The DW launched its redesigned website today. It requires registration to see more than the first 3-4 lines of a story.
"But in the near future, thedailyworld.com will become a paid Web site." But will paid subscribers have to endure sentences that begin with conjunctions?

<-------- Will not be a paid subscriber.

No cost to subscribers. Hmm... maybe will get a few people to get a subscription that otherwise wouldn't. But journalism isn't quite dead yet. Wait, what's a conjunction again?

The animation reminds me of Jay Ward productions. Anyone know if he, or his animator, was involved?

I couldn't find any connection between Schoolhouse Rock and Jay Ward, but it seems that when the idea was being pitched to then-ABC President Michael Eisner, he brought in Chuck Jones to listen to the presentation. Anyhow, the animation was produced by Phil Kimmelman and associates, with the design on this particular one by Tom Yohe and Bill Peckmann. I couldn't tie any of them to Jay Ward.

Typically, the Hurl's management has decided that instead of doing something to improve the product, they just need to charge more for it.

This is likely not local management's fault, although local management is certainly responsible for the quality of the product, and I say that without any malice or insult intended towards the reporting staff there.

Wow. I have to respect the paper for recognizing that changes are necessary and that what they are doing is not working. However, the changes that are being made appear to totally be off-base and ill-advised. I don't think there is any chance this will work. There's not enough news being offered nowadays anyway.

Living in Humptulips, the only thing reported on that I actually care about are the PUD and the County Commissioners and the radio does a fine job of covering those areas. Anything else I may be interested in, the radio will also pick up, which would be the big-ticket items, like a big concert or a new store, etc. And the "major" items, such as a Lindsey Baum case or a high school fire, still will be covered by TV and bigger papers. Too often, that coverage is better.

So, The Almost Daily World now offers Joe Humptulips nothing he cares about that he can't get anywhere else. I'm sure there are a lot of "Joe Humptulips" out there. Providing them with nothing relevant doesn't sound like a recipe for success to me. Unlike the previous poster, I know nothing of who is to blame for the changes. But I do believe that "blame" is the correct word and time will prove it so.

So Im wondering from reading all these post's.......... How Many of you will become paid subscriber? If you are not already, will you do so in order to gain access to the website? What is the trend: are other newspaper doing this???

To pull off a pay site, there needs to be a compelling reason to want to pay and that's in any niche, not just in particular to newspapers. They really need to be providing something that people can't get elsewhere.

Those people that already receive the paper delivered to their doorstep apparently will get access to the new site. So, they are relying on people that don't already subscribe.

I am kind of curious if they just flew into this blind or took some type of survey of visitors to gauge the interest.

I'm not currently a subscriber, and don't see losing access to the web site to be any great loss. I see this move by the DW as a mistake in that they will lose web traffic and thus fewer viewers for those who advertise on it.

I don't blame TDW for trying to locate a new profit center and/or trying to figure out a way to keep or gain subscribers. This current rendition won't do it, imo. I read the Letters. Other than that, not much. I've tried to get Mrs. Stash to stop taking the paper for a couple years. She keeps it for the ads.

Hint... Hint...

It's all about the ads. Most local businesses haven't figured out the tricks and, therefore, the value of internet adverstisingand driving traffic to their profit centers. At this time they will not pay a premium for it. Some are starting to figure it out. Others will sooner or later.

When that happens, TDW will wise up and do things to increase the value to advertisers.

It has been a slippery slope for years with the printed papers and fueled by the current "lack of" economy the slope has increased. This is one way to draw a line in the sand and know what you have to work with (good or bad). Probably not the path I would take but if corporate is using this as a test bed before larger decisions are going to be made why not test in an area like ours? I did not check to see if other papers owned by corporate are doing this as well?

The new site looks nice however if the end result is paid use good luck. I will say the ads stick out more, when not logged in, but now knowing that I can see no "valuable" content and needing to login will drive me to other sites like this one or others for local news.

It seems to me that the community has the ability to create its own content off of local "tweets" or other style updates to a platform such as this one and let the local community experts add valuable feedback to the "tweets", stories, etc? I am most amazed with some of the stories and feedback that has been created on this site by people that are in the “know”.

We need local news! How does it get supported moving forward should corporate pull the plug on the Daily World or scale things way back.

I dropped my DW subscription last year and haven't really missed it. I don't plan to subscribe to online edition.

According to this site,some papers "located in smaller, often rural markets" are going this route. I'd say it's too soon to call a trend.

