Worst Site in Town: Oregonlive.com
Portland has a lot of great things going for it like clean air, great music, and a couple of entertaining weekly papers.
But one thing we are cursed here with is a daily newspaper that is home to one crappy web site called Oregonlive. With a page design right out of 1995, this eyesore is laden with blinky ads and a gosh-awful color pallet. No matter, it’s the content, right?
Want to know the weather? Click on the cloud and be taken to a page that wants your zip code, gender, and year of birth in order to “serve you better.”
Hey, Oregonian, serve us better by switching off this monstrosity.
Oregonlive’s only redeeming value is its sports blogs…
I always love the obviously automated choices for ‘headlines’ on their section front pages. “SW Missouri University of the Blind Fires Football Coach” or “Meth Bust Biggest in Boise History”.
I think a lot of people at the O and at OLive would love to “turn it off” or change it somehow, but Newhouse/Advance won’t let them.
What Lynn said is 100% accurate. Lots of folks at the O detest the “monstrosity.” Newhouse controls the Web presence of all of its papers, for example, Flint, Mich.:
http://www.mlive.com/fljournal/
Look familiar?
However, I’m not sure editors and executive staff realize that it’s not just annoying–it could end up being their Achilles Heel as paper-based subscriptions continue to flag.
Well then, I guess we’ll have to use the local TV station web sites for news. Oh, wait… nevermind.
Police blotter journalism = uninformed public = Bush as President
God bless our free press… too bad the press doesn’t do heavy lifting anymore.
I think that O editors and reporters have understood for years that it’s going to be their Achilles hell, and have tried to wrest away more local control accordingly.
That’s a hard battle to fight when you’re just one spoke in the wheel, though…
And the worst part is that Oregon Live’s archives only go back a few weeks. Fortunately, the Multnomah County Library’s online archives go back at least a decade and can be accessed anywhere. You need a valid library card # to rifle through it though.
This site is much better.
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/
This site is much better.
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/