January 31, 2005
Giving 'The Oregonian' And OregonLive Another Swift Kick
Yes, In The Ass
We're sure that we must have mentioned, at some point, the end-of-December thread on BlueOregon about the utter and most woeful inadequacy of the alliance between The Oregonian and its affiliated website, OregonLive.
Actually, perhaps we didn't mention that thread in particular, We did, however, take them to task in our list of demands for the new year.
So there might be no good reason to pile on them once more, but there's been another development out in Greensboro, North Carolina. As we've mentioned before (and here is a good place to get somewhat up to speed), the News & Record is charging headlong into reinventing its presence on the Web to better reflect, well, an intelligence that reflects the media world in which we now all actually live.
Apparently, according to Ed Cone, that very paper is about to launch a perhaps somewhat small but entirely emblematic initiative.
They will be posting all letters to the editor as blog entries, complete with the ability to comment.
Meanwhile, the best that Jeff Jarvis (the man behind the curtain, to steal BlueOregon's phrase, of Advance's newspaper-affiliated websites) can come up with is a vague "group blog" plan. It's interesting, but compared to what the News & Record has planned... well, ok, so maybe Jarvis' plan is not very interesting after all.
In all the ranting we've done about how pitful an online presence our local newspapers have, we've never hesitated to avoid slamming the people who work at OregonLive. They -- and their counterparts over at the newspaper, for that matter -- are stuck in a system that offers no real room for creativity or innovation.
Well, for that matter, it barely even has room for efficiency and basic-level usefulness. But perhaps we're letting the fact that we've been up all night cause us to get carried away here.
Our point, as ever, is this: Please, please, please -- will someone in the high-ups of the Advance corporate maze awaken from their slumber and tear down the walls that separate their newspapers from their websites, and then get the Hell out of the way and let the local communities which they serve help them become relevant?