‘Londonist’ Is Crap

The Londonist weblog, which launched some time ago, is really quite rubbish.

Firstly, the site itself is constantly slow or unavailable. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve tried to load a page, only to be served with a white page containing only a link to Blogads, which the site carries, and which are invariably rubbish. It would seem that the site is coded to not display until the images are loaded from the Blogads server, which then slows the whole site down.

Secondly, the RSS feed doesn’t contain full posts, so you can’t even bypass the site altogether.

Thirdly, when you can get onto the website, it looks rubbish, with little styling, and not even much customisation of the Movable Type templates.

Finally, whilst some of the articles are interesting and topical, there’s no real journalism, and much of the content is the same news that you read elsewhere, but with added snidey comments and silliness (which is never funny). The constant references to ‘we the Londonist’ show an exaggerated sense of self-importance when it should be the articles that are doing the talking. All the articles start with some chatty prelude and a ‘witty’ headline, which makes it impossible to tell at a glance from the RSS feed what the story is about or whether it’s interesting.

There’s definately a space for a collaborative London weblog. But Londonist, with its crappy commercialism and silly cynacism, isn’t it…

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