There’s been some nice discussion in the comments section for my most recent Tech Tuesday article. I think that people being able to comment on articles on the Times-Standard web site is a great step forward toward media becoming more fully integrated in to its community and acknowledging the impact of the Internet on that community. It’s too bad that I have to continually check back with the web site to know that anything has been posted. It should be a simple enhancement to provide either an email notification or an RSS feed for comments. Do any of the reporters read those comments? Do they even know when someone comments? Or are the comments only for readers to talk to one another?
Speaking of RSS, when will a local paper provide RSS feeds for their sites in general? I’ve approached both dailies about this a few times and so far neither has seemed interested or capable. Instead of extending the interactive features of the Times-Standard web site, they are putting resources into a proprietary ‘E-edition’ platform. I signed up for a trial subscription to the E-edition when it first appeared. But I never use it. I can’t find any reason to leave the web site for that format. Anyone else have a different opinion of the T-S E-edition? I’d love to hear it.
Update: Related to my article and the general trend in news, news gathering, reader participation, budgets, etc. is an interesting article in the LA Times about the political blog Talking Points Memo. TPM is an example of how this new new journalism works. The blog has been on the forefront of the firings of the U.S. Attorneys. I believe, traditional publications of all sizes must find a way to embrace this trend or they will die. From the article:
All of this from an enterprise whose annual budget probably wouldn’t cover the janitorial costs incurred by a metropolitan daily newspaper.
“Hundreds of people out there send clips and other tips,” Marshall said. “There is some real information out there, some real expertise. If you’re not in politics and you know something, you’re not going to call David Broder. With the blog, you develop an intimacy with people. Some of it is perceived, but some of it is real.”
Marshall’s use of his readers to gather information takes advantage of the interactivity that is at the heart of the Internet revolution. The amount of discourse between writers and readers on the Web makes traditional journalists look like hermetic monks.
The recent addition of e-Edition from the T-S is certainly welcome. Everything in the print edition online and not PDF.
Kevin- No Doubt! Makes me not even want to read it anymore… pop-unders are sooo ugly.
And what about the pop-unders on the T-S site now? Every story view generates another one — which get by Safari’s normally great popup blocker. It’s annoying and smacks of T-S’s desperation for money.
emailed the webmaster, who then forwarded the message to the MNG webmasters, who eventually wrote back to me with the deatils on the T-S RSS feeds.
That’s odd they would have a feed and not tell anyone. Even if it is limited. How did you find it?
Actually, T-S does have RSS feeds (for news articles), it’s just that they don’t really know about it. Or at least, they haven’t made it available to the public via a nice link or RSS button on their site. Media News Corp provides the RSS feed from one of their servers, but the only place I have seen it used in the wild is myrtletown.net.
Also, I don’t care for the T-S E-edition either… I just don’t understand why they won’t publish all of their articles on their main web site? Why do you have to register for the E-edition and then view it outside of the T-S web site?