I have been reading Thisweek Online for quite some time and I even recently began to receive it at my home on a weekly basis (it just showed up, I didn’t ask for it). While the site itself was horrendous to look at, most of the content contained inside was good and being that they are the official newspaper of Apple Valley since at least 2000, I feel that I should be getting some decent local news from them — and I generally do.
Thisweek has been touting that on April 1st they would be releasing their updated site to be known as Thisweek Live. Prior to today, they showed a video clip claiming that it would include blogs, podcasts, etc. “Excited,” I fired up Thisweek Live this morning and wondered if what I was seeing was an April Fools joke. After surfing around on the new site for a while I realized that this was not an unfortunate April Fools joke and instead was a new site that they were now redirecting from Thisweek Online’s URL.
I surfed around on the site for a while and immediately sent the link to Aaron who pointed out something that I completely agree with, the fact that they have 14 RSS feeds that are all truncated so you would not only have to subscribe to them all but you would also have to click through from your RSS reader to their ad-filled site (you can happily get rid of the majority of them by blocking http://thisweeklive.com/images/banners/*) to read the article in its entirety. If you’re going to bother with RSS feeds, at least make them useful and remove the truncation, have one for the entire site which will include all sections and news types (sports, “this just in”, etc).
The news isn’t any more current than it was before with the last posts coming in on the old site and according to the Thisweek manager’s blog, they are looking to add more video, audio and the opportunity for the community to comment on what was written. While I applaud them for realizing the power of news websites and how news print is dead, I think that they have a long way to go before they can be comfortable with their current design.
I am lost and distracted whenever I click on another section, link or story. There is entirely too much going on in the various sidebars, widgets, and unnecessary drop down menus across the top that my mouse continuously seems to find w/o me even trying. The pictures are all resized inline causing them to look fuzzy and odd. While that would be fine for an amateur site, when you’re trying to run a business from this, I suggest spending the time to do it right. The more I look through it, the more I can’t wait for them to have a site-wide full RSS feed so I never have to visit their pages again.
After looking over their site and comparing it to what I have rebuilt here recently, what would you like to see lazylightning.org offer? I’m always up for suggestions, tips on new places to check out, and even story topics. Even though I can’t get to them all, like the e-mail I received about Rosemount’s downtown initiative to use imminent domain to tear down preexisting structures and build something new, I do take the time to read them and respond to them as best I can.
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April 1st, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Somebody got drunk on PHP ;)
April 1st, 2008 at 3:33 pm
jorn,
I’m drunk just trying to read it — Thisweek Drunk!
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:52 am
Bill, at least they got their office in the front page picture of their website……… saying that, Thisweek’s news stories seem to be written in such a way as to not upset the respective local governments that they serve. I believe this can be traced back to that great fraternal organization known as the Chamber of Commerce and the potential loss of advertising revenue. The larger papers seem to be more objective in their news reporting of suburban city govenments. I have found that certain Burnsville city government stories that should have been covered by Thisweek were covered only by the Strib and Pioneer Press.
Will
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:58 am
Will,
I have noticed that as well, like those referring to the Lakeville transit tax issues. Take for example this one, written for Apple Valley and then the one written for Lakeville.
What a bunch of shit.
June 16th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Bill,
Greetings, I’m Jeff Achen, the online editor for Thisweeklive.com and an Apple Valley resident. I’ve visited your blog here and there over the past year or so. I was previously the Apple Valley editor before taking over as online editor to launch the new site this spring. I’m glad to see we’re on your radar. We’re really trying to keep up with the times and I’m always eager to get feedback on the site. FYI, I’m also interested in potentially posting a “blogroll” for local bloggers like yourself so readers of our site who are interested in what local bloggers have to say can find them. What are your thoughts?
Concerning the RSS feed issue, I’ll get an RSS feed for the whole site up asap. Our reasoning behind the individual city RSS feeds was that folks would just want the news for their community, but you’re right, we should have a general feed for all our breaking news.
I appreciate your criticism of our new site and hope we can impress you with some of our innovations over the course of the next few months and years as we learn, grow and phase in new features. I assure you, we are committed to quality community journalism and web innovation. I hope you’ll find that now that we’ve been up and running for a while, we do have more daily postings and increasingly more professional content and design. I’d also like to hear what you think of our podcasts and video coverage. Constructive criticism is always welcome.
Cheers,
Jeff
June 16th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Jeff,
Thanks for posting! I probably should have contacted Thisweek Live directly with my comments, as I had originally planned on doing after a waiting period which was undetermined in advance by me which would allow kinks to be worked out, but I never got around to it; for that, my apologies.
If you want to put up a blogroll I wouldn’t be adverse to my site being listed there (as that’s what the Internet is all about) but you might want to think twice about your side of the coin as some of the content here, and elsewhere on the Internet, might not be exactly be inline with the mission of Thisweek. Especially when I rag on your bloggers and their content, the varying content of the different cities that you serve and whatever else my catch my fancy. I’m also known to be fucking crass but that’s a whole different topic all together ;-)
Good, I like the idea of an all encompassing feed. Keep the individual feeds for everyone who wants just their slice of the pie but for the rest of us news hounds I guess it would be best. Thanks for doing that, I really appreciate it.
I honestly haven’t even bothered with the video or podcasts because I just haven’t gotten around to watching it. If the articles are being written have related content in audio or video perhaps it would be advantageous for it to be right in the main text as links so that those of us that only read the story are more likely to follow through on clicking through. Just a thought…
Thanks again for reading,
Bill
June 16th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Jeff,
BTW, I just went to the site for the first time in quite some time (after following a nice post for the Burnsville graduation slideshow) and hovered over the “blogs” link in the left nav under “Interactive” and found that the sub menu was coming up, without any obviousness, in the middle of the content next to it. Looks like a bug that’s present in IE6 (that’s what we have at work) and Firefox. Perhaps it’s working correctly for Firefox on OS X?
Bill
June 16th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Bill,
Yeah, that’s actually us. We’re experimenting with all kinds of “phase II” things and pop out “suckerfish” menus was one option. We’ve been having trouble with a little gap in the pop out menus that makes it look like the text is hovering over the stories but not connected. I think we’re going to scratch that idea and just have the word “blog” hyperlinked to the full menu instead of having a pop out menu when you roll over it. It’s a delicate balance between annoying and convenient.
We need to do a better job of linking related content on our site, so you’re point about video and podcasting is well timed. We definitely put the videos with the appropriate stories already, but we have to start linking to the podcasts with more consistency. The Thisweek in Politics podcast is on iTunes now, so we’re hoping that gets us some listeners too who will become loyal subscribers.
As for the blogroll, we wouldn’t mind linking to bloggers regardless of content. We’re not afraid of criticism, especially if it makes us do our jobs better. Like you said, that’s the way the internet is supposed to work. The fact that we link to you or anyone else would not be any kind of endorsement of your content, it would just be there to let our community know what’s going on in the local online community and in some cases it would be dissenting voices to the local news and that’s okay. I know there are probably a lot of people would would like to know who’s blogging locally. I’ll be in touch when we start moving on that.
June 16th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Jeff,
Good luck and thanks.
Bill
June 16th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Id be up for a link, my blog isn’t as interesting as Bills, but it’s local and rarely has the “F” word. :)
Then again, I’d have to tone down my political commentary, especially on the Mayor whom I believe to be insane.
or not…
June 16th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Sank, it’s just as interesting — it’s just different content is all.
June 16th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Ah.. you get much better discussion and have more of an edge than I do.. makes for more interesting reading. More controversy…
June 18th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Jeff,
Looks like I just had my first full length text come through on a feed for this article. Much appreciated!
Bill
June 24th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Bill, unfortunately we won’t be able to continue to provide full text RSS feeds. Our advertising people are going nuts because eyeballs won’t be directed to our own news pages which is where the ads are. As I’m sure you realize, we rely solely on ad revenue since we’re a free distribution paper. Just one of those “catches” to “free” news. Hope you’ll still visit our news pages from time to time…
- Jeff
June 24th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Dont mean to hijack the thread, but Sank, can you post the link to your Blog someplace. I am sure others already have it, but I dont, and have not the skill nor patience to search for it.
On a side note, I do read “This Week”, primarily in print, but I do browse the online version as well. I appreciate the free paper. Thanks Jeff and co.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:40 am
I give it out freely except to my wife…
sank63.wordpress.com