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http://blog.al.com/al/2012/05/alabama_me..._digi.html

Advance Publications is doing this nationwide to all of its publications. It was first announced yesterday with The Times Picayune.

All of these paper groups use a standardized web CMS, too, which is why they all now have that butt-ugly yellow theme. And that standardized CMS is why I'm certain this "web-based local journalism" will not work, because they still won't have local control over the websites. Al.com, which included Huntsville, Birmingham and Mobile papers, is run out of a centralized office that also controls the content of more than 50 other newspapers.

And it's not the beginning of the end. It's more like the middle-stages of the end.

I am reminded of a time in B'ham when during WWII there was a paper shortage (rationing) and every night at 6:00 "Miss Ann" read the daily comics over WSGN which was owned by the B'ham NEWS - The SGN stood for the "South's Greatest Newspaper". At that time we also had the B'ham Times, a Black newspaper, the B'ham Age-Herald and the B'ham Post. The latter two later merged to form the Post-Herald.

Another local radio station that was founded on the Auburn campus in the 1930s moved to B'ham with its call letters WAPI and carried all Auburn sports until the school put them out for bids.

(05-24-2012 11:44 AM)Grammar-Nazi Wrote:  Advance Publications is doing this nationwide to all of its publications. It was first announced yesterday with The Times Picayune.

All of these paper groups use a standardized web CMS, too, which is why they all now have that butt-ugly yellow theme. And that standardized CMS is why I'm certain this "web-based local journalism" will not work, because they still won't have local control over the websites. Al.com, which included Huntsville, Birmingham and Mobile papers, is run out of a centralized office that also controls the content of more than 50 other newspapers.

And it's not the beginning of the end. It's more like the middle-stages of the end.

It's not even a good CMS. Advance owns Conde Nast which owns Wired magazine and Ars Technica. Ars makes money, good money. I know a programmer who used to work for them. Now, their audience is of course different than the rednecks that troll al.com, but for a company with such a rich technological background to have such a horrendous system like al.com is a sad indictment on the Newhouse family. I predict al.com will be sold or out of business in 5 years.

We can hope.

(05-24-2012 08:20 PM)mixduptransistor Wrote:  

(05-24-2012 11:44 AM)Grammar-Nazi Wrote:  Advance Publications is doing this nationwide to all of its publications. It was first announced yesterday with The Times Picayune.

All of these paper groups use a standardized web CMS, too, which is why they all now have that butt-ugly yellow theme. And that standardized CMS is why I'm certain this "web-based local journalism" will not work, because they still won't have local control over the websites. Al.com, which included Huntsville, Birmingham and Mobile papers, is run out of a centralized office that also controls the content of more than 50 other newspapers.

And it's not the beginning of the end. It's more like the middle-stages of the end.

It's not even a good CMS. Advance owns Conde Nast which owns Wired magazine and Ars Technica. Ars makes money, good money. I know a programmer who used to work for them. Now, their audience is of course different than the rednecks that troll al.com, but for a company with such a rich technological background to have such a horrendous system like al.com is a sad indictment on the Newhouse family. I predict al.com will be sold or out of business in 5 years.

I wonder if that might be part of their intent (though admittedly, I have no clue, just that it sounds inconsistent based on the info you provided).

I think Advance just doesn't have good management. They also own Bright House Networks cable, you'd think that they would have done some kind of synergies with The News and al.com and BHN, but of course didn't. I think Advance just buys up the companies, lets them run themselves like they always did in the past, and just collect a check. Conde Nast was well run before they were bought, and obviously Advance's newspaper groups have never had any good sense when it comes to digital.

I just received my subscription renenwal notice in the mail and it is still asking the same $100 for 6 months as last time, even with them planning on going to a 3 day week for about 1/2 that period.

(05-24-2012 11:44 AM)Grammar-Nazi Wrote:  Advance Publications is doing this nationwide to all of its publications. It was first announced yesterday with The Times Picayune.

All of these paper groups use a standardized web CMS, too, which is why they all now have that butt-ugly yellow theme. And that standardized CMS is why I'm certain this "web-based local journalism" will not work, because they still won't have local control over the websites. Al.com, which included Huntsville, Birmingham and Mobile papers, is run out of a centralized office that also controls the content of more than 50 other newspapers.

