Tuesday, June 06, 2006

headlines

Every morning I check out the local news page of my local paper's website, and every morning I get frustrated. Most of the headlines kind of make sense. But at least a few make no sense whatsoever.

Examples from today:
Lots of space, top attractions are lures
Maybe next year, kid
They’ll scream at queen of mean

But then you click on the links and you discover these cryptic lines are part of a cluster of headlines that make more sense:

PARKS AND RECREATION | Bringing in the visitors
Lots of space, top attractions are lures
By using economies of scale and letting volunteers pitch in,
park efficiencies go up.


Maybe next year, kid
Michelle Wie did not qualify for the U.S. Open,
Monday at Canoe Brook in N.J


And the last is a Steve Penn column, which is a whole other subject entirely.

So why can't they put this little bit of extra info on the main page? It would really help me figure out what I want to read.

Like, if they think this extra info is important to provide to the dying breed who read the news on paper, why wouldn't it also be important for those who've already embraced the new tomorrow?

1 comment:

WLIB said...

I hear you, Joe. I noticed last week that My Yahoo! has a beta version of a local news feed. You put in a zip code and they give you a module with four tabs of local news headlines. For KC the Star was one, as well as KMBC, the Biz Journal and the Pitch. Headlines from KMBC and the BJ were helpful but both the Star and the Pitch are both ingrown and obtuse.

I think that's the problem: the organization hasn't educated their people as to how the newsfeed/RSS system works, how their headlines are going to appear and how much work each headline has to do.

My two cents. Glad to see you haven't completely abandoned your revolution.