To be honest, I don’t like to comment on our competition, mostly because I think it’s inappropriate for me to make remarks that could so easily be confused as an official New York Times view on what another news outlet is doing online. It’s not that I don’t have an opinion on what they’re doing, I just think it wouldn’t be productive of me to air my thoughts publicly (catch me in private if you really want to know), even if those opinions are generally positive — and they frequently are, as lots of companies in the online news space are doing exciting work.

I do make an exception, though, for those instances where I think a competitor has really hit it out of the park, and when I like a design enough to be effusively positive about it. One example of this, from last September, is the discussion between Liz Danzico and myself over last fall’s redesign of The New York Post’s site. It’s not without its flaws, but I still stand by my contention that it’s a nearly pitch-perfect expression of that paper’s brand and journalism. Nicely done, I say.

Today I want to talk about another example of a newspaper that, I think, is doing really wonderful work online: The Times of London’s recent redesign beautifully translates (versus simply transferring) its broadsheet aesthetic into something vibrant and native to the Web.

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