Home pages ‘old fashioned’
By Andrew Grant-Adamson • May 28th, 2007 • Category: Journalism, Newspapers, OnlineJeff Jarvis makes a compelling argument for a rethink of home pages on media websites. Fewer than one person in five now lands on the home page, most arriving directly at story pages through search or other links, he says.
Ironically, having read his column in the Guardian, the easiest way to find it on the web was to go to the Guardian Home page and do a search for "Jeff Jarvis". That is because is was not on the Media Guardian RSS feed and had not appeared on the Google News search.
The front page is deeply embedded in the way journalists think and it has been natural to transfer the concept to the web. Readers too are familiar with this structure and while I most frequently arrive at a story page I often click "home" to re-orientate myself. Often the serendipity that flows from the home page is rewarding, taking me to things I would never reach through search or the confines of my selection of newsreader feeds.
The home page is going to be with us for some time but Jarvis’s thinking makes sense. It is something every journalist should be thinking about.
Andrew Grant-Adamson is Andrew Grant-Adamson is a journalist who now teaches a new generation of writers, subs and editors at the University of Westminster.
Email this author | All posts by Andrew Grant-Adamson
Siobhain Butterworth, the Guardian new readers’ editor (ombudsman) is to start a blog about issues for the paper and its readers, she tells us in Comment is free. This is great and should open up a… Home pages ‘old fashioned’  Jeff Jarvis makes a compelling argument for a rethink of home pages on media websites. Fewer than one person in five now lands on the home page, most arriving directly at story pages through searc…