I first blogged about the new entrant into the Texas newspapers biz in March. Among their titles, in my area, is a (I think?) still-daily in print Sherman Herald-Democrat.
Took a gander at recent issue last Saturday at my local WallyWorld. This was their Friday issue.
Twenty pages? OK, decent size.
But? About zero local content. The one locally bylined story on page 1? It was about trying to prevent "summer learning loss" among K-12 students. Nice concept. But, the local follow-up was limited. Asking a superintendent, not an assistant, about the idea of year-round school as an antidote would have made it better. Getting a comment from TEA Commish Mike Morath to that end, or even asking him about a longer school year, like other developed nations, would have been better. (It was made worse by the study being from 2017. If you're going to try to localize something off the Net, it probably should be fresh.)
That was a small problem, though, compared to the adhole.
Or rather, the lack thereof.
NO ROP. That's right, NONE. As in NO DISPLAY ADS!
Page and a half of classys with half page of filler on the second page of them.
That's it, in a 20-page paper.
I don't know if Cherry Road has any plans beyond an Advance-type wind-down, or per my original post, if they bought this paper from Craphouse to data-mine subscribers for more nefarious purposes, or what?
And, as a data company? The dotted lines that pop up around most links? Looks like ass. If that is part of "ADA compliant," pass.
There's no emails for publisher, ad manager, managing editor or staff writers. The one bylined person doesn't have their name as an active link. The "about" has names for none of the top people, which leads me to be suspicious about two paragraphs above. A "community rules" link is NOT CherryRoad's community rules, but eType Services, their CMS. I can't even find, under popular stories, a link to the then-new ME introducing herself two months ago. Very likely, she ain't there.
No comments:
Post a Comment