Washington Post Reviews its 10 Years on the Web 95
anaesthetica writes "The Washington Post is featuring three stories today reviewing their experience in adapting the "old media" to the new environment of the web. The first article examines their revelation that 'The news, as "lecture," is giving way to the news as a "conversation".' The second looks at the 'Kaiser memo' which served as the germinating point for what would become WashingtonPost.com, phrased in language that today seems amusingly quaint. The final article looks at the death of traditional print newspapers as consumers flock to internet sources for their news."
If only they'd drop the registration (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If only they'd drop the registration (Score:3, Informative)
Yeesh, you only gotta do it once. They don't even validate the email address. That's what cookies are for, lazypants.
Only once? (Score:4, Insightful)
That would be once for my laptop, once for my desktop system, once for my primary machine at work, once for the kiosk in the server room, twice for the kiosks in the lab...all being redone every time I clean out the cookies.
But the problem is it's not just the Post. There's all these newspapers doing it. Repeatedly, I've had people send me links to what I would assume are interesting stories...only to be hit with a registration page. If I'm not willing to put up with the hassle for my local paper, I'm sure not going to bother for the West Bumfuck Tribune out of Idaho. CNN, Fox News(1), ABC News, even MSNBC aren't doing registrations, so guess who gets my traffic.
------------------
(1) Yeah, like I'd really follow Fox News.
Re:Only once? (Score:4, Insightful)
It'd be once for the machine you're reading the story on. Don't be dramatic.
"If I'm not willing to put up with the hassle for my local paper, I'm sure not going to bother for the West Bumfuck Tribune out of Idaho. CNN, Fox News(1), ABC News, even MSNBC aren't doing registrations, so guess who gets my traffic."
Okay... so you're unwilling to type in some garbage to get through the reg page, instead preferring to go hunting for the story (if it's even there) on one of the other 4 sites that you've mentioned.
You know, I can understand some of the annoyance here. I work across 3 different machines every day. I'm not oblvious to the problems you're mentioning. But, man, I just don't understand the panty-bunching about it on Slashdot. By the time you've spent that (minimum of) 20 seconds typing that comment, you would have been in already.
Re:Only once? (Score:2)
But, man, I just don't understand the panty-bunching about it on Slashdot. By the time you've spent that (minimum of) 20 seconds typing that comment, you would have been in already.
It's not 20 seconds, it's 2 minutes times however news sites you read across however many computers you read your news on times however often your cookies get cleared times the small loss in privacy times the number of spam-target email addresses it's necessary to create and remember passwords for times however many broken re
Re:Only once? (Score:1, Offtopic)
I just timed myself doing it, took 25 seconds.
"...times however news sites you read..."
I think I've encountered like 4 of these in the last 2 years. (LaTimes, WashingtonPost, NYT, and... one Portland I cannot remember the name of.) How many are you hitting?
"across however many computers you read your news on"
Why would you read this story, then go hopping to all your machines and logging in there, too? The answer is, you wouldn't. Again, don't be dramatic.
"times how
Re:Only once? (Score:2)
I think all your points are arguable but I don't want to get into a point slinging match. Readers can decide.
I'd like to make a couple of other points though: one is that this is an "I don't mind and you don't matter" situation. The website administrators clearly aren't interested in creating creating the best experience they can for the reader when they do this. Fortunately others are.
Also remember that one of the reasons you don't see it much is in part because of people you regard as unreasonable (li
Re:Only once? (Score:3, Insightful)
> The BBC is one of the best mainstream news sites out there and in general the idiots who think their news is worth mandatory registration for just that
The BBC can afford to do that because every UK television-owning household is paying for it -- over $250 a year IIRC. And a lot of them do chafe at what they're getting in the bargain. And if you think the BBC doesn't have an agenda, you're seriously deluded. (Tha
Re:Only once? (Score:2)
I agree; multiple news sources are a good idea. That's why I qualified my praise of the BBC by calling it "one of the best mainstream" news sources rather than simply "the best".
