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I visit MNSBC.com multiple times, every day - more than CNN.com and any other news site. I turn to MSNBC to find the top stories in the nation. I look to its producers for their news judgment and their ability to show me the important stories using only a headline.

But I probably only click an MSNBC story once out of every 50 times I visit the site.

Why? Because after getting the headlines, I can go find another site that has more depth to its stories.

So what are the top stories?

After the redesign, the top secondary stories are no longer along side the top story. I’d rather they stayed front and center.

Further down the page, I like how the design sorts out categories and gives them their own top story to get readers into sections. However, I still only need to read the headline and I understand what MSNBC is pushing. That’s the end of my praise.

MSNBC will still be my de-facto source that I’ll check daily to see the top national headlines. But I can’t see myself digging into this site any more than I did before.

Among my disappointments with this design:

1. Where’s the user interactivity? With a huge redesign, why did the brain trust at the new org ignore that news sites are embracing their readers, seeking their comments and ideas? I don’t get a personal relationship with MNSBC or its readers in this design, a major folly for a design project of this scale.
2. The site still links only within itself and partners - as far as I can see. This is one thing that CNN.com is really leading MSNBC in. I like MSNBC’s news judgment more than CNN’s, but CNN links out to other sites when they don’t have copy for an important story. MSNBC doesn’t link out, as far as I can see. I would love it if they could become that resource.
3. I still don’t have a reason to scroll down. Why should I? Yeah, there’s topics with top stories pulled out - the very thing that I applauded them for. But so what? The headlines are still presented in a way that isn’t getting me to click. Anything that’s important to me will make the top headlines above the scroll. And if they don’t, then the story obviously isn’t important enough.
4. Story page is cluttered and has an ad directly in the middle of the content. better. On second thought, I like the story pages. I like all the content on the side to help compliment the story and keep me reading down the page.

I’ve yet to stumble upon much positive criticism for the redesign. The only reaction I have found is Bryan Schwegler’s which compares the MSNBC redesign to Fox News’ design - and not in a good way. He also says MSNBC should have worked harder to help users understand the difference between story images and advertisement images.

I have to agree with Schwegler’s assessment in regards to the story pages. The images run directly into the ads, ka-lame I’m good with the story pages now. Kind of like them actually.

What do you think about the redesign? Should MSNBC considered the social world the web is barreling toward?