Daily A Can Do Better
Well, our local newspaper, the Daily Astorian, has a slightly different look these days, since the paper is now designed in Salem, along with all other EO Media publications. Can't say I like it. (Sorry Patrick and Steve, and all my other friends at my former employer.) The print is slightly bigger now, meaning even less content than before, and giving the paper a more unprofessional look, in my opinion.
I suppose maybe those in the community like me, whose vision is not that great, might welcome the change. But there's something wrong with a model where the layout of the paper in a small town is done hundreds of miles away, even though these days that is quite practical, and may have some economic benefits to the company producing the paper (along with their other news periodicals).
All of this is made worse by shoddy reporting and printing errors, as evidenced by the August 7, 2013 edition of the Daily A. On page 1, an article about parking fees imposed by the Port of Astoria, which is continued on page 11, has an obvious typo right before the continuation. I wonder if this has anything to do with the switch in the layout team. More importantly, on page 3, there is a blurb with incredibly boring photos showing consultants and board members, of a really important public meeting concerning the Astoria Public Library.
I couldn't attend this meeting because I had to perform in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in Cannon Beach, and besides chance meetings with those that did attend, the daily paper is where I had hoped to get some information about where we are headed with the library. There was no substance about the library renovation project in the blurb at all. Fortunately, there was something on the library's website. But there wasn't even a link to the library's website in the blurb in the Daily A! Something as important is the future of the city's library should be front page news!
Speaking of websites, the one for the Daily A is awful (see above link for yourself). The mother ship website (see EO Media link above) is beautiful, and when I worked at the Daily A, posting to the East Oregonian, I was told that a new website and system was just around the corner. That was four years ago!!
And the iPad app just got worse! I was using that app to read the paper, and was impressed by some of the features, especially relative to the website. The app is free with a subscription to the paper, and is a little like Zinio apps, but not quite as polished. You can read articles as text and with a PDF viewer, and up until the switch in layout teams, there was a sufficient border around the edges to see all the text in the PDF version. Now, the text is scrunched at the edges (like it used to be when I worked there). This needs to be fixed.
I'm writing this not as a letter to the editor because it's a little too nitpicky and critical, you only get one LTOE a month, and there's a size limit on letters -- all because it gets printed, and has to fit on the page. With a blog, you can write what you want, as long (or short) as you want, and as often as you want, without editing (!) and we need more of this from readers of print and electronic newspapers across the land.
Let's see some more blog entries with your opinions!! Citizen journalism!
I suppose maybe those in the community like me, whose vision is not that great, might welcome the change. But there's something wrong with a model where the layout of the paper in a small town is done hundreds of miles away, even though these days that is quite practical, and may have some economic benefits to the company producing the paper (along with their other news periodicals).
All of this is made worse by shoddy reporting and printing errors, as evidenced by the August 7, 2013 edition of the Daily A. On page 1, an article about parking fees imposed by the Port of Astoria, which is continued on page 11, has an obvious typo right before the continuation. I wonder if this has anything to do with the switch in the layout team. More importantly, on page 3, there is a blurb with incredibly boring photos showing consultants and board members, of a really important public meeting concerning the Astoria Public Library.
I couldn't attend this meeting because I had to perform in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in Cannon Beach, and besides chance meetings with those that did attend, the daily paper is where I had hoped to get some information about where we are headed with the library. There was no substance about the library renovation project in the blurb at all. Fortunately, there was something on the library's website. But there wasn't even a link to the library's website in the blurb in the Daily A! Something as important is the future of the city's library should be front page news!
Speaking of websites, the one for the Daily A is awful (see above link for yourself). The mother ship website (see EO Media link above) is beautiful, and when I worked at the Daily A, posting to the East Oregonian, I was told that a new website and system was just around the corner. That was four years ago!!
And the iPad app just got worse! I was using that app to read the paper, and was impressed by some of the features, especially relative to the website. The app is free with a subscription to the paper, and is a little like Zinio apps, but not quite as polished. You can read articles as text and with a PDF viewer, and up until the switch in layout teams, there was a sufficient border around the edges to see all the text in the PDF version. Now, the text is scrunched at the edges (like it used to be when I worked there). This needs to be fixed.
I'm writing this not as a letter to the editor because it's a little too nitpicky and critical, you only get one LTOE a month, and there's a size limit on letters -- all because it gets printed, and has to fit on the page. With a blog, you can write what you want, as long (or short) as you want, and as often as you want, without editing (!) and we need more of this from readers of print and electronic newspapers across the land.
Let's see some more blog entries with your opinions!! Citizen journalism!
Comments