A helpful fellow informed me the other day that our site is not as good as www.nytimes.com or www.reuters.com.
What? No way!
OK, I admit my first reaction was a bit brash. This nice gentleman was only trying to find reader-submitted photos of the big waves that crashed into our shoreline last week. The print edition promised we'd have them online, and he could not find them.
After calling The Tribune and talking with at least one colleague (not associated with the Web site), he was transferred to me.
That was when he dropped the bomb. He uses both The New York Times' and Reuters' sites daily, he said, and never has a problem. He tried 25 times to find those surf photos, to no avail.
If you're not familiar, those are two of the biggest news agencies in the world. Yes - world. While we are the foremost online resource for news and information in this county, we're dealing with far fewer resources.They've probably got dozens (hundreds! thousands!) of people dedicated to the web. We've got, let's see, Danny, Sally, Sergio, Kim, Laura and... me. And half of that list is only on the web part time. (For more on what we do, count down four posts to Danny's Dec. 3 entry).
So bear with us on site design and navigation. We’re working on it. Our site has changed dramatically in the past year, and you can expect more - and even better - changes to come.
And if you’ve got questions, or need to find something, or wonder why your comment didn’t show up on that story (that horrible Tribune deleted my comment! Censorship! Why they… wait, what? I posted it on a different story? My bad.), feel free to call or e-mail me anytime at 781-7936 (direct line) or ldoust@thetribunenews.com. I know you all don’t spend as much time on this site as I do (and if you are on here 8 hours a day, and unlike me aren't getting paid for it, well, maybe you need a hobby. But thanks for the traffic.). So far, I’ve been able to help most people quickly find what they’re looking for (and I promise I'll do it cheerfully, not matter how silly the question may seem), or can at least pawn the question off on someone else.
Oh, and if you're looking for those photos of the waves, you can find them here.
It was only two clicks away.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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