Designer who critiqued New York Times website accuses critics of ‘libelous journalism’

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Andy Rutledge, the Web designer who posted mockups of a redesigned New York Times website to show that “digital news is broken,” has posted a response to his critics. In it, he says that his post was misrepresented as a redesign of the Times site when he stated that he was using it as an example of what’s wrong with news sites in general. “As for the authors of these articles, most of their words reveal that they simply looked at the mockups, scanned a few sentences or bullet points, and then made some assumptions…which then formed the foundation of the thesis straw man premise that they then each attacked in supposedly-authoritative articles. For those of you scoring at home, this is called irresponsibility. It’s also called libel.” (The ellipses and strikethrough appear in the original.) Rutledge says the “lies and distortions” have damaged his reputation and cost his business hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential work. ||  Earlier: Pushback to ‘redesigned’ New York Times website.