In case you missed it, The Dallas Morning News Web site was seriously troubled for most of last Friday. Ian McCann, in The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog, explained it as "the virtual hamsters who power the dallasnews servers were out of commission. Or something." Later, when service was restored, McCann explained, "we worker bees don't got a clue what happened, and I doubt they'll be telling us."
This is another example of my pet peeve with the news media. Why isn't a snafu that shuts down a major metropolitan daily's Web operations considered newsworthy? Until the DMN can learn to cover itself, there's a big hole in its coverage of anything local. If the future of the news is local, the DMN is doomed.
10 comments:
"Why isn't a snafu that shuts down a major metropolitan daily's Web operations considered newsworthy?"
No one really cares if the DMN goes, uh, down for a while. It's not like there aren't other places to get your "news, sports and weather."
I care.
So are you really Belo employee in disguise?
Belo employee is a new one. Earlier today, I was described as a tin-foil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist. I wonder what's next.
One tin-foil hatter to another; what would you miss if the the DMN web site disappeared? The sports and weather you can get anywhere, that leaves the 'local' stuff and the editorializing. The DMN has been pretty consistently on the wrong side of big issues for a long time now, with Kevin Willey's motley crew leading the plunge into the abyss of cheesy populism.
What's there to care about?
"Anonymous" at 8/05/2009 7:32 AM, I agree that the DMN isn't what it used to be, but there are several hundred thousand people still buying it daily, so a lot of people are finding something to read in the paper edition. Personally, I find the Richardson blog to be the best source of news about the Richardson City Council and the RISD. That's not saying much because the alternatives are few, but, still, I consider it a must-read and would hate to see it get shut down.
Oh, I'm sure it won't get shut down, not completely, anyway. This latest SNAFU was just a temporary technical glitch of some sort.
I wouldn't be surprised if the DMN made budget cuts that would effect the size and scope of their web presence, but it's too easy and cheap to maintain a web presence of some kind or other. The quality of the staff and the caliber of the writing is another thing altogether. It can't be cheap to keep a staff of full-time writers.
Bob
Bob, even a one day outage is big for a Web site that measures its financial success by how many online ads it serves. It's newsworthy. But not to the DMN.
The DMN has been cutting back on its writers for some time. The paper is the poorer for it, no matter how much grief they get for their writing.
"Bob, even a one day outage is big for a Web site that measures its financial success by how many online ads it serves."
If the measure of success is the number of ad clicks, then the DMN is doomed, as you said. The site is already too cluttered with invasive, pop-up ads. The signal to noise gets lower all the time.
Bob
Nodding my head at all you said, Bob.
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