Comments on: Thisweek Live is a Big Bust

By: Sank

Sank — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:40:40 +0000

I give it out freely except to my wife…

sank63.wordpress.com

By: Chad

Chad — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:01:20 +0000

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.

By: Jeff Achen

Jeff Achen — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:43:52 +0000

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

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:37:00 +0000

Jeff,

Looks like I just had my first full length text come through on a feed for this article. Much appreciated!

Bill

By: Sank

Sank — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:53:57 +0000

Ah.. you get much better discussion and have more of an edge than I do.. makes for more interesting reading. More controversy…

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:22:45 +0000

Sank, it’s just as interesting — it’s just different content is all.

By: Sank

Sank — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:20:01 +0000

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…

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:46:45 +0000

Jeff,

Good luck and thanks.

Bill

By: Jeff Achen

Jeff Achen — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:29:02 +0000

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.

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:09:02 +0000

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