All news sources must select what stories they run. That alone creates bias. How they phrase the stories also creates bias. In addition, readers create their own bias by selecting what news sources they read and by interpreting the stories they read. Marketers pay for bias by spamming their biased messages across multiple news sou
Re:Only once? (Score:3)
Re:Only once? (Score:2, Informative)
3 seconds.
Re:Only once? (Score:3, Insightful)
But every time someone says "Screw it" and doesn't register, their web stats will record someone who reached the registration page, but gave up before making it through to see their news and their banner ads (and any business worth its salt should be examining viewing patterns). Enough of that, and they will conform to a less annoying policy. Nearly every news article is in a few dozen sources anyway,
Re:Only once? (Score:1)
Google news does it well. I can get to the newspapers. I get a broad range of veiws. It's not cluttered. I don't have to worry about the newspapers agenda (as much) because I'm getting stories from China's angle, as well as the State's and quite often on the same subjects.
BBC has some good st
Re:Only once? (Score:2)
Re:If only they'd drop the registration (Score:2)
Why should I have to do it at all? Do they want me to view their advertisements or don't they?
Re:If only they'd drop the registration (Score:2)
Re:If only they'd drop the registration (Score:1)
Re:If only they'd drop the registration (Score:2)
Re:If only they'd drop the registration (Score:1)
Re:If only they'd drop the registration (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If only they'd drop the registration (Score:1)
Re:If only they'd drop the registration (Score:1)
Re:If only they'd drop the registration (Score:2, Informative)
Re:If only they'd drop the registration (Score:2)
I know there are going to be people crawling out of the woodwork to give how many seconds it takes to create a new registration for a particular site, but honestly I'm just not interested. I have to remember enough usernames and passwords as it is already, I don't need to remember another half dozen or two for my news sites.
Google News seems to be pretty good about finding stories from no-reg-required sites, and it's easy enough if you click a link and end up at a registration page just to back up
Re:If only they'd drop the registration (Score:3, Interesting)
Serious Conversation (Score:5, Funny)
News as entertainment (Score:2)
First Newspaper on the Web (Score:2)
Re:First Newspaper on the Web (Score:1)
Re:First Newspaper on the Web (Score:2, Informative)
Does anyone want to top that?
Re:First Newspaper on the Web (Score:5, Informative)
The Arizona Daily Star [azstarnet.com] launched May 5th 1995.
Re:First Newspaper on the Web (Score:1)
One of Norway's largest daily newspapers Dagbladet [dagbladet.no] was first published on the web, March 8th 1995, beaten only by two days to be the first Norwegian newspapers on the web. First out was the rather insignificant Bronnoysund Avis [ba-avis.no]. (A preemptive sorry to anyone from Bronnoysund reading this thinking I'm an insensitive clod!)
Re:First Newspaper on the Web (Score:2)
Re:First Newspaper on the Web (Score:1, Informative)
You're opening a real can of worms there but I'll submit the UK's Daily Telegraph, which launched its online version, Electronic Telegraph (now telegraph.co.uk [telegraph.co.uk]), in 1994. Their tenth anniversary homepage [telegraph.co.uk] (from 2004, natch) has more details. According to Wikipedia's article on Electronic Telegraph [wikipedia.org], it launched on November 15th 1994 and was "Europe's first daily web-based newspaper".
'Kaiser memo (Score:4, Funny)
Now, I think the fundamental problem with this metaphor is that frogs have no business swimming in the sea, electronic or otherwise. That should be left to select e-turtles.
Re:'Kaiser memo (Score:2)
Not the first, not by a longshot (Score:5, Interesting)
1992? What a joke! The folks at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram [star-telegram.com], with help from some local techies [radioshack.com], produced "the world's first electronic newspaper" in 1982!
From the usual source [wikipedia.org]:
1992... we had y'all beat by ten years.
StarText.Net is now owned by a domain squater (Score:1)
Re:Not the first, not by a longshot (Score:2, Funny)
They can't have done. Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet by that stage.
