Text-only versions of news sites?
September 14, 2018 6:41 AM

I just found out that there is a super-stripped down version of the npr.org homepage and was wondering if there were other news or popular sites that have something similar?

(not looking for rss feeds, but actual html-based sites)
posted by gwint to Computers & Internet (14 answers total) 42 users marked this as a favorite
CNN Lite
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:51 AM on September 14, 2018


Ditto CNN lite. Just FYI, i noticed it doesn't seem to update as frequently as the regular page.
posted by littlesq at 6:52 AM on September 14, 2018


A couple of articles about light news sites: Text-only news sites are slowly making a comeback. Here's why. and Clean, Fast & Readable: Lightweight Versions Of Popular News Sites.

Despite the optimism of that first link it only names three; NPR, CNN, and The Age. The last one seems to be gone now. The second article has many more examples but most are just mobile sites. Christian Science Monitor has a text edition.
posted by Nelson at 6:57 AM on September 14, 2018


http://m.facebook.com/
posted by Glomar response at 7:01 AM on September 14, 2018


Or even https://mbasic.facebook.com/ if you want it super simple.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 7:10 AM on September 14, 2018


m.xkcd.com
en.m.wikipedia.org

etc.
posted by aniola at 7:26 AM on September 14, 2018


Metafilter has a gopher site, which is actually awesome.
posted by Melismata at 7:40 AM on September 14, 2018


The Guardian by mefi's fabius.
posted by snarfois at 7:54 AM on September 14, 2018


Not quite text-only, but USA Today has a GDPR-compliant "EU Experience" at https://eu.usatoday.com/ which strips back all of the shenanigans of its usual homepage.
posted by A Robot Ninja at 9:23 AM on September 14, 2018


I’ve disabled JavaScript in Chrome for The NY Times, and that eliminates a lot of cruft, plus it defeats the paywall.
posted by notyou at 1:18 PM on September 14, 2018


Tech news and JS library aggregator Hacker News has been stripped-down by default for its existence.
posted by tapesonthefloor at 1:27 PM on September 14, 2018


Not sure if this is exactly what you wanted for (and it's certainly got mixed reviews in the developer world), but Google's AMP project renders websites in a much simpler text-and-photos format that might be closer to what you want. If you use Google News on your phone, it will automatically show you AMP sources when available, and I believe it tells you which are AMP articles.

Edit: using a no-script plugin that blocks Javascript is a great idea!
posted by nosila at 1:57 PM on September 14, 2018


CNN lite. Just FYI, i noticed it doesn't seem to update as frequently as the regular page

Yes IME it can sometimes go for a week without being updated - clearly, and unfortunately, somebody influential at CNN has lost interest in this project. Also, at times it seems the articles listed there are only about one thing - I wish there was more variety.
posted by Rash at 9:44 PM on September 14, 2018


TimesWire - Not strictly text only but TimesWire is The New York Times in reverse chronological format with no bells and whistles.
posted by cmaxmagee at 4:51 AM on September 17, 2018


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