I hate washingtonpost.com. If I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I hate washingtonpost.com. It never gives me news that I’m interested in. It never gives local news. Its articles are always focused on national politics (or worse yet, the suburbs), regardless of what else is going on in the world and never what is happening within the city from where it gets its name. For example, a tsunami may be killing a quarter of a million people halfway around the globe but some Senator getting an expensive haircut or a soccer hockey sockey mom in the H8ST8 stretching her grocery dollar is the top story. In short, a waste of time. Sadly, I can track local news better elsewhere.

Unfortunately I’ve spent lots of time this week on WaPo’s site waiting for Todges’ obituary to be posted. I haven’t seen it yet—have I missed it? If you’ve seen it, please let me know. But I did notice the amount of space they dedicate to actual stories they’re reporting. It’s minimal. For instance let’s examine a typical obit page on the Post and see how much pixel area is actually devoted to delivering content.

This page’s pixel area is 1039 x 1903 (that’s some fun numbering, I must admit). This gives 1,977,217 square pixels, if you will. The article space numbers 249,737 pixels. Advertising occupies a whopping 1,045,508 pixels and the remaining 681,972 pixels are devoted to mastheads, navigation and direct links to other articles.

Breakdown
Content: 12.6%
Navigation: 34.5%
Advertising: 52.9%