Attention Portland-Area Weblog Writers
There is a general consensus amongst local weblog writers that OregonLive is one of the worst examples of a newspaper-related website. In fact, if you read the comments to this prior item, you'll see that newsroom staffers at The Oregonian don't much care for it either.
This week, I received email from a local weblog writer who suggested that we try to steer The Oregonian in a more usable direction. Everything presented here is a direct result of this email.
Which is a trickier proposition than one would hope.
OregonLive is part of Advance Internet, which serves newspaper-affiliated content for the newspapers of Advance Publications, Inc. -- which arguably would make it rather difficult for The Oregonian to transition to something that would actually be useful.
But there's always the possibility of using our observations of the drawbacks of OregonLive as something of a case study and example. If you're a Portland-area weblog writer with input to provide, please get in touch. Either offer your observations in the comments here, or (especially if you're willing to be a little more involved) email me via the contact link in the left-hand sidebar.
Why Portland-area and not statewide? Well, if you have an experience of OregonLive you want to share, no matter where you are, please do. But the focus is on Portland-area writers because of another central aspect to this that I'm not prepared to discuss publically just yet.
Note: If you, like the commenter mentioned above, have an experience of OregonLive from the perspective of working inside The Oregonian, I'm extending a special invitation just to you. Anonymity will be protected, in order to obtain the insider perspective on the Advance Internet system.
One last thing. The president and creative director of Advance.net, which "oversees the Internet vision and strategy for Advance Publications," is a rather known figure in the weblog world. Apparently, and somewhat counter-intuitively, this doesn't seem to make Advance Internet concerned about true usability or usefulness.
September 20, 2003 at 01:35 AM
My sources from inside The Oregonian tell me that the management of Advance -- which controls many newspapers around the country, and is part of a family-controlled media giant that owns magazines and broadcast media as well -- isn't sure that having a web presence is a good thing for its traditional core businesses. So it's deliberately leaving all of its newspapers' sites, which are in fact very similar, in a ragged state.
Perhaps someone can show Advance that a good website will help its other products and make more money in the long run. Until that sales job is done, expect The O's site, and the other Advance sites, to be a crummy high-tech extension of its classified ad section.
Here's what I and some commenters had to say about this recently.
September 20, 2003 at 11:50 AM
I've written to the O several times about the bad layout/usability issues, and have never received a response from them. They appear to be uninterested in feedback, even through the official 'feedback' addresses.
September 22, 2003 at 09:37 AM
Circulation numbers drive newspaper advertising rates. Make the website more usable and those numbers could decline. It's kind of like the decision of Xerox Corp when it came to a paperless office. Not in their best financial interest.
September 22, 2003 at 09:54 AM
Prove it.
September 22, 2003 at 10:44 AM
I wonder what effect the NYT website has had on its print subscriptions. It's the one I use most frequently, and I've been generally satisfied with it. For a variety of reasons, I don't have a print subscription to that paper (or to the Oregonian), nor have I subscribed for the premium online content.
Goes without saying that only a death threat will make me go to OregonLive. My main frustration has been the lack of correspondence between the print and online versions -- when somebody tells me they saw an article about x in the Oregonian 3 days ago that I would like to read, it would be nice to be able to find it online.
September 22, 2003 at 10:51 AM
addendum: in that last sentence, I meant to put emphasis on "find" -- the content might be online, but it's a pain to locate.
September 22, 2003 at 11:50 AM
The only way to prove that circulation numbers drive ad rates would be to provide a comparison of the open column inch rate charged by, say, the Medford Mail Tribune versus the Oregonian. If I get a chance I will try to get some numbers. If I'm right we should also see that the New York Times charges way more than the Oregonian. Might be interesting to see.
September 22, 2003 at 05:58 PM
*cough* Tribune *cough*.
Seriously, though, there you can at least find what youa re looking for. Downside, at least in my case, it *did* drive down circulation numbers, because I rarely pick up a paper copy any more. Why bother to, when I can just read it with my OJ in bed in the morning?
I *would* like to see a better Big O site, but I suspect that there isn't much we can do about it.
September 23, 2003 at 09:43 AM
I have long ago given up reading an actual newspaper. I have a problem with eczema and the newsprint tends to irritate it. Our household does still maintaine a subscription to the Oregonian. I was exstatic to relize that they had a website that I could use to get my local news. Then I visited the dreaded OregonLive. What a sorry excuse for a website. I have tried to find information about local events and was never able to find anything.
I think it may be all well and good that they are trying to disuade people from using the website in favor of the print edition, but not everyone is able to utalize the print edition, and it would be nice to still be able to access local news.