Re:Not the first, not by a longshot (Score:2)
Re:Not the first, not by a longshot (Score:1)
The rise of wire services (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Man what (Score:3, Insightful)
I still subscribe to the paper version... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I still subscribe to the paper version... (Score:2)
Compared to pulling open another window on my computer's screen and typing in a Web address, actually carrying around a paper and futzing around with flipping pages seems like a lot of work. I'm sure that sounds like the height of laziness (and I suppose I could easily imagine the reverse situation:
Re:I still subscribe to the paper version... (Score:1)
Re:The rise of wire services (Score:3, Insightful)
Now we just need to get rid of coal fired power plants to generate the electricity we need for our computers, and come up with readers that actually work as well as newspapers
Re:The rise of wire services (Score:1)
Re:The rise of wire services (Score:2)
There must be some marketing rationale for coupons, but me personally I hate the whole idea, especially s
Re:The rise of wire services (Score:2)
Many newspapers are made with recycled paper.
and come up with readers that actually work as well as newspapers when you are on a subway commuting.
And also cheap enough so you can leave them around in public without worrying about them being stolen, like you can with a real paper.
Re:The rise of wire services (Score:2)
The wire services are a big part of what I see as the problem. I understand that not every paper can keep up with the NYT and such, but so many news casts and papers and sites are so close to straight wire service copies it's insane. It doesn't cost a fortune to send an article across the world. News papers could team up (like sister papers).
There are other things that drive me off. What I see as a very clear bias is one thing. This is both a political bias (most outlets are liberal to varying degrees, alt
Re:The rise of wire services (Score:2)
Furthermore, why the hell should a person care about local news? Given the choice between a story that effects a the entire world and a story which effects one percent of one percent of the world, I think it's obvious which story is more important.
Re:The rise of wire services (Score:2)
You don't have to spend 10 minutes on each new school built in Iraq, but you could actually point out that it happens. If you only got information about Iraq from news casts you'd think the entire country was a warzone covered in IED with people being killed everywhere and no improvements going on.
As for local news, I agree international news is important. My point was that making my local paper less local just gives me less reason to read it.
Re:The rise of wire services (Score:2)
I don't think this happened as recently as you think it has. Print newspapers have been relying on wire copy for a large amount of their content for a long time now, since well before the growth of the Internet. You didn't think your local small-city paper sent its own reporters to Washington D.C. or the Middle East, did you?
Next gen newspaper (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Next gen newspaper (Score:1)
Minority Report annoyed me because it reminded me how annoying the future is going to be.
Re:Next gen newspaper (Score:1)
That's entertainment, not news.
Wapo is pretty good (Score:5, Interesting)
The NY Times has walled off their editorial and I have seen my interest in the paper slowly wane.
Happy 10 years Wapo!
Re:Wapo is pretty good (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wapo is pretty good (Score:1)
Re:Wapo is pretty good (Score:1)
Re:Wapo is pretty good (Score:1)
I see where you're coming from, but there's still time while blogs settle from the undifferentiated mass of crap into something decent. For now, I see very little to get from them outside of the pleasures of a feedback loop.
I hate feedback loops.
Re:Wapo is pretty good (Score:1)
Re:Wapo is pretty good (Score:2)
Re:Wapo is pretty good (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not really the expertise of the op-ed columnist per se. The columnists serve, more often than you'd think, as a kind of conduit for ex-big shots, real experts, and government insiders who want to leak their analyses. The op-ed columnist gets to pass it off as their own insight, and it end up a win-win situation for the both.
Re:Wapo is pretty good (Score:3, Interesting)
I just cancelled my print subscription recently.
I found that their printing of unconfirmed rumors regarding Haditha, for which investigations are still ongoing, on the front page above the fold on 26May to be reprehensible yellow journalism.
To be sure, the issue is grave, and bears full disclosure, without coverups.
The US armed forces deserve to be both accountable, and innocent until proven guilty.
WaPo's wet-blanket read on the subsequent snuffing of Al-Zarqawi was the proverbial straw.
