Capital New York

Jake Brooks commented on For their next trick, the Knicks will attempt to not disappear in the playoffs

Megdal, you forget one thing: The Knicks are Heat kryptonite in the playoffs. I know its been a long time since they've been there, so you may have forgotten. If I were a Knicks fan, I would want nothing more than to play Miami in the first round. Forget the matchup or the records. I am a Heat fan and want nothing to do with New York in the first round. I don't forget that they were an 8th seed the year that Allan Houston gave Alonzo Mourning chronic kidney disease ... indirectly, of course. (That buzzer beater would have done much worse to a weaker man.) Please, I'm breaking out in a cold sweat just thinking of a Knicks-Heat playoff series.

Posted on April 7th, 2011 3:40pm

Jake Brooks commented on F.A.Q.: What if Rex Ryan isn't exaggerating?

LOLphins!!! C'mon, you Jets were 5 yards away from having that game pushed into overtime. Puh-lease. And John, you'd like to have the Baltimore back after watching what the Jets did to the Bills ... the BILLS?! Comparing the Bills to the Ravens is like comparing Andy Roddick to this guy. And yes, I guess I would be confident sitting atop a division where its historically best team just lost the league's historically best receiver, another that just fired its special teams coach and has to travel to Green Bay to play the Packers after one of the Pack's most embarrassing losses in a while and, oh yes, the Bills. But I'm reading this FAQ as two very nervous Jets fans trying to reassure one another that their team is good, after years of being mistaken about that very fact. Good luck! I hope it works because there is a lot more football to be played. ps Did you see that infographic during the jets v. dolphins that compared how much weight sparano and rex reed had lost? There should definitely be an NFL-themed "Biggest Loser."

Posted on October 11th, 2010 2:04pm

Jake Brooks commented on Taking time to read on the web: Instapaper gets ready for the big show

I think you're absolutely right that publishers should partner with—or even try to outright buy—Instapaper. They should be far more aggressive re products, investing more in development and research, especially when those products effect distribution and can be new sources of revenue. As for the nature of the content, I am suggesting not creating more slideshows or creating something flashy for the sake of being flashy. I think that publishers have created websites for too long based on the content they have, rather than the content they should be creating. It's an economic reality. Most, if not all, news websites are built around the article, but the article is not unique to the web. It is not a unique expression of the web's strengths. It's a transplant, something created for an entirely different medium and then placed online. Mind you, I'm not arguing for the article to go away. I love reading articles, both short and long. I'm arguing that maybe the news online shouldn't look like an article, shouldn't look like something that can be sucked into an app like Instapaper. Maybe it looks a little more like something you'd create with ScribbleLive or Storify, an assemblage of media. Maybe it looks a little more like something you saw on Dustin Curtis' site (which I know is based around articles, but they're beautifully designed articles!). I don't know exactly what it will look like, but I'm thinking it will look different. As for the mix, I hear you. You're right. That is what works best for now.

Posted on October 6th, 2010 2:46pm

Jake Brooks commented on Taking time to read on the web: Instapaper gets ready for the big show

Instapaper does point to a clear flaw in newspaper and magazine website design: The reading experience is rarely, if ever, the priority. For better or worse, it typically takes a backseat to organizing and promoting content and generating pageviews. These websites fail on one level because they don't do one of two things: They don't follow the Instapaper model, which strips out all of the distractions and puts the primacy on text, and they don't do the opposite, which is create a unique enough reading experience for each story. Because of the latter, the users of Instapaper can dispense with the sites that publish these stories because these sites do not offer a compelling enough reason for someone to read the story in that context. Newspapers should therefore see Instapaper, not as a threat, but as a challenge. They need to focus more on the online medium and create content that compels users to read it in context, basically create content that cannot be parsed by Instapaper. As for the distribution of traditional articles, Instapaper is clearly onto something.

Posted on October 6th, 2010 12:11pm

Jake Brooks commented on Printing in pixels: The 'Times' lead designer and others on the next-generation web

Only the New York Times could cause an existential crisis in web design with the use of typekit. Look at the page today and this large feature section that has caused such a stir is gone. Unless they've had a change of heart (look what you've done Capital, with all your muckraking!), the layout is modular, scalable. Now that's something to strive for, the freedom to change the design from day to day, easily and in the service of your content.

Posted on September 24th, 2010 5:18pm

Jake Brooks commented on Presenting ... Omar Minaya's freakshow Mets of 2010

Fair enough. I read a lot of hard-earned wisdom in your hope tinged fatalism. Who am I to deny even a Mets fan their fleeting moment of happiness? I'm just happy that Bobby V is no longer in the running to take over as the Marlins skipper.

Posted on July 6th, 2010 9:52am

Jake Brooks commented on Presenting ... Omar Minaya's freakshow Mets of 2010

Why do Mets fans do this to themselves every year? Despite this commendable piece of analysis and all the evidence to the contrary, I can read the hope rising. Hope springs eternal, right? You gotta believe! But is there any question how this is all going to end? Megdal shouldn't be focused on whether or not Minaya is holding on to his job because plan C is working, but how did this team—THIS TEAM—get Mets fans hopes up once again. It's cruel. Repeat after me: Never again! The Mets are not going anywhere with a journeyman knuckleballer as their best pitcher.

Posted on July 2nd, 2010 1:13pm

Jake Brooks commented on Yahoo! style guide advocates three-ways, short sentences

Shouldn't the argument be not whether a digital style guide is useful, but rather why the major news players like the Associated Press and the New York Times have left it to Yahoo! to fill in the gaps. While there is certainly going to be overlap in a style guide written for print and one written for online, there is no question imho that the medium effects the style of writing and that a style guide for online is a worthwhile endeavor—not a symbol of misguided mid-90s idealism—and one no news outlet has even attempted. Why is that? And while a lot of fun can be had at pointing out the awkward nature of SEO-friendly headlines (meanwhile, anyone who has published to the web knows the difference between a headline that you affix to a story and a headline that you use to promote one) and drawing comparisons to Perez Hilton, little is written about the fierce competition among news websites to have their content read and how the difference between success and failure can be a link at the top of google news. Perhaps Google should be the target of Mr. Haber's scorn. PS Is there anything in the style guide about bad comment writing?

Posted on July 1st, 2010 7:09pm

Jake Brooks commented on Sounds we've never heard before

I don't know. I watched Ohio State take on Michigan on NBC the other weekend. It was scrum-tastic.

Posted on June 24th, 2010 1:42pm

Jake Brooks commented on Sounds we've never heard before

Next up? Rugby World Cup!

Posted on June 24th, 2010 8:59am