Steve Clayton posted back in September a mock-up presented by Microsoft US showing how newspapers could take advantage of the latest digital apps to deliver a ‘next gen’ newspaper experience. Here’s the screenshot:

Steve has already commented on the design and, to a large extent I agree with him:

‘.the above still looks a bit too much like information overload for me.What I’d love to see is that beautiful reading experience augmented with digital breadcrumbs from sources like Twitter. Think of it as the confluence of high quality paper journalism with realtime digital narrative. I’d love to read the official report of the football matches here in the UK in a digital Sunday Times with snippets attached from Twitter and blogs. That’s what the future of newspapers means to me – the best of traditional with the best of digital.’

I think he’s cracked something there, and it’s something we’ve tried to introduce here at MSN UK with our new ‘wide page’ design. There has to be a balance between the old and the new – a layout that allows the text to breathe (the old) and technical innovation that allows you to pull in the latest, relevant data on your subject (the new). It’s just too easy to swamp your page with gadgets that distract your reader from the act of actually reading text.

Anyway, here’s a screenshot of the our new MSN TV layout, compared with the previous version. Hope you think it’s an improvement!

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