Daily News Takes the Money Anyway For Its Work-In-Progress Mobile Site
As I was scanning the mobile version of the (N.Y.) Daily News, what should be viewed as an unusual banner ad kept popping up at the bottom, even in these desperation-driven times in the troubled realm of newspaper advertising.
It was there that readers were offered an opportunity to click to get a discounted subscription for USA Today for $10 a month. In other words, a newspaper selling ads for another newspaper.
Granted, the degree of overlap between a typical Daily News reader and one who might regularly scroll USA Today is likely limited. And if someone is reading the News on an Android, chances are better than even they're not plunking down a George for the real thing. But even if it's not Macy's reluctantly taking ads for Gimbels (as he seriously dates himself), that the News or whichever digital ad behemoth it uses to sell banners would cough up real estate on its home page to a putative rival is a bit unseemly and certainly sad.
What the News should be working on more is the user-unfriendliness of its mobile incarnation. Exactly what is the real difference between the "Metro View" and "America" sections, anyway? Not much, unless you scroll to the borough tabs in the former. Ah, the tabs. For the city, that means Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and, uh, "Uptown." Apparently, the News has no readers in Manhattan below 125th Street. Who knew?
Only thing: if you're going to have sections, you have to do a better job of restocking the shelves and removing the journalistic equivalent of moldy bread. On April 10, we should not still be seeing prominently featured a March 31 story about a dead Columbia co-ed.
While you're at it Newsies, make those tabs a little easier to the touch. I felt like all thumbs pressing on the "Mets" tab in the sports section and stories about the Knicks kept coming up. And why not also include the sports columnists--some of the best in the biz--in the sports section, rather than just lumping them in with the paper's other columnists in yet another section. The sports columnists are destination reading, so you shouldn't have to go on a maddening journey to find them.
If making people work for their free content is a way for the News to gently encourage people to buy the paper, it won't work. At least not as long as the New York Post site is free. And I haven't seen any USA Today ads there.
Yet.
Showing posts with label USA Today. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USA Today. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
A Delta Doozy?
Why You Need to Check Your Quotes Before Hitting the Send Button
I caught up to a nice story on the USA Today "Today in the Sky" blog about the retirement of Delta's senior pilot who, among his many accomplishments, never missed a day of work in 45 years at the airline. The blog post was actually an AP dispatch, which was rewritten from a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But this human-interest slice of life about how Cal Flanigan got to live his dream is muddied by a quote that is questionable at best. Questionable in that it's hard to believe that the speaker actually meant to say what he said if he said it that way at all. Questionable in that the reporter did not challenge him about what he said. And questionable that the AP and, by extension, USA Today, repurposed it verbatim.
Flanigan is “very humble — he epitomizes the principles of servant leadership,” the AJC quotes Delta senior VP of flight operations Steve Dickson as saying.
Servant? The implications of that word are especially troubling, given that Flanigan happens to be black and worked for an airline based in a city with a troubled civil-rights history. Yet, it was an airline that also gave him a shot in the cockpit in 1976, after he came through the ranks as a mechanic.
A guy like Flanigan, who's logged more than 12.5 million miles and flown to six continents would never be mistaken for a servant. Delta CEO Richard Anderson called Flanigan a "hero of mine." In other words, not a servant.
Because of that, I find it hard to believe Dickson said what he is quoted as saying. Let's swap out servant for "service," and you have a quote that's not only better, but probably more accurate. Either way, dicey words should prompt red flags, which at least one reporter and several editors somehow ignored.
I caught up to a nice story on the USA Today "Today in the Sky" blog about the retirement of Delta's senior pilot who, among his many accomplishments, never missed a day of work in 45 years at the airline. The blog post was actually an AP dispatch, which was rewritten from a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But this human-interest slice of life about how Cal Flanigan got to live his dream is muddied by a quote that is questionable at best. Questionable in that it's hard to believe that the speaker actually meant to say what he said if he said it that way at all. Questionable in that the reporter did not challenge him about what he said. And questionable that the AP and, by extension, USA Today, repurposed it verbatim.
Flanigan is “very humble — he epitomizes the principles of servant leadership,” the AJC quotes Delta senior VP of flight operations Steve Dickson as saying.
Servant? The implications of that word are especially troubling, given that Flanigan happens to be black and worked for an airline based in a city with a troubled civil-rights history. Yet, it was an airline that also gave him a shot in the cockpit in 1976, after he came through the ranks as a mechanic.
A guy like Flanigan, who's logged more than 12.5 million miles and flown to six continents would never be mistaken for a servant. Delta CEO Richard Anderson called Flanigan a "hero of mine." In other words, not a servant.
Because of that, I find it hard to believe Dickson said what he is quoted as saying. Let's swap out servant for "service," and you have a quote that's not only better, but probably more accurate. Either way, dicey words should prompt red flags, which at least one reporter and several editors somehow ignored.
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