Stay classy Arizona Republic

Lake Havasu is a god-forsaken hellpit with exactly one passable club and a few very meh bars in its "channel" area, that's milking the fact that it was on MTV ten years ago for all it possibly can, before that pointless, barren wasteland is swallowed into the blasted expanse of the Mohave Desert from whence it was spawned.

Ahem. Sorry. I worked at the local rag paper there a few years ago and have still not forgotten or forgiven that town for stealing 10 months of my life. For a "party" town, it's a complete shit heap with nothing to do if you're a local. The drunken college kids tend to stick to the channel, but there's not even anything for them to do once you get past getting drunk on a boat. I've never found how it could be anything but disappointing, when there are plenty of better Spring Break venues in the area (fuck, Vegas is only about a two hour drive north of Havasu).

The point where I knew I had to get out came on a dreary, over-cast Saturday morning as I was standing outside the local video store. It was the day after St. Patrick's day and, despite it being 9:15 in the morning, the store was not open because its lazy, hung-over staff had not bothered to stumble in yet. I struck up a conversation with another guy who was waiting to return a DVD about how much the town sucked (he worked at a local medical clinic and apparently spent most of his days dealing with meth heads). After the employee finally came to open the store (he was wearing a sweat shirt, unzipped, with only his bare chest underneath), I drove off to begin my Saturday shift at the paper. I gave my notice Monday.

The one absolute regret, the one moment in my life I would change if I could go back again and intervene with my younger self, was my decision to go to Lake Havasu City. Warn your children. Warn your children's children.

At some point, I was going to comment on the Republic's T&A coverage. But my hatred of the town blinds me.

 

I know, at least from my personal experience, that the same ethics and principles we held for the print product didn't carry over to the website. You could be more explicit in language and content, more conversational. Is that bad? No - you're battling blogs that do the same thing and you're trying to make money off of it, too.

Is what the Republic did any worse than the shit you see on Deadspin or With Leather? They're trying to tap into a demographic that carries a large advertising push, and trying to do it locally. I can't blame them for doing it - especially if it brings local advertising like clubs, bars and restaurants that typically don't do online advertising.

When you expect a newspaper's website to maintain the same principles and ethics that the print product does, you're dooming it to fail. It becomes a replica of what people don't want to pay for in print. You need the hits and the unique views to prove to advertisers that they should spend the money on your product.

We always hear that "the internet doesn't bring ad revenue" ... well, when you're asking advertisers to buy ads for the same things they don't want to buy in print, why should they?

 

context, my friend.

 

I bet Deadspin's actual ad revenue would shock you. They aren't making as much as you seem to think.

 

Stain - I'm sure it's more than most newspaper sites make.

A top-tier run-of-site ad on a pretty large newspaper site, with 20,000 guaranteed impressions, will cost you around $750/month. From there it drops down to 450, 350, 200, and lower. Figure half that cost for a static ad.

An ad sales person doesn't want to chase those ads because a) no company wants to commit to 12 months and b) the commission isn't high enough for the sales rep.

 

I doubt it's the product so much as it is the medium on which the product is being presented. It's not as immediate as the Net, and a PDA is easier to carry around and read on the go. People would eat up every seriously presented detail on the next Watergate or terrorist attack, but there have to be grownup newsgathering organizations to do that. Newspapers need to move to the Net in a serious way, no doubt, but on mainly their terms. The longer we go on with a decimated print product, the harder time we will have being taken seriously on the Net.

Is it your contention people don't want hard news, and want only fluff in their lives?

 

"more" ? Yes.

Enough to give hope to "saving" the industry by selling out? Not even close.

 

No, I think people look for a balance. It's why blogs like PerezHilton, TMZ and DListed bring in 20-million+ views a month and put up numbers comperable to CNN.com.

Newspapers have got to stop taking themselves so seriously on the web. Have a little fun. Open yourself up to conversations within your readership. I know the thought of reader blogs on a newspaper's website is evil around here, but at least you're getting people to spend time on your site.

Newspaper sites need to realize that just allowing a reader to comment on a story isn't going to bring them in. They want to tell THEIR story, too. They want to communicate, in the open (not via e-mail) with a columnist. They want to see THEIR pictures available somewhere on the site.

It's the thinking that a newspaper's website has to be all news, all the time that is dooming them.

 

There's something for that. It's called a diary, or a scrapbook.

 

My South Florida paper is getting more "bold" with what it's linking to all the time. I'm no prude at all -- but it's still disturbing.

 

Until someone comes up with a way to effectively monetize this whole "getting people to look at the site" thing beyond the pennies that come from online advertising, I'm not interested.

 

Do people really want this in a newspaper site, and is a newspaper site doing this really a valueable exertion of resources?

This is a serious question. I'm not knocking it. I just honestly don't see the point of the local daily rag trying to do what sites like Facebook and Blogger already do better. Most newspaper blog set-up offerings are so far inferior to what dedicated blog hosting sites do, and littered with spam besides, that they actively drive posters away. As for posting and social networking...I do not want to splatter my personal pics all over the Arizona Republic's website. I have a Facebook page that allows me to communicate with my friends, family, and other people who might conceivably give a damn, and my Facebook page already does it better. Meanwhile, staff resources at the newspaper are drained trying to pump these things up and make them work.