Gazette, Afflicted by Readership, Kills Website Experience.
by Bellanca on Sep 18, 2010 7:29 AM CDT
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PrintThe Gazette Company, flag of convenience for Marc Morehouse and Mike Hlas, has breached a new frontier in web design and usage: they have relaunched their site and created a broken muddle of dysfunction, intrusive registration requirements, and brain-choking ugliness. Honestly, it's so bad I thought it was a self-satirizing Onion piece. It's so bad it's hard to imagine someone achieving this level of badness and surviving. It's so bad their own "Feedback" page is broken.
Dialogue boxes don't work, links are broken, it appears that they released this pig without doing any QA in Safari, you can't make a waggish remark on football without leaving your full fucking name there to be googled by your customers or next girlfriend. (Google: perhaps the New Media wunderkind at the Gazette thinks it's a passing fancy?)
Morehouse and Hlas have been very sincere about engaging a readership, and bam, I think that just got killed.
That is all.
Unless otherwise expressly indicated by BHGP editors, this FanPost is strictly the viewpoint of the author and is not endorsed by BHGP in any way.
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agreed
This new website is a big step backwards so far, and it used to be the best newspaper site around.
Not working for me
on either my Apple-based system at home or windows-based at work. Hlas has already posted a plea for patience.
In Norm we trust.
This is like their fourth effort in the past two years
and I operate under basball rules. So they’re out…because this one does not qualify as a foul ball.
"I wish you luck with a capital 'F'" - The Real Elvis.
by StoopsMyAss on Sep 18, 2010 11:12 AM CDT up reply actions
There's no point in being churlish about someone else's business,
because we can just ignore it, but seriously: the Gazette is going to write new rules for the web and impose them on the world? the Gazette couldn’t just copy the format and functionality of, I don’t know, 5000 other newspaper sites? The Gazette doesn’t know that people use Safari? The Gazette can’t engineer a dialogue box?
You’d think even a moron would say, “Why don’t we just copy how the NY Post/WSJ/NYT does it?” They had to develop something that doesn’t work, is hideous to look at, impossible to navigate and requires you to commit to a lifetime of Google citations?
Bad luck for Hlas and Morehouse.
I’m annoyed because I have gotten accustomed to using the Gazette for my Iowa news and sports.
Mr. Boh Knows ...
Thank you for writing this
it was over for me when I got an email — a personal email mind you — from the web editor with the demand to “use your real name please.” As if anyone gives a shit who I am or even knows what my real name is to verify that I am being truthful, and as if that is going to ensure they fulfill their hokey fantasy of becoming the Pleasantville of online newspapers.
It’s a fucking joke and you’r right to call it out. Feel bad for Morehouse. Maybe we can recruit him to do his real work here and he can toss up his leftovers over at that shit palace (Wow, I can’t believe how pissed I am about it…)
"I wish you luck with a capital 'F'" - The Real Elvis.
by StoopsMyAss on Sep 18, 2010 11:10 AM CDT up reply actions
The Wall Street Journal doesn't verify "your real name".
But of course, the CRG is a more sophisticated newspaper.
The worst thing is that the site doesn’t even work mechanically. (Let’s set aside that it is awful to look at, I can see some middle manager in beige saying “that’s a matter of personal taste”.) A smart fifth grader could execute a better web site. Line spacing, fonts, colors from 1974, dialogue boxes … what’s wrong with these people?
I get so completely annoyed when officious Iowans demean the state by doing things like this.
Let’s assume Iowa has a great year. Let’s assume people want to know what is going on with Iowa football. Let’s assume you have not spent the last 15 years in a coma. Would you be embarrassed for Iowa if you had to link to this site, in order to get Morehouse’s content? Yes. You would.
Mr. Boh Knows ...
The worst part is that no commenters were out of control there
"I shoot, I score. He shoots, I score." - Dan Gable
by ClaybornSmash on Sep 18, 2010 6:01 PM CDT up reply actions
How can you be hungry, I just ate.
They’ve been able to tap into the infinite flow of wisdom for several years now – and have managed to ignore everybody but themselves. Bye, bye.
The new Hawk Central design is actually a nice improvement on the old one.
And beats trying to navigate the individual P-C or Register pages. Sadly, all that means is that it’s easier to read the drivel that Keeler and Harty write.
Meanwhile, Hlas, Morehouse, and Doc labor away on yet another shitty new website.
"I want to be a cowboy. I don't want to be a panda. Pandas are boring, stupid and boring. Bad panda!"
Another vote here against the new design.
Mas Casa deserves better.
I will haunt your dreams and eat your children.
No longer a newspaper
My office installed a draconian firewall this winter that blocks 90% of the internet. The only things I could access after the switch were newspaper sites (but not the sports or jobs sections), including the Gazette. It was a solid way to stay in touch with the goings-on of back home.
No longer, however, as the new Gazette meta language or headers or registry or something has it identifying itself as “advertising”. Their stupid redesign forgot to make themselves a newspaper!
You got no fear of the underdog; That's why you will not survive!
by YouCanPutYourEddsInIt on Sep 18, 2010 3:47 PM CDT reply actions
The old Gazette website...
was always one I checked on (on roughly an every-other-day basis) partially because it was NOT full of batsh!t insanity and disorganization. The Des Moines Register website IS full of batsh!t insanity and disorganization.
When are people going to understand that I don’t care where others like to go to have drinks or dinner. I don’t care what you think about the latest TV shows. And since I live in Waterloo, I don’t care what you think about local politics in CR, or DM, or anywhere that doesn’t affect me. I have spent 29 years on this earth developing my own brain and personal tastes. I don’t need to be told (or influenced by alleged real people) about what to do/think/like. (Exception made for, of course, BHGP).
If there was any other alternative for finding news and insight about the Hawkeyes, I would probably use it. But, the other Iowa newspapers are doing their jobs just competently enough to satisfy readers and online viewers who are older than 55 years old.
Unfortunately, similar things are happening with the local TV that I watch. About 3 years ago, I didn’t believe the hype about how we would all, one day, get most of our news from blogs and other “independent” sources. And now, I think it will happen sooner than I ever could have imagined.
/end rant
I've sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn't want to do it. I felt I owed it to them.
-- Judge Smails
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