And it's not the beginning of the end. It's more like the middle-stages of the end.

Apologies, but that doesn't make sense. If "local" staff (however "local" is defined, which could be the key) has no control over the sites then it's not a CMS but rather an aggregator. You and mixedup can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's more likely - based on my experience deploying CMS solutions - that the solution is robust enough for truly "boots-on-the-ground" local resources to create a unique experience but the vast majority of journalists/columnists working now in "traditional media" models heard the option mentioned in the first 5 minutes of presenting the site that they could just type their articles and upload them (i.e., the basics) and didn't listen to anything beyond that. From there it's up to management to tell the "content creators" (formerly known as journalists) what is expected. If they let them continue to upload articles to the default site then that's all they'll ever do.


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(06-01-2012 10:45 PM)blazr Wrote:  

(05-24-2012 11:44 AM)Grammar-Nazi Wrote:  Advance Publications is doing this nationwide to all of its publications. It was first announced yesterday with The Times Picayune.

All of these paper groups use a standardized web CMS, too, which is why they all now have that butt-ugly yellow theme. And that standardized CMS is why I'm certain this "web-based local journalism" will not work, because they still won't have local control over the websites. Al.com, which included Huntsville, Birmingham and Mobile papers, is run out of a centralized office that also controls the content of more than 50 other newspapers.

And it's not the beginning of the end. It's more like the middle-stages of the end.

Apologies, but that doesn't make sense. If "local" staff (however "local" is defined, which could be the key) has no control over the sites then it's not a CMS but rather an aggregator. You and mixedup can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's more likely - based on my experience deploying CMS solutions - that the solution is robust enough for truly "boots-on-the-ground" local resources to create a unique experience but the vast majority of journalists/columnists working now in "traditional media" models heard the option mentioned in the first 5 minutes of presenting the site that they could just type their articles and upload them (i.e., the basics) and didn't listen to anything beyond that. From there it's up to management to tell the "content creators" (formerly known as journalists) what is expected. If they let them continue to upload articles to the default site then that's all they'll ever do.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

From what I've read and gathered from both the al.com stories and what's come out of New Orleans, is that al.com is (from the beginning) a "separate" company from each of the three newspapers (though all four are owned by advance/newhouse). the newspapers create the content, but the al.com company gets to choose what goes up on the website and has editorial control. Most people would think that al.com is just the same folks as The Birmingham News.

This whole move just takes the editorial process of The News away and puts the journalists directly under the employment of al.com. I figured this was coming for a while because articles covering Auburn or the University of Alabama have been written by the same person for all three papers for a while. Just made sense that they'd keep squeezing out more and more people.

What worries me, though, is that al.com has shown itself to be nothing more than a highly publicized blog. The stories are not edited, and constantly have typos and grammatical errors. I won't claim to be some grand writer, but I also do not try to earn a living at it.

(06-02-2012 03:45 PM)mixduptransistor Wrote:  From what I've read and gathered from both the al.com stories and what's come out of New Orleans, is that al.com is (from the beginning) a "separate" company from each of the three newspapers (though all four are owned by advance/newhouse). the newspapers create the content, but the al.com company gets to choose what goes up on the website and has editorial control. Most people would think that al.com is just the same folks as The Birmingham News.

This whole move just takes the editorial process of The News away and puts the journalists directly under the employment of al.com. I figured this was coming for a while because articles covering Auburn or the University of Alabama have been written by the same person for all three papers for a while. Just made sense that they'd keep squeezing out more and more people.

What worries me, though, is that al.com has shown itself to be nothing more than a highly publicized blog. The stories are not edited, and constantly have typos and grammatical errors. I won't claim to be some grand writer, but I also do not try to earn a living at it.

If that's true then al.com is not even an aggregator...it's a portal (a la MyYahoo! or what MSN used to be...I can't even think of another company that still tries to make money with that model). That's just doomed from the start because the only reason people have or would use a portal is if it contained some high quality content that you can't get anywhere else (like Slate and Salon when they started). The only content the three papers might have that anyone would have an urgency to read is UAT and API beat articles, and it sounds like that's going to be watered down.