using the newspaper website which did get bigger and smaller. This was a lie, of course.

Now Slate.com is joining the "only those with good eyesight need read us".

I think there are two reasons for this insanity. One, print media people can not cope with web design. They want their cool layout to remain a cool layout. "Who cares if people can read it? We do not want old people anyway."

Two, it is possible that there is a patent on the "make it bigger" stuff, and some hardware makers are bribing web designers to NOT use the "make it bigger" as they do not want to put it on their new phone or tablet.

BTW, it is cool with me if you put an ad on before I see the article or video. However, I DO want to be able to close the ad and go to my article. If you allow advertisers to highjack your readers, you will LOSE READERS.

Luckily, there are plenty of free news sites on the web.

But I hate to see the New York Times try to keep selling buggy whips, when they could so easily make a lot of money by moving into the modern world.