Slightly ajar

Vs.

In honour of the recent redesign of the New York Times, I'm starting off the duelling contest between a clash of Newspaper titans. USA Today is the top selling newspaper in the United States with a circulation of 2,154,539, while the New York Times comes in third with 1,118,565, according to Infoplease. I didn't choose the Wall Street Journal as it mainly focuses on business, so it it probably best to pair it up with the Financial Times at a later date.

I've contacted both parties today and I'm awaiting their response. I'm hoping they will be willing to work with us to improve any issues found. If I don't hear anything by this time next week then I'll start the contest, otherwise I'll delay until the contestants have time to make their pre-fight preparations. I'll keep you informed with any news and pre-fight quotes from either camp. May the best site win

The pages chosen to be compared are as follows:

• Homepage: nytimes.com and usatoday.com
• News: nytimes.com/pages/world/ and usatoday.com/news
• Business: nytimes.com/pages/business and usatoday.com/money
• Sports: nytimes.com/pages/sports and usatoday.com/sports
• Arts/Lifestyle: nytimes.com/pages/arts and usatoday.com/life
• Travel: nytimes.com/pages/travel and usatoday.com/travel
• Technology: nytimes.com/pages/technology and usatoday.com/tech
• Video: video.on.nytimes.com and usatoday.feedroom.com
• Forms: Broken link feedback and Site feedback form

These pages will be used for most of the criteria, but as many pages as possible will be used to test site compatibility, to ensure as many issues as possible are found. All web site bugs found will be reported to the site before the score for the first round is given, unless they make clear they will not make any changes.