Honestly it looks like a massive pile of shit. It's not a surprise because the internet's business model incentivizes blog spam (reposting press releases and YouTube videos while adding a few lines of snarky captioning) and circular link farm clickbait (i.e. "You might also like", "More on <site name.com>"). The AVClub's strongest content was long-form written reviews, which are now buried and difficult to navigate. Try to, at a glance, tell what content are reviews, what grades the reviews gave. Try to pull up a season of television and see what grades all the episodes have. I would guess something like 80% of the page's layout now consists of stuff other than the content and navigation core to the actual content you're trying to read. The actual main page is now entirely just blog posts about stuff I could have read about on reddit or GAF.
I'm sure some of this will be fixed, for example the fact that it's not obvious from the title that something is a review, as new content gets posted. But some of it is structural and reflects a changing priority for the site in response to market conditions.
All the other Kinja websites suck too. It's a large part of the reason I don't read them. The combination of a terrible trashy layout and content that does well under that format.
Not trying to be a jerk. It's precisely because I love the site and writers and that it's such a good resource that I feel disappointed.
I can do without the reviews, I'll just use metacritic to get a quick impression of overall reception. But Does anyone else have an example of a site that has the following requirements:
1) Clear, clean layout
2) "What's on tonight" with a basic show list and a brief synopsis of new shows or new seasons.
3) No, really, a clean, clear layout.
4) I actually don't care that one of the cast members of Dogwelder Adventures made a comment about inequality.
5) The layout should be clear and clean.
