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A desperate plea to the Chicago Tribune
Thursday, Mar 9, 2006 - Posted by Rich Miller The Chicago Tribune’s website has gone all to hell. The Trib has added several new features, which would normally be a good thing, but the site is now so disjointed and spread out that it’s almost impossible to keep track of what’s going on unless you hire an intern or quit your job. Most state-related stories have always been posted on the Local News page, although lately there’ve been a few that have been hidden in other sections. They’ve since added a Breaking News page where several state politics-related stories are posted. They finally put up their elections page - a mere 13 days before the election. It’s obviously still a work in progress because none of the extensive Tribune questionnaires were posted last night and the video links I checked didn’t work. And then there’s something called Trail Mix, which is kind of a bloggy (sans comments) news updatey thingy that just kicked off yesterday. For whatever crackbrained, Luddite reason, Mother Tribune refuses to use RSS feeds in an intelligent way, so there’s no easy way to track updates to any of these pages (except a single outside source for the local page, which requires that we view an ad first). And since stuff is posted willy nilly all over the place, it’s absolutely frickin’ maddening trying to keep up. Seriously, talk to this guy right away. He can help. Get it together, Tribsters. Please. (Updated to add “in an intelligent way” because the feeds they do have are wholly inadequate to the task of keeping up with that behemoth of a site)
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- Anonymous - Thursday, Mar 9, 06 @ 6:51 am:
“The Chicago Tribune’s website has gone all to hell.”
They must have hired some of Blago’s consultants.
- Rick Klau - Thursday, Mar 9, 06 @ 9:29 am:
Hey Rich -
Thought I’d told you about these, but this ought to make you happy:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/site/chi-rsspromo-htmlstory,0,4885820.htmlstory
:)
- Dan Vock - Thursday, Mar 9, 06 @ 10:25 am:
Those RSS feeds are useless. The only thing guaranteed to be in the local news section is the weather.
The only way I can track down state stories, which I have to do every day, is to bookmark search pages for “Blagojevich” and the like.
That said, the Tribune web site is still better than the Sun-Times or the Daily Herald in that regard
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Thursday, Mar 9, 06 @ 10:49 am:
Rich-
Your mastery of prose is never more evident than when you are handing out free advice to your competitors.
This made me laugh over and over:
“bloggy (sans comments) news updatey thingy”
I picture a squeamish Tribune editor holding the whole concept at arms-length between pinched fingers, face screwed in a half-wretch, asking the question “Do we really haaave to keep content current??”
Can this become a regular feature?
- Rich Miller - Thursday, Mar 9, 06 @ 10:52 am:
No
- Navin Johnson - Thursday, Mar 9, 06 @ 4:00 pm:
The Tribune is like the anti-Borg, offers of help are futile and none of it will be assimilated.
- charlie madigan - Thursday, Mar 9, 06 @ 4:14 pm:
Well now,
It’s very great to be hated.
Charlie Madigan
- NotALipinskiFan - Thursday, Mar 9, 06 @ 5:31 pm:
The Trib has gone to hell in general
- Rick Klau - Thursday, Mar 9, 06 @ 11:41 pm:
No promises, but I’ll raise the local news issue with the guys working on the RSS project at the Trib. Will report back once I know anything…