For all the Flint Journal's stated commitment to its website, I'm not seeing it.
As I've said before, the original commitment to an online presence was assigning one person to the job. The original online editor tried, but never got the resources or support she needed to make it work.
With the buyouts offered last year, there was supposed to be a renewed drive to sharpen the online presence. So far that's a big fizzle. The plan, and remember I'm no longer in the loop there, was to have an online desk of six people. Six to replace one. So far, so good.
But stories are posted, many with errors in copy or headlines, and the infrequency of the postings has been noticeable. It may be that the folks left to produce copy are too few to allow for new frequent postings.
I'm one of those who has almost totally made the switch from paper to online, so it's not encouraging when you head online only to find the same stories that were there four or five hours ago.
It is my belief that reader involvement will help drive the success of a website. The Flint Journal seems to have a small group of frequent commenters, but many of the stories register no comments at all.
If I were the Journal's webmaster I would start tracking the types of stories that garner comments and aim to post more of them. And do it more often.
The look of the Journal's website is anemic. Compare it to either of the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press and you'll see what I mean. At least change the type to black and not that pale, faded blue.
For goodness sakes make it easier to find what you are looking for, please. The Journal's videos have been remarkably good, one I think ended up making national news. But they are not prominently featured or displayed.
The two major editors, who alternate columns each week, rarely garner any comments at all with their tepid opinions. Time to stir things up a bit. Yeah, your phone will ring with unhappy campers, but then that would move you closer to being a real editor again.
But the biggest problem is the stagnant website. If the future of newspapers is in their online presence, as things stand now, the future is bleak for the Flint Journal. Time to get edgy, get fun and get real.
In the one column he wrote that garnered nearly 30 comments (still anemic by Detroit Free Press standards) the editor admits to the need for a major change to the online offerings.
Early in March the editor wrote back to the commenters (who generally hated the new site): "On the Internet, to stand pat is to become irrelevant, and we can't afford to do that."
Well, it appears since his comment, the paper is standing pat.
More crime and courts is what is needed, in my humble opinion. The link to mlive.com is the biggest problem the Journal and other Booth papers have in improving to an aggressive and interesting online presence.
Don't take my word for it, check out the articles and where the commenters are. It's usually crime stories or stories about the latest Williamson follies that bring the traffic.
So if you want more traffic, do more of what brings it. Doesn't sound like rocket science to me.
If your are going to do something new, why not do something really new and have some of the editors help out by producing a little online copy instead of heading to the next stupid planning meeting. With fewer hands to produce copy, if you really want to reinvent the news business, it's time for everyone, from the top on down to start helping to produce copy. And I'm not talking about a once a week, from the seat of the pants column either.
4 comments:
There is less being posted later despite more people supposedly on the internet team.
Heck - sometimes it is in the newspaper before it is online. What happened to posting online first?
Oh wait - who is on the team? The best? Or the forced?
And in the newsroom - which editors and reporters went to the workshop on writing for the web?
too funny.
the journal's online efforts and look are almost completely controlled by mlive, its subsidiary.
you could see the posting on the screen before the buyout: whoever was put "in charge" of the online component — no matter how good or how well intentioned or how capable — was going to have all the responsibility and none of the authority.
the journal has tossed 125+ years of branding and reputation (good and bad) out the window to serve mlive.
it has surrendered what little personality it had to a faceless corporate entity that is far away and mostly unresponsive.
mlive. what is that, exactly? what does it mean to you?
uh-huh.
There's a reason why mlive is known in many circles as "mdead."
I've always found the site a confusing mess from a design standpoint. It's just hard to find things, and there's no focal point. You open the main page and your eye doesn't settle on one design element. Instead there's a see of type. It's kind of like a bad myspace page, minus the creativity.
And it may be my inability to find it, but is there an archive service? Can I look up older articles and actually pay to read them, like the New York Times. In other words, it doesn't seem like a very good online historical source.
But I'm a little old-fashioned. I love the look of the NY Times online...more of a souped up traditional newspaper. I know that's not the only way to do it, but at least it's user friendly.
I won't even bother commenting on the content because that's been covered already.
www.flintexpats.com
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