It depends. I'd prefer to read it online and I'd pay a small fee to do it but it should be less than half the regular subscriber rate since they won't have the expense of printing and delivery.

Obviously, advertising plays a key role to the whole picture. When they decided to cut a day, they went with Monday, because it was in the least demand by advertisers. If they had looked at it from the subscriber viewpoint, they would have dropped the Saturday paper as it would have only been 12 hours or so after the Friday paper, leaving us without the paper for a day and a half. Instead, we are without the paper for 2 and a half days. Perhaps that is why they are getting the weekday papers out so much earlier now, I usually get it by 11:45 now.

Great list!

I will not be apart of this process. They lost me as a lurker who did read ads. I know they lost the older lurkers as some can not figure out how to work through the sign in process. They could just get to the dailyworld home page now this extra hurdle puts them out of being viewers.

That's the big one right there. I was actually considering doing some advertising with them, but I fear that their pageviews might actually go down with this change and make advertising with them less attractive. Going to have to wait until they actually make the switch and get some actual numbers in before deciding.

they lost the older lurkers as some can not figure out how to work through the sign in process

I guess I resemble that remark. I just tried to sign in, using my existing DW online registration info, and the site would not recognize that info. Guess I'll try opening a new account. It shouldn't be so tough. I look at several other, larger online papers daily, without this hassle.

I think more people would subscribe if there was more local coverage. We can get state, national and international news from many other sources. Seems like it would even save TDW money as they could drop their subscriptions to things like the AP. But this doesn't mean they would have to hire a lot more reporters to cover the local beat either. Why not simply encourage people to submit their own reports? Yes, they might need an additional editor to clean up copy and to contact the submitter for clarifications but I would bet this cost would be more than covered by dropping those news service subscriptions.

For example, my MIL is in the DAR which gives out citizenship awards to 6th-grade students based on essays submitted. I would have loved to read about who won with maybe a snippet of their essays.

I know that, currently, TDW will sometimes print reader-submitted photos of local events but they don't push for people to submit. I've gotten a couple things in over the years, mainly for Habitat for Humanity, but they don't always print them and you also have to know that they will consider printing such things. Most people don't know it's an option.

Anyway, that's my solution to tumbling readership.

I think you have something there. Then again, the World is one of the few papers that don't seem to have a policy regarding LTEs. By that, I mean regarding frequency and length. Most papers limit to once monthly, and have a set word limit. With the World, if it is too long for a regular spot, they hold it for a My Turn column. Sometimes we see two letters from the same person on one day. Of course, I would like it if saw more letters from a variety of writers (especially the contrubutors here).

Looks like the DW will no longer be accessible through Timberland Library's online reference section. The last available issue is July 15.

But I really don't want to see local news shared via LTEs. I'd rather see a photo of all the kids who got DAR awards with their names and maybe a snippet from their essay.

Oh, well...probably not gonna happen anyway.

I won't pay.

You're right about news in LTEs, I was thinking of columns, and then neglected to actually type that out. The Daily News in Longview (although a slightly larger paper) runs a monthly section written, photographed, and layed out by high school students. Then, at the end of the school year there are awards.

The Longview paper also has an e-edition subscription for $7.50/month while the print edition is just over $15/month. I've sent an email to TDW to see if they are going to offer such an option. If not, that's whacked.

I think $7.50 is a bit high for online access but at least it's a good savings over print. Hope TDW does something similar.

It seems like we had a student-created page some years back. Or I'm dreaming.

I think thats right. If I'm not mistaken- that Kurt Cobain Memorial Foundation came about as a result of that page in the paper??!

I would I think pay for an access to the on-line paper if it were updated more frequently - with more breaking new's and stuff

One thing I've noticed so far is a good portion of the articles are from the AP. Ok, so I'm exaggerating a bit, 10 Local to 9 AP articles on the sports page. Just seems to me that If I'm paying for access, then I should be getting a larger ratio of content that I can't get elsewhere for free.

Edit; Maybe the sports section is a bad example. I've just been visiting daily and I want to find a reason to subscribe, but having a hard time to so far.

We have been an online subscriber since day one. We used to be able to look at an image of the published paper. Now we get to read some articles but perhaps not all the articles of TDW in the same format as the free version. The server is slow.

We got a call from TDW telling us of their service. My wife politely told them of the problems and mentioned we were not satisfied.

