Score again for the old media behemoth

Spending the morning playing around with Jakob Nielson's discussions about e-mail newsletters, I have to once again ask the obvious question: Why on earth should we trust his opinions on design or usability when his site looks the way it does? I'm all for the diamond-in-the-rough approach, but on the Internet, when my attention is being drawn in a million different directions, it's tough to keep my mind focused on the abomination of Web design that is Nielson's work.

Despite that, I'm glad Nielson tackled the question of professionally published newsletters versus those created by the campaigns, coming down heavily in favor of the Post's newsletter:

The Post gets high scores for newsletter content, but then so did the presidential candidates. You would expect a leading newspaper to have people who can write and edit, and they do, collecting a tad more points in this area than the campaign newsletters. ... The Post's Web design team and newsletter editors have done a superlative job and beat both George W. Bush and John Kerry by a mile.

I'm not sure why this surprised me. I think I was just taken aback for a moment that someone on the Web actually recognized the value of having talanted professional editors and designers create a product such as as newsletter. (note: I edit and design newspaper pages for a living, so of course I'm going to say this.)