Trouble commenting?
So I am hearing that people are having trouble getting their comments up and running on this site. We’ve had some problems but we thought we’d solved them. If you ever have a problem getting a comment posted here, call Brittany Dashiell, our online editor, at 468-3515 or email her at udjonline@pacific.net.
I plan to fill you all in on the conference I went to Monday on the future of newspapers, but not today. However, a couple of people have commented here that they would be willing to pay something for viewing our online site and I appreciate that. I frankly wish there were more of you out there. The gentleman who said that the Eureka Times-Standard has its newspaper posted as a pdf which you can look at for a fee brings up a good point. We also post our actual pages online each day - and archive them - and you can look at those and download them for free. When I discussed paid circulation versus online audiences and the problems newspapers have with the limits of the traditional way our readers are counted - meaning online is not counted at all - these pdf versions are the exception. If you have a system like they do in Eureka where you can download actual pages for a fee, that does count as “paid circulation” in the traditional sense. We have looked at that option here, but our publisher, Kevin McConnell, is a big believer in the Web being an open and free source and doesn’t believe that would be a significant enough boost to our circulation numbers to make it worth setting up a fee system and the collections and tracking that it entails. Who knows if that will change with time. Perhaps more people will begin to think that paying for a good local source of news is worth the money. We’re not betting on it. We believe the future is more in increasing our audience overall and coming up with unique and effective ways for local businesses to get their message to that audience.
I am looking into a story I heard that the county hired a Sacramento attorney to threaten to sue the folks putting together another petition to roll back the supervisors raise and travel expenses.
Comments
If you could expand the on-line subscriber application to include a place where the UDJ could charge my credit card monthly $10 to support on-line reading (like my other automatic payments) I'd sign up today. Any ideas?
Posted by: Vanessa Vachon | September 13, 2007 06:35 PM
For what it's worth: While I'm a very devoted Internet junkie, using it quite a lot for research, I find it quite inconvenient for daily news. I tried reading the UDJ on-line and find that I'd much rather read it in print and am now (again) a subscriber.
I also want to comment that my wife and I seem to find the UDJ much imrpoved and more worth reading. Maybe that's just because I've gotten more involved in local matters than previously but I think it's actual improvements in the papers contents. BTW, we rather enjoy Kramer and think he's a worthwhile addition. He rocks the boat and that's good for readership!
Posted by: Granville Pool | September 16, 2007 08:46 PM
I can't imagine sitting in bed on Sunday morning with a cup of coffee and my computer reading the paper. Give me newsprint or give me.....
By the way, your way too numerous flashing ads on your online edition are not simply annoying, they may cause someone to go into a seizure.
Give the flash the axe.
Posted by: Richard Shoemaker | September 20, 2007 08:16 AM