Huffington Handles Drudge, Handily

The last few posts have been an examination and critique of how The Huffington Post handles elements of online news delivery that are often points of contention or are otherwise notable. As part of my ongoing comparison of The Post and The Drudge Report, I will now examine how The Drudge Report handles these elements.

Video: The Drudge Report offers no video content on site, as it only links to other Web sites.
Slideshows: See above.
Linking: The Drudge Report is extremely experienced with linking, seeing as how that's all it does.

Okay, so it's not really a fair comparison. I'm being somewhat facetious. Let's talk about a real issue: the frontpage.

My last blog complained about the disjointed, inconsistently arranged frontpage of The Huffington Post. Still, at least The Post has color, photos and I know that when I click a link I'll be reading something on The Post. That way I can then interpret and filter said story as necessary based on my own conclusions about the authors. Drudge, meanwhile, offers blocks of BLACK TEXT IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS THAT MAY LEAD TO SOME SITE OF DUBIOUS ORIGIN. This is neither easily navigable or soothing to the eyes. Simple and basic and consistent, undoubtedly, but I have no desire to scan these same indistinguishable blocks of text every time I want to check the news.

One way I judge a site's layout is how closely the columns align at the bottom of the page. This isn't a practical concern but it does indicate, I think, how much effort goes into the design and how sound the fundamental concept is. Despite Drudge having nothing more to account for then blocks of text, the columns are entirely different lengths on his page. Ugly. And why, praytell, is the first link of the blogrollish area of his middle column a link to the very site I'm already on?