Why Do a Research on it?
The reason why I made this post is simple I am a guy who works 9-5 job and barely have time to keep up with the latest news. Most of my time is taken up by frivolous TV shows mobile apps yadda yadda it sucks but that's the reality will live in. There have been a lot of options when it comes to short news stories for Indians, some sites do a pretty good job of creating a brief excerpt of the whole story while some sites promise news within 60 words. Just how good are these promises? Well, let's find out!
Who are the contenders?
I have narrowed down the list to 3 contenders. All three of them promise to provide Indian news for political, sports, technology and business verticals. All three of them promise to be short and to the point. All three of them have a website which is the main thing which we would be focusing on. An app is a good thing to have but really? Do you need an app for such a basic thing as short news?
Ranking Methodology
For the ranking methodology, I have taken many factors into consideration such as readability of the article, actual content length, the time taken to read the articles, how many articles I can read and understand within 5 minutes, and finally the UI and UX of the website itself.
The Verdict:
After spending about three days with each of the websites these are my final verdict
1. Inshorts
The first thing that catches my eye about Inshorts is it's very clean and minimal looking UI. On its first page itself, it has more than 10 articles is about 60-word length. An immediate turn off is its constant push to install the app.The website itself seems to be built for app first layout but I am not complaining though as it looks good on the mobile browser as well as PC browser and it's readable. It is a sort of aggregator but one which aggregates the content down to just 60 words or less which is a good thing in my book.
One negative part about this website is sources are very diverse you can get sources from reputable media websites like Hindustan Times, Indian Express and Reuters while sometimes you would get news articles from new sites which you barely heard about.
2. TheMirk
This is another fairly new website which identifies itself as a quick and fast news provider. Although its article lengths are nowhere near the 60 word limit like the one above. Most of the articles here are about 200 to 250-word length. I feel for news articles this is a sweet spot, You cannot restrict yourself to just 60 words and expect to convey the entire news message in a single 60 world piece. The direction TheMirk has chosen allows itself to be flexible as well as delivering complete facts without the opinion bull shit that most other sites resort to. You can say it's a news site, without the fluff that you often get.
When it comes to The Mirk, it definitely has a good looking UI although not as minimal as the other two. I can see the appeal in using something that is not just the blank text over a white background.
3. TheIndependent's Short stories section
For just Indian content, the top two sites above should be enough but when you need a world coverage there is nothing better than the Independent's own short news section. It covers almost every major world news in a format that is very similar to what TheMirk follows. Only fact-based news article with little or no opinion added. This is in my opinion what every news site should follow. Opinion pieces have a spot in the opinion section. The layout of the website is also very user-friendly on the desktop as well as mobile.
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