I'm not in the slightest surprised. They're inferior products.
When we first moved into our condo we got a free trial subscription to the Seattle Times and then we got the same thing when we got our house. Each time it was a profoundly negative experience.
Aside from making my fingers filthy which I hate, there's the irrelevance. I only ever read one or two stories at most, making how much of a percentage of the rest of the paper a complete waste of time? The local things were things I wasn't interested in (not living actually in Seattle proper) and the national news were things I'd already heard about elsewhere. It's hyperbole to say I spent more time washing and drying my hands after handling the paper than I did actually reading it, but not by much.
I remember I thought the proper thing to do would be to use the websites instead. No ink, right? Unfortunately, at the time, both of their websites were just horrible. I can't remember which was which, but one had a dramatically ugly interface that made me to not want to go there ever ever and the other had a search engine that sucked so poorly I'm surprised it could find the word Seattle.
So I abandoned both local newspapers in toto. Clearly, these were two publications that did not want to compete in an open market.
I accidentally found out about NWCN when I was channel surfing and went to their website and it had interesting stories, an interface that while not world class at least didn't poke me in the eye and was, gasp, searchable. And it turned out their email bulletins for breaking stories—both national and local—broke (still break) faster than any other news organization I've seen for both national and local news—including the Seattle Times for Seattle-related stories.
I still subscribe to the Seattle Times email bulletin just in case, but really there's no point. Half the stories are about sports (sports is not news) and the other half break well after both NWCN and CNN for national news.
Take the fact that Seattle's police chief is the new drug czar. How'd I learn about that? NWCN news bulletin which included a sentence about the fellow, then from CNN which included a sentence about the fellow, then—nearly an hour after that#151;Seattle Times email bulletin which said nothing other than Chief [insert name I forgot] might become drug czar. Full stop.
Awesome work, guys. Waiting longer than anyone else for less information. Top quality.
And I recently (month or so ago?) subscribed to both ST's and the PI's Twitter feeds. ST's is actually pathetic, updating almost never, which I find kinda incalcuably silly since, I thought, news happens all the time, like when people are alive and not zombies. But even zombies would be up to something. The PI feed is good in that it's actually updated, but it's updated in big clots with five or six stories at a time, which is bad Twitter behavior.
Incidentally, the best Twitter feed for news I've found so far is BreakingNewsON (http://twitter.com/BreakingNewsOn), which in its quest to be first is the first to blurt out the very first thought in its head and then add detail later, so you're likely to get five tweets for one story over an hour. But, if you can stand that and story corrections as it unfolds, they have broad coverage of international news and events that far surpasses anyone else's feed, including CNN's. I learn things not only first but they're often the only feed that mentions things at all, particularly international events.
Wow, what a tirade.
The two papers lost for good reason: They're simply inferior compared to any other possible outlet for any kind of news or entertainment they cover.
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Date: Thu, Mar. 12th, 2009 05:58 pm (UTC)When we first moved into our condo we got a free trial subscription to the Seattle Times and then we got the same thing when we got our house. Each time it was a profoundly negative experience.
Aside from making my fingers filthy which I hate, there's the irrelevance. I only ever read one or two stories at most, making how much of a percentage of the rest of the paper a complete waste of time? The local things were things I wasn't interested in (not living actually in Seattle proper) and the national news were things I'd already heard about elsewhere. It's hyperbole to say I spent more time washing and drying my hands after handling the paper than I did actually reading it, but not by much.
I remember I thought the proper thing to do would be to use the websites instead. No ink, right? Unfortunately, at the time, both of their websites were just horrible. I can't remember which was which, but one had a dramatically ugly interface that made me to not want to go there ever ever and the other had a search engine that sucked so poorly I'm surprised it could find the word Seattle.
So I abandoned both local newspapers in toto. Clearly, these were two publications that did not want to compete in an open market.
I accidentally found out about NWCN when I was channel surfing and went to their website and it had interesting stories, an interface that while not world class at least didn't poke me in the eye and was, gasp, searchable. And it turned out their email bulletins for breaking stories—both national and local—broke (still break) faster than any other news organization I've seen for both national and local news—including the Seattle Times for Seattle-related stories.
I still subscribe to the Seattle Times email bulletin just in case, but really there's no point. Half the stories are about sports (sports is not news) and the other half break well after both NWCN and CNN for national news.
Take the fact that Seattle's police chief is the new drug czar. How'd I learn about that? NWCN news bulletin which included a sentence about the fellow, then from CNN which included a sentence about the fellow, then—nearly an hour after that#151;Seattle Times email bulletin which said nothing other than Chief [insert name I forgot] might become drug czar. Full stop.
Awesome work, guys. Waiting longer than anyone else for less information. Top quality.
And I recently (month or so ago?) subscribed to both ST's and the PI's Twitter feeds. ST's is actually pathetic, updating almost never, which I find kinda incalcuably silly since, I thought, news happens all the time, like when people are alive and not zombies. But even zombies would be up to something. The PI feed is good in that it's actually updated, but it's updated in big clots with five or six stories at a time, which is bad Twitter behavior.
Incidentally, the best Twitter feed for news I've found so far is BreakingNewsON (http://twitter.com/BreakingNewsOn), which in its quest to be first is the first to blurt out the very first thought in its head and then add detail later, so you're likely to get five tweets for one story over an hour. But, if you can stand that and story corrections as it unfolds, they have broad coverage of international news and events that far surpasses anyone else's feed, including CNN's. I learn things not only first but they're often the only feed that mentions things at all, particularly international events.
Wow, what a tirade.
The two papers lost for good reason: They're simply inferior compared to any other possible outlet for any kind of news or entertainment they cover.