Pull the plug
It's hard to believe, but here's what the front page of the Oregonian's anemic website looks like at this hour:
At least they got the Olympics into the right hand corner. But the rest of those stories -- that's all they've got to tell us about?
1. Canby music show with '80s cover bands.
2. Comedian leaving Portland for L.A. (hint: he already left).
3. Lucha libre wrestling.
4. Oregon Ducks have one of the top punters in the country.
Thanks, but we think we'll go reorganize our sock drawer rather than read any of that.
| Posted at 12:17 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (11)
Well, it's not as if there is anything to write about in Portland.
The SF Gate webpage had an article this weekend about how an unfunded pension plan for police and firefighters is currently ravaging the finances of Oakland, California, despite the fact that the pension plan was closed to new entrants in **1976**. Fortunately, we would never be that stupid.
Posted by Random | July 30, 2012 5:41 AM
Pensions or punters, what to chose?
I think the Zerogonian punted on that one.
Posted by Harry | July 30, 2012 5:49 AM
Looks like the "happy talk" of the 70s.
"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.". -- H. L. Mencken
Posted by Nolo | July 30, 2012 7:42 AM
Scrolling down by the page down key still causes part of the article to go underneath that huge floating banner at the top. Would have thought that would be fixed by now.
Posted by Andrew | July 30, 2012 8:22 AM
I clicked on two different stories from Oregon Live's Oregonian front page menu just now this morning, one a sports story about Olympic sponsorships, the other about NE Portland neighborhood events. On the right side of the page for each story,among all the promo and ad stuff, is a box listing "recommendations," with hot links to other Oregonian stories. Three stories are listed. One, from clear back in June, is about a guy who crashed his car while masturbating. Another, fromn clear back in May, is about a guy caught masturbating in a park. Both stories have the word "masturbation" in their headlines. Man, even the most salacious of supermarket tabloids hardly stoop this low.
Posted by The Boregonian | July 30, 2012 9:17 AM
The new site looks tabloidy and unserious. The headline font looks blotchy and ugly on the screen. With so many un- and underemployed Web programmers and graphic designers in Portland they couldn't have come up with something more polished and professional looking? Although I suppose it was mandated by their corporate overlords in New York.
Posted by Eric | July 30, 2012 9:32 AM
Not to mention that you can no longer get to the Winterhawks section by hovering over the word "sports"...
The only thing that is true in that rag is the date, yesterdays weather, and the sports scores. All else is opinion or spin.
Posted by It's Mike | July 30, 2012 10:02 AM
We need a new Oregonian-sponsored animal in the Oregon Zoo: The Pander Bear.
Posted by NW Portlander | July 30, 2012 11:26 AM
It looks like a website built by a member of the trendy creative crass....
Posted by tankfixer | July 30, 2012 1:02 PM
It took me awhile to figure out that one can click on the "News" tab at the top left-hand corner to go straight to a scroliing line-up of news stories in the middle of the page. Of course, you still get the ads and other Oregonian links, etc. on both the right- and left-hand side of the page, but you don't have all the annoying, silly "front page" crap, including that GD drop-down ad.
Another thing I've noticed recently at some sites (Slate, The Atlantic, to name two) that is just unbelievably obnoxious is when you're reading an article, scrolling down, out from the right-hand side shoots this small ad for the site itself that covers part of the article you're reading. You then have to stop and "click the X" on the ad to get rid of it so you can continue reading! And it happens more than once on the same article as you continue to read and scroll down. Why in hell would any web site want to irritate and annoy their readers in this way? Just boggles the mind.
Posted by realitybasedliberal | July 30, 2012 3:31 PM
The Oregonian is less relevant everyday, and the new format has succeeded in encouraging me to look elsewhere for local news.
Posted by Mark | July 30, 2012 8:45 PM