Views from Medina Road

I vote for the wider (2008b) design, but the other one's (2005) arrangement of elements. The "blinks" should be at the very top of the left-hand column, so that one will not always need to page down to find the end of the first date's entries. This is a real annoyance on a laptop on a shaky table ...
 

thanks for the comment. i've been debating removing the 'future history' block altogether, since it's static all week and takes up valuable space... but lots of folks send me data for those listings, so i think it's important to a significant portion of the audience. but perhaps that block could move down underneath the latest set of blinks? not a bad idea...
 

The follow-up point I would make is this:

It's all well and good to acknowledge material that you've gathered from/received from others, such as the "future history" block... but this is Locus's website, and everything that is Locus's own content should come first. That's not just advertising/marketing theory speaking, but respect for the readers who are coming to the site for Locus's content.

I'd also like to suggest an additional feature to add to the "issue contents" block, perhaps that one gets only when clicking through: A list of exactly what books/magazines have reviews in that issue. That would also be helpful to librarians (and others who recommend and acquire books), as it's definitely something to distinguish Locus as a source of reviews. And you should continue to disclose which reviewer did each review. For reasons that vary from reader to reader, everyone ignores certain reviewers and immediately gravitates to others... which is something that PW has, to its detriment, always tried to ignore.