The Reno Gazette-Journal Online Loses A Fan
You’ve read my relatively low key diatribes on the increasingly unnavigable RGJ.com. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. Not only has the RGJ lumped my neighborhood (WeFi) in with southeast Reno so that my “Neighborhood” section is filled with stories of suburbia that have little to do with my life, they’ve changed the opinion page to the sacchrinized “Voices,” and scattered the local news all over the place. Grrrr.
And to add insult to injury, DMD alerted me to the fact that RGJ has put their archived stories behind a fee wall. Yeah, you read me right. In a business philosophy that, frankly, eludes me, Gannett wants you to pay to access local stories beyond a certain age (6 months). I’ve directed thousands of people to the RGJ’s online stories through my links (locals and non). To me, it seems like they’re turning their back on close to a year’s worth of free advertising and how smart can that be? I mean, how many people are going to actually pay the RGJ to see the older articles I link to? Not many I imagine–its not like you get access to Pulitzer Prize winners or anything (no offense).
Then, to top it all off with a juicy red cherry, the site continues to get slower and slower. Again, did the RGJ online folks commission any usability studies, because I am sort of an expert on the subject, and I just don’t think so. I hope what’s happened is that parent company Gannett has forced the RGJ to make all of these annoying changes. Unfortunately, as someone who blogs frequently on local issues, all of this means that I have to start looking for other local news sources that do not expire (so to speak). I don’t really have a choice–I can’t afford to annoy my readers with a bunch of broken links. Sorry RGJ guys, I really like some of you, but your website has become something I have to work around now rather than with (and I never could get the paper version delivered to my home).
As Mr. Darcy (played by British mancake Jeremy Northam) says to Emma after she insults the intellectual capacity of Miss Bates in the 1996 film adaptation of the Jane Austen novel of the same name: “Badly done RGJ.com, badly done!”
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The RGJ website has sucked the big one for a long time. It’s article search has been a piece of crap for even longer. How pathetic that they actually thought it offered anything up that could have a value assigned to it.
Today is April Fool’s Day. How appropriate for such a foolish newspaper.
Every day is April Fool’s Day for the RGJ.
The article search has actually improved. It’s much better today than it was six months ago. And while they may not have always had archives behind a paid firewall, they certainly were no easier to find before. Several stories of interest to me have disappeared over time so I stopped linking to them a while back.
I tend to agree with Myrna…I counted no less than six different spots or links on their home page citing ‘local news’. Very confusing.
Locking their older articles behind a fee-firewall will hurt them greatly. Their permanent linkable archive brought a lot of traffic back to them. Being that I am a search engine optimizer and web designer, I can tell you that what they did will kill them with google. Not very proressive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Pulitzer_Prize
Not to discount your broader point, but just saying.
Touche, in 1977. Good on the Evening Gazette. Did Gannett own them then I wonder? Thanks for the tip.
Looks like their owner merged into Gannett the next year: http://www.gannett.com/about/map/ataglance/ren.htm
May I suggest an email interview with their online director?