A Media Rant
This morning I linked to the Clarksburg Exponent-Telegram which is the largest daily paper in north-central West Virginia. At the time, I noted that they have a tendency to not update until midday, though it is a morning paper, but now I see that other than their in-house feature columnists and the obituaries, nothing has been updated since December 19th.
I do recall something similar happening a few years ago, when I was watching for a particular story at the time and when I complained, it seems that I was told their webperson was on vacation. I must not have saved the email because I can't find it right now, but the biggest breaking news story since Tony Danza Grand Marshaled the Italian Heritage Festival is happening in their backyard, people from all over the world would like to get the local angle and having one of the most prominent stories on their website be about people shopping six days prior to Christmas is not acceptable in the media age.
The web is full of stories about media sites starting to become profitable in their own right. I just watched a fifteen minute, web-only broadcast of ABC's "World News Tonight". Sunday's "Reliable Sources" had an editor from the Washington Post mentioning that two to three million more people have access to his paper through their website, than has access through the print edition. Media sites should no longer be an afterthought and any self-respecting newspaper that lets their site go dark for two whole weeks, breaking news or not, definitely does their public a disservice.
I do recall something similar happening a few years ago, when I was watching for a particular story at the time and when I complained, it seems that I was told their webperson was on vacation. I must not have saved the email because I can't find it right now, but the biggest breaking news story since Tony Danza Grand Marshaled the Italian Heritage Festival is happening in their backyard, people from all over the world would like to get the local angle and having one of the most prominent stories on their website be about people shopping six days prior to Christmas is not acceptable in the media age.
The web is full of stories about media sites starting to become profitable in their own right. I just watched a fifteen minute, web-only broadcast of ABC's "World News Tonight". Sunday's "Reliable Sources" had an editor from the Washington Post mentioning that two to three million more people have access to his paper through their website, than has access through the print edition. Media sites should no longer be an afterthought and any self-respecting newspaper that lets their site go dark for two whole weeks, breaking news or not, definitely does their public a disservice.