I was not hyperbolizing when I wrote to new N&R editor Jeff Gauger that his horrible website is killing his brand.

There is data to back up that assertion: the local daily is in last place in its online media market.

That's quite an accomplishment. Local papers usually lead their markets, and reporter Carol Marie Cropper told me she was shocked to find one running dead last.

Former N&R editor John Robinson is quoted re the online strategy that evidently was forced upon him: "I thought it was a terrible idea."

Changes are said to be coming to the N&R site, but that doesn't mean more newspaper content. 

More evidence of the local audience's discernment: Despite heavy promotion, WFMY's laughable DigTriad site ranks third out of four major media outlets, behind WXII and leader Fox8.

The News & Record should be the dominant online brand in Greensