Reading the op-ed on blogs today in the O and the commentary on it at BlueOregon.com got me thinking about why I spend so much more time at places like Daily Kos or the late lamented Communique than I do at places like OregonLive.com or KGW.com. The sites attached to local conventional media just don't do much for me; I've even stopped getting weather from them, preferring the ForecastFox plug-in for my browser. (Full disclosure: OregonLive.com declined to hire me at one point, but that actually worked out really well for me so no hard feelings. Best thing all round.)
We all know poor OregonLive's problem--they're hobbled by corporate policy set thousands of miles away. But what I want to know is this: Is it possible for any traditional media concern to run a decent website, or is it just too far removed from the one-to-many model? Who locally does the best job? My general, vague, feeling about it is that traditional media don't have any real sense of how to use the web, and I've seen no evidence to contradict that feeling.
I've fired up the aggregator. There are eight local outlet feeds in it now, three of them from OPB. If I'm missing one, let me know. RSS is technologically a really simple thing to do. If you're running a news site, you should have a feed, period.
Lynn Siprelle * Former Innie * OMI Coordinator