Newspapers Need To Recognize You Can Be Hispanic And A Mother At The Same Time
from the not-about-silos dept
Vin Crosbie has been posting again recently on his blog about how newspapers need to better embrace the internet. He was recently talking about the need to recognize that they're not serving one-size-fits-all any more, but need to offer much more customized experiences -- which is exactly the type of benefits that the internet enables. There certainly are some who are recognizing this, but Crosbie is back to note that too many are focusing on creating special silos for customized content, building many niche sites, rather than customizing the overall experience. As he points out, why force everyone to jump around: "If you're a young professional Hispanic woman who's getting married, must you jump among three sites?" Even worse, he points out that building out and managing each of these sites simply adds to the overhead for the newspapers. Creating a single space that brings all the relevant content in makes a lot more sense, but for newspaper execs who have always been trained to think about different "sections," it's apparently still taking some time to figure this out.
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Xml?
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indeed
You get better news/information from a site that specializes about one thing, rather than one that just haphazardly tries to report everything.
And with a feed manager, or google's customizeable homepage (what I use) It has never been easier to view articles from multiple specialty sites.
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not about xml/rss feeds
All 3 of those sites are owned by IGN/Fox - the article is saying that it would make more sense to just have one site with sections for files, news, and tournament status. Instead with the way things currently are, you have to jump between the 3 and navigate through 4 or 5 different sections each to find the one section you want, and chances are it's going to be the same section, making you go through those 5 generations of links every time you visit the site.
Now, lets see if anybody can comprehend that babbling crap I just wrote...
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ya.. but no..
As for IGN and Gamespy these are more review/preview based sites rather than news, and although they may be owned by the same parent company, the writing staff is seperate and the reviews/previews are based on different opinions. This makes them, for most intents and purposes, seperate, and if you were to merge them then you would lose half of the opinionated content, unless you kept all the staff and had them write seperate reviews on each item, in which case it would be the same as it is now except the website would most likely look too busy and cluttered as you find difficulty navigating through too much of the same but different content.
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Utopia
The utopia that newspapers on the Internet may somehow encompass the whole wisdom of the world and somehow chew it for each person individually according to his profile.
Newspapers are first and foremost entertainment. And something to discuss at dinner. Oh and they occasionally bring worthy news too.
Aggregators like Google are already adapting to the needs of the person, but the individual sources can't be everything for everyone.
Where is the content on your own blog for hispanic mothers that can program basic?
Even your paid corporate intelligence is a glorified aggregator of someone else's news.
No news media can produce ALL that info alone. Face it.
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I don't just disagree, I STRONGLY disagree
I have absolutely NO interest in havine a news media company become my rss aggregator.
I do have an interest in being able to find news from various news sources that matters to me. To that end, I welcome google news recommended stories, and I alse welcome competition to google in its news aggregation business (and all other aspects of its business, I only benefit when there is competition).
I don't really care at all about news sites that aren't dedicated to their subjects. I only care about news when its clear the "reporter" actually has a clue about what is going on. On a consistent basis.
I hate to say it, Mike, but I just don't agree with you.
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