There is no sense paying that much money for that much less product. They have less than a year to straighten it up or we will finally after 37 years be absolutely Daily World-less.

That is sad.

I don't see why they don't just better-optimize the website as an interactive news source. I can take the title of their top story and search google news... nothing... fail. They are poorly google indexed, and SEO seems like an afterthought - if a thought at all.
<meta rant>
Their title tag is static...like they're using a "website builder" Their Description tag is missing.
</end rant>

Not everyone thinks "I wonder what's in the newspaper today... let's check online.... now what was that web address for my local newspaper?"

More than half of my own site's traffic is through search engines, mostly google but bing more recently as well. Not to toot my own horn (too much) but my site generates a modest amount off of google ads, and has relatively low traffic considering I'm the designer, major contributor, and admin.
-also my site's google ads rotate against local ads, so they don't show every time on the home page.


I would think even a one-man-web-department could do better than a news director/tech admin/web-admin-on-the-side type like myself.

But hey, the domain expires in 2 months, maybe they're just trying to go out with a bang

Not to knock their new website and all, but dam... what I could do with 23k inbounds....

They are just using a poorly implemented Drupal install. Drupal is great if you know how to adjust everything to make it SEO friendly, but if you just slap it up, by default it has problems. With the switch to paid only they won't be helping themselves in the eyes of the search engines anyways, since they'll have less to index.

well I guess, but the nypost does the same thing and I'd have to wonder how many conversions they get by search engine hits that wanted to read "the rest of the ...article...online"

I believe nypost has enough articles where you get to read the full article without paying to keep the search engines busy. But yeah, I imagine they do get do get quite a few conversions from those that require payment.

Personally, I just take the title of the story and plug it into google and see if I can find it elsewhere first

HAHAHA a good point, and a great tip to use locally too. If it's any kind of "breaking news" odds are that someone else has reported on it. Unless the story is so local that no one else cares to report it, or someone had an inside tip - in which case they'll submit it to the AP anyway.

Is that why grass comes out fluorescent green in the photos they post?

Yeah, that is a bad example in August. Now, if it is October, with the high school-JC seasons in full bloom and there's more AP stories than local... (there won't be, but you get my drift)...

Some yrs ago TDW used to include police and fire calls. Don't know why they stopped, always thought it was a good thing. Kept us up on what's happening in the neighborhood.

You can get some of that from crimereports.com. Just enter an address or city. Doesn't have fire calls, however.

I don't remember TDW ever reporting police/fire calls at least not for Aberdeen, Hoquiam or the GHSO. The calls are so numerous for those three there is no possible way to put those into any kind of short form for a partial page in a paper. Granted on line would be easier but I'm assuming the data entry alone for those various agencies day after day would be a pain.

It was back in the 60's, it was called City News Briefs I think.
It was kind of like what the Vidette does, just recaps not the entire call.

sometimes either TDW or the Vidette will post 'out takes' of the GHSO calls, we get that log weekly-ish. It doesn't always have anything funny in it though so I think they hold off until they have a few things to publish. APD and HPD don't offer full call logs anymore as far as I know.

When I started at the Daily Hurl back in the day, we were allowed to go to the 911 center and read the morning logs to mine for interesting stuff.

Then a certain officer who shall remain nameless (but whose initials are the same as Hoquiam's Police Chief) decided to invent a reason to get the Hurlers kicked out of there.

Yeah, when I started here everyone just said "Ohh we don't allow that anymore...."

I've always wondered how much of my 'information-challenge' was from previous news guys here, or just good-ole-boy-style staffing. Hey speaking of escaping how's college going?

Well, there's a qualitative difference between "escaping" and "run out of town on a rail."

College ended in December. Then there was Census work. Now I am seriously considering jobs out of state, because there's just nothing happening for me here. So perhaps escaping is the right word after all.

Through my travels this summer one place stood out as having jobs with help wanted signs everywhere. That place was Texas. Perhaps a place near GW might have some work.

It was probably easier than setting up procedures to ensure compliance with the Public Records Act.

The radio station's news site is regularly updated with breaking news. That will be the downfall of the newspaper - the fact that they only update once a day (and not at all on Mondays)

Okay, so now the announcement that the online edition will be for pay...I have not been that impressed. any thoughts?

I like getting local news, but if I'm going to pay, would probably rather get the actual paper. there is not enough posted on the on line edition to be worth it, imo.

just wondering what others are feeling

The online version is incredibly amateurish.

