I am a huge fan of the redesigned New York Times website, but they failed to address one major issue that has lingered since they last revamped their home page.

For months before the new site launched on Wednesday I got to see the “prototype” version of the article pages.  They are less cluttered, and every story is on a single page (are you listening, Washington Post?), making for a much more immersive reading experience.  I could not ask for more here.

There was no early look at the home page, but the mostly cosmetic changes they made there are just fine with me.  It’s the layout of the bottom half of the page that gets me.  This section has a grid of 27 boxes with categories like World, U.S., Technology and Arts:

For the first 26 boxes, everything is fine.  There’s a category and a few stories to go with each one.  It’s easy to browse through and see if something catches your eye.  But then there’s box 27:

It’s completely empty.  A box of white space.  Blankness in a sea of stuff.  Box 27 wants some content, and despite the Times having a few years to come up with something to put in there, it remains desolate.

I have tried to think of an explanation for this.  One theory is that they are purposely leaving it open in case an absolute no-brainer category comes up and they need to quickly slot it in there without having to bump another one.  And that’s it.  I can’t come up with any other remotely logical reason for not having something, anything, in there.

I sent a few emails to the Times asking them about box 27, but so far haven’t heard back from them.  Obviously I will update if they respond.

All I ask is that box 27 get some love.  I don’t care if it’s a category full of bad stories about me or Eli Manning, just put something in there.