These Wa
Re:Wapo is pretty good (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
This just in: according to themselves... (Score:1)
best quote from the article (Score:5, Funny)
News as 'conversation'? (Score:3, Interesting)
But a first rate "news" source (like the front page of the WP) shouldn't require me to wonder who is conversing with whom, that particular day. The Washington Post is my "local" paper, here in suburban Maryland. My gut sense, having read the paper for over 30 years, is that the web-based conversation they are now hosting has been eroding their editorial spine. Ironically, I've traditionally disliked their editorial positions - but they were consistent, and I had a sense of how that was going to shape their coverage decisions. Now, they seem to be thrashing around quite a bit.
My own paradigm shift (Score:4, Interesting)
I moved to Parker, Colorado, in August 2005. Parker is about 25 miles from downtown Denver. My WSJ delivery shifted from early morning to coming in the mail--which meant that I got each day's edition in the afternoon, if I got it at all (sometimes it wouldn't come until the next day). I didn't even try to get the WP; instead, I signed up for a 'weekend' subscription to the Rocky Mountain News (largely for movie listings). And when my WSJ subscription came up for renewal, I let it lapse for this simple reason: by the time the WSJ came and I had a chance to read it, I had already been exposed to most of the news stories that interested me via the web.
I now have in my bookmarks roughly 140 news, information, commentary and blog sites, all of which I review at least once a day, and about 25% of which I review multiple times a day. I miss having the Post and the WSJ at my door before 6 am each morning; navigating their web sites is not as easy as reading the newspaper, and could I get them here that early, I would still subscribe to both, even at the combined rate of $200-300/year. But getting the WSJ in mid-afternoon just isn't worth it, and the Post would be even more delayed. So after a lifetime of reading newspapers (I'm 53), I've largely given up on them.
Re:My own paradigm shift (Score:5, Funny)
I now have in my bookmarks roughly 140 news, information, commentary and blog sites, all of which I review at least once a day
Congratulations! You officially have no life! :)
Re:My own paradigm shift (Score:2)
Re:Holy macaroni! (Score:1)
Re:My own paradigm shift (Score:2)
What a piece of self-congratulatory hooey. (Score:3, Funny)
Writing Their Own Obituary (Score:1)
The Post website is sad. (Score:5, Interesting)
Start with the home page. It's impossible to scan the thing. There are a few big stories at the top of the page, and then the bottom of the page falls into a huge morass of links arranged in multiple columns. The eye gets lost in this junkpile, and the little five-word headlines generally provide no context for the stories. Why don't these guys look at online-only news sites, like CNET News.com or Yahoo News? They're much better organized and easier to scan for interesting news.
Bad layout isn't all that's bad about the website though. Take the ads for example. You'd think that with the registration data they demand from users, they could serve targeted, useful ads. Nope--instead I always get the same ads for mortgage refinancing--how useful for an apartment dweller. Or you'd think that they could use the content of the news stories to serve up targeted ads--wouldn't advertisers pay a lot for that? If I'm reading, say, a story about computers, serve up computer ads; or if I'm reading Steve Barr's "Federal Diary" column, serve up ads for federal employees' health insurance? Hasn't the Post learned anything from Google? Nope--it's always the mortgage refinancing ads. And these guys wonder why they're not making any money on the Web?
Useless ads wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so irritating. All the Post's pages are littered with ads. They figure that annoying pop-ups aren't enough, so recently they started these irritating Flash ads that creep out, seizing a third of your browser window before receding. Are they trying to make it annoying? Is that what they've learned from powerhouse ad sellers like Google--annoying ads work? Did they really make that much money selling X10 camera ads?
I look at the Post website because they still have the best local DC coverage. I avoid the Post website for anything else--sure, the Post covers the White House the best, but the AP does almost as good a job and I can get their stuff on the annoyance-free Yahoo News. The Post is intent on annoying its users with cluttered pages and as long as that's the case, craigslist and Google will eat them alive in the online world.
Words to live by (Score:1)
Data retention (Score:1)