I suspect they want to pull out of this market.

As long as Mrs. Stash keeps taking the paper (over my objections), I'm in. But the web version is incredibly lame and, certainly not worth any payment.

My friend in Seattle said that when there was a shooting last week that involved the Cambodian lady killing all her relatives, people went to the West Seattle Blog for updates and they did a good job of updating breaking news. When there is no breaking news, they do a lot of community features and report on meetings of interest to the greater public. I wonder if something like that could take off here. At the very least, it would keep the DW on its toes and perhaps spur / challenge them to improve their product.

I would love to support the DW business but it needs to be worth the money.

Some of us actually talked about doing that here, TLM, but we were probably too lazy to make it happen. It's still a good idea though. Maybe we should all make an effort to create that here, as best we can. I'm game...after I get through October, anyway.

Ditto.

I thought version 1.0 of the website was weak; the latest version is even worse. Less articles, no comics! I will continue to subscribe to the hard copy because I cannot rely on the website for all the info I want to read. The new editor has done a terrible job. His letter from the editor today made me laugh--he cited several newspapers that have a pay website. He did NOT mention the Seattle newspapers that have FREE websites!

Did anyone else notice that TDW subscription price went up recently? What the HELL for?? Less local news, and only six days a week. BAH!!

I can get more local news from the weekly Vidette than I can from six days of TDW.

If we have enough people wanting to post local news we could look to roll something out like the below platform! However, the threads from this platform would be one of the tab links to support the open flow of the threads...

www.thurstontalk.com

I am just starting to take the above to a revenue generating business! Looking to have a reporter mid next year in the Thurston County area.

** If anyone on this board is interested in getting something similar going in Grays Harbor look me up.

As a note - the open threads will remain in place as it has for many years now. We just may wrap a few more widgets around it to get more viewers and traffic. Yes, we need ads also in the future - the google ads generate a big fat zero in revenue...

Note - When you check out thurstontalk.com go easy on my english skills. I will be the first to admit "...eye am know writher..."

Down here where I live they kid about the Mexican business model. Your business doesn't make money then you raise your prices. If items don't sell, you never lower your prices on them. If you have a business in your commercial building that is barely making it, you raise the rent. After all, someone will always pay it.

We laugh about it(a sad laugh at that) because we feel for these business people. Many of us were in our other lives.

Right now I am thinking that the Mexican business model is being copied by TDW. We have subscribed our whole adult lives and continued with electronic editions for when we are not there. The Daily World is totally useless to us now and when it comes time to re-subscribe, we will not. The server is slow and there is only a hand full of stories a day to read. The editorials appear to be weeks old. Business ads placed in the hard copy are no longer seen online.

We have let them know that this is not acceptable. Whoever makes business decisions does not care.

Our subscription will be up at the end of the year and we will be totally cut off from TDW. I guess if they don't care we shouldn't either but it will be strange. 37 uninterrupted years of readership done.

I guess I should identify who 'they' are and why I drew the conclusion I did. The 'they' I was referring to are Stephens Media Group - The corporate entity that holds the purse strings and sets the agenda for TDW.

I believe the 'locals', including Rush, are doing everything they possibly can with what they got where they're at. Stephens Media is in the business of business. GH County is a very small market. Newspapers are under incredible pressure to reinvent themselves. TDW's web presence does not appear like the Nevada boys have thrown their full support behind the effort. But what do I know?

Brian

I agree Brian,

Its alot like the airline industry, business is down, they have no choice but to charge for things that used to be given away: For example, Checked-in luggage, and food on the plane. People cried foul. They said they wish it was like the old days.

The revenue is down - what else do you expect the newspaper to do? I just hope it survives... it's a tough spot for any Business to be in especially one that is gradually getting replaced by the technology's of the 21st Century...

Well Rush is correct in that it doesn't make sense to keep trying the same thing. I have to wonder, though, about radio. They've been giving their product away since the beginning. True, radio isn't exactly thriving right now, but it does seem to be surviving even with increased competition from just as many sources.

I got a funny compliment the other day; "I can't drive to work in the morning and read yesterday's paper" to which I replied "well of course not, that's yesterday's news"

You'd be surprised at how many news tips I get through the website, mostly via email links but we used to have a "Submit News Tip" button...stupid bots spammed me for a bit and I gave it up though. Also; wow, no revenue from your Google ads?

They finally pulled the plug.