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A look at local web happenings in Tacoma, Pierce County and South Puget Sound
Thursday, September 13th, 2007
Posted by Mark Briggs @ 02:37:10 pm

I take exception to Chuck Taylor's rant on his Crosscut site, describing online newspapers in the Northwest as "bad and ugly." Working in the online newspaper world for the past seven years, I can safely state that Washington state is blessed with some of the best online newspapers in the nation.

The web sites for the Seattle Times, Spokesman-Review and News Tribune have all received national awards in the past couple years for their online presence. (A few years earlier, the Herald in Everett even picked up a few national nods for innovation.) And the P-I, in my opinion, has one of the better newspaper web sites in the country with massive offerings of photo galleries, robust reader blogs and first-rate staff blogs.

Of course, we could all do better. We make the most of our resources and technology, but there's always room to do more. Mr. Taylor, however, misses most of what makes our sites worth visiting with his rather uninformed critique published today.

I'd like to address some of Taylor's complaints about the TNT site specifically:

It's not news until we get around to posting it:
The News Tribune in Tacoma freshens its site even later, sometime after I get up in the morning, so I check it last. Not the best way to influence the regional agenda — or the D.C. congressional delegation.

All news articles that appear in the printed News Tribune are automatically published online around 1:30 a.m., so I'm confused about the "freshens" rate. Additionally, he looks at this feature from a print-first view. We're not waiting for the print deadline to publish news; we post news constantly all day. Friday, we posted 16 new stories by 5 p.m (see image). If readers – or the D.C. congressional delegation – want to keep tabs on our area, they should visit our site throughout the day instead of waiting until 5 a.m. the next day. Why get up so early to read yesterday's news?

Do not discuss amongst yourselves: Few newspapers let readers comment at the bottom of articles. (A notable exception is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.)

With all due respect to my friends at the P-I, the TNT's web site has been allowing comments at least as long (not sure exactly when the P-I started). We began the practice in 2005 and last year we hosted an estimated 50,000 comments on our news stories. Our blogs feature even more robust discussion and last month accounted for almost 15% of our page views. But he doesn't give us any credit for blogging either, even though our Seahawks Insider blog has won national awards the past two years.

I confess that I don't read Crosscut's web site often. But given the superficial reporting that went into this article, it makes me wonder about the rest of the news published there.

Categories: TheNewsTribune.com, Online journalism 6 comments

COMMENTS:

Chuck Taylor @ 16:17 - Thursday, September 13th, 2007 Email
http://www.crosscut.com
Mark, every day your home page changes from the time I boot up at 5 a.m. and when I refresh an hour or so later. Usually the photo package changes from yesterday's to today's in that period of time, unless you posted that package the day before due to big news. I'm a cache-clearing maniac, so that's not my browser deceiving me. You might be feeding your database automatically at 1:30, but I don't think that's being reflected on your home page until much later.

I'm not a big fan of awards, but you're right, the newspaper Web sites in the Northwest are better than in most places. So what? They still have a lot of deficiencies, and some of them involve very basic issues like the ones I cited.

As for superficial reporting, I read your site and many others every morning. This was a critique of what the user experiences.
washingtonCEO @ 14:50 - Friday, September 14th, 2007
It pains me to read a diatribe such as this from TNT, a news outlet I trust -- far more than I would be led trust Crosscut. Instead of informing me, a reader, of news and happenings, this TNT blog entry merely serves as a chest-puffing exercise. How does this meet your newspaper's mission, Mark?

Personally, if the TNT merely sees its blogs as conduits for this kind of activity, I have trouble believing they exist anywhere near the level of usefulness at which you believe they do.

Further, can you explain to be what "robust" means in the multiple times you mention it? We hear it in conference rooms and techspeak pitches all the time. But again, as a newspaper reader, I'm not sure what you mean to say in this context. Apparently, you're way over my head, Mark.


Skybolt @ 15:31 - Friday, September 14th, 2007
I don't follow the Tacoma paper, but the Seattle papers are falling down on the job online. When there's a massive bridge closure or big traffic accident during the day, affecting tens of thousands of their readers, you can't jump online and get updates from the PI or Times online. The papers do, in fact, sit there as if they don't need to update until the morning, or at least hours after the information would be helpful. You have to turn to the Seattle TV channel Web sites for this kind of useful info. I lived in Minneapolis, where the paper had actual reporters working for the online side and really chased breaking news throughout the day.
Mark Briggs @ 21:04 - Friday, September 14th, 2007 Email
WashingtonCEO writes:

Instead of informing me, a reader, of news and happenings, this TNT blog entry merely serves as a chest-puffing exercise. How does this meet your newspaper's mission, Mark?


I've been doing this blog for about 18 months and one of the four categories I post to is called "thenewstribune.com" (I've written about our web site 113 times). My blog is not for readers looking for news and happenings - we've got 20 other blogs and a dozen news sections for that. It's aimed at people who are interested in the online happenings of the South Sound, which include what The News Tribune is doing on the Web. When another online publication (which I wrote about when it launched) published misinformation about our operation, I was compelled to set the record straight.

Sure, there's some chest-puffing in there. But I'm proud of our work here and am not about to apologize for that.

edwardallen @ 17:24 - Saturday, September 15th, 2007
What utter Babbitry. Chuck Taylor's critique of Northwest Web sites was spot on target, and it takes some sort of chutzpah for you to be so sensitive that you don't take the criticism to heart. How childish, and I actually find it typically provincial, too. The New York Times Web site has stories on Darfur and schools in Afghanistan. Where are those sort of stories on the Northwest Web sites, notwithstanding prizes from organizations I've never heard of. You give us Udubs scores, etc., but where are the policy discussions or in-depth look at what is going on inside the Washington delegation in Washington, D.C.?
ron999 @ 09:19 - Monday, September 17th, 2007 Email
Yes, Chuck Taylor's critique was right on, and well researched.
And Mark, your diatribe here has done nothing but help highlight that for us.

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