It wasn't explained anywhere on the site so I had to ask :(

Horseychick:

 

The '5 minutes to read' means it will take you about 5 mins to read. 

 

But 5 minutes for who?  Reading speeds vary widely.

Understandable   As a Business Analyst I'm always interested in how things that seem obvious to one person are taken a totally different way by someone else.  Bet the Herald didn't get that feedback during UAT!

And I agree reading speeds vary widely so it seems like a stupid measure to me too   something dreamed up by someone in the 'Innovations' team no doubt!

vexxxboy: dont want to leave my email so cant take the survey

 

Indeed. The first page says that it's confidential, then on the last page it asks for your email address (somuchforconfidential@example.com)!

Horseychick:

 

The '5 minutes to read' means it will take you about 5 mins to read.  So if you're on the bus and due to get off at the next stop you know not to start reading the article at that point because you won't finish it.  It's designed for millennials who have a very short attention span and need to be spoon fed.  Interesting that you had a totally different take on it 

 

Considering I'm a millennial i see that trait a lot in my peers. Has to be now and not in 5 minutes.
Then again i have patience and i will read an article based on my interest and not the length. I could read a 1000 words of rubbish on a topic I like but 50 words of the best written article ever and not be on a topic I like wont get me far.

Its more engaging us rather than just saying we have no attention span.

DarthKermit:

 

What do you think of their new look?

 

Mutton dressed up as Lamb comes to mind.

No way to go back to the old site, is there?

On a S5 - Too long to download and  render images, images are too big, so now I have to scroll heaps.

Navigation is painful, slow

Bye NZH, hello RNZ

It won't pinch and zoom on mobile and that's a big fail so far as I'm concerned.

Also very slow to load.

I deployed Adblock Pro, HTML5 blocker, Flashblocker and noscript against it.

While it dealt to most of the annoyances (except for that stupid black bar) it meant that the website became mostly white space.

I didn't think it was possible to make the Stuff website looked good, but the NZ Herald has somehow managed it.

No more Herald as part of my morning routine for me I suspect.......

Interestingly, they said the feedback they had received during testing was "very positive" (I think). Who did they ask? Friends of the editors? They sure didn't ask me - and I definitely don't like it.

Edit: the search feature doesn't work either (for me, anyway).

Seriously, why does anyone consume media from NZME or Fairfax when you can get real journalism from sources like RNZ, Newsroom and Interest.co.nz?

Familiarity? Loyalty?

I liked the (old) Herald site because it was easy to follow and I knew exactly where the sections were I wanted. This is just a mess - stories scattered all over the page and (it seems to me) in no particular order.

With the old one, the main stories were in one neat column, with secondary stuff on the side. This has everything everywhere.

Does anyone actually like it?

What an absolute pig of a website. It's soooooo slow to load on a desktop and so sluggish on a mobile that it's almost unusable.

Open Article

Video Commercial auto plays.  Hit pause button to stop it. 

Scroll page with mouse (to go read the content)

Video automatically unpauses

Browser tab closed.