AnnArbor.com: Not a criticism, just a question

On Tuesday, AnnArbor.com posted a You Tube video of a woman singing her public comment about a controversial development. Several commenters at the old AnnArbor.com site (and me at this one) were critical of the poor coverage of the issue, as compared to the extensive report over on Ann Arbor Chronicle.

The Chief Content Czar told everyone, just wait until Friday that's when the real coverage starts and that the You Tube was just a place holder until the new reporter's story could appear in the real AnnArbor.com.

So when I pulled up the new AnnArbor.com (all the links to the the old site included here on FFE will take you to the site, but the old item will not come up) I looked for the reporter's story on the meeting. It may just be me, but it is not in the news feed for the day.

There are links to a story much older than a Monday City Council meeting and there are other stories about items at the Monday City Council meeting (written by another reporter) but no report on the building controversy.

Again, it may just be I can't find the story, but while I am withholding judgment on the site overall until a week or so goes by, I didn't see a story on there that made me say "Wow, they are really on to something here." I was expecting to have my socks blown off at least with the first edition, but my socks are still on.

In the "News" feed there is a story about a pre-Art Fair bash that was written on July 14th. It would have made sense to have really breaking news in the first news feed. There is some of that, but most of the stuff there is soft features or news features.

There was a news feature on the cuts to the police department that talked about the police chief who was a deputy at the Oakland County Sheriff's Department back in the day when I covered cops for the Oakland Press. Barnett Jones was a great deputy, sergeant during the time I knew him. So that was a story that did interest me.

The offerings, especially for a first edition three months in the planning stages, was pretty average.