Online News is Broken

If you pay for the whole pipeline, then the provider of that pipeline cares deeply about their brand. This gives them incentives to get the news right.

If you pay piecemeal (with money or eyeballs, doesn't matter), then the provider of that pipeline cares deeply about how effective the headline is at grabbing your attention. The quality of the article doesn't matter so much because it doesn't affect your buy decision. And what people don't care about, gets shortchanged.

The internet has caused us to move from a subscription model to a piecemeal model, and the quality of news has suffered. But this is not new. A hundred years ago the "yellow press" was also on a piecemeal model. So, more recently, were British tabloids. And they were crap in the same way that the internet news today is crap.

Unless you're either relying on a third party curation that you trust, or are purchasing the brand, quality is going to suffer.

The big killer feature that could have helped is user-created subreddits. You could create reddit.com/r/quibb, run it on an invite-only basis, and moderate the submitted content to keep it close to your ideals. Of course, that would only solve the problems of content and membership; it would do nothing to fix Reddit's design.

You're right that Reddit does context poorly. Perhaps you should look at Metafilter as an example of how to add context to aggregated news. Take this post for (an exceptionally long) example: [http://metafilter.com/120387] It has a single main link summarized above the fold, with a large amount of historical context and supplemental links below it. Most posts to Metafilter don't go quite that deep, but almost all provide at least one or two extra links on the subject.

Let's let readers judge for themselves: http://i.imgur.com/6Qtch.png

That's gray.

> Perhaps it looks different on different computers.

Yes -- something that's not true for black text on a white background.

> I am NOT a designer though, so I won't even pretend to argue the current design is optimal.

In that case, a more conventional design might be a better choice -- one in which the contrast between text and background is sufficient to render your pages readable.

I've always favored sites that set themselves apart with their atypical content rather than their atypical color choices.

There are many examples of practical color choices. Everywhere you look, there are sites with reasonable choices. HN, for example.

Or visit the most popular web sites:

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/most-popular-websites

Notice anything? All of them have black text on a white or very light background. No exceptions.

More on this topic:

http://contrastrebellion.com/

(1) <cost> The "brain damage factor" is relevant tradeoff to consider, if and when present;

(2) <information efficiency> or lack thereof is a nother key determinant of success; and

(3) <threshold competence> failing to understand (1) & (2) damages credibility ever-so-slightly.

Let us not forget the subject: competition, criteria, and selection of optimal media platforms.

Finally, this article // is a bit // <Exit through the Gift Shop> // with its finish.

I regularly see HN posts get downvoted simply for being negative, regardless of the topic. In this case, I think the criticism is both justified and constructive. And I see you agree. :)

> I didn't even finish the first page, let alone put up with such a design as my daily news reading.

I think it's an age thing. There's a certain age at which adorning oneself in dark colors makes one cool, above it all. And designing one's pages according to accepted norms makes one a sell-out. I would be more certain about this were it not for the fact that I am so old that, not only was there no Internet when I was young, there wasn't even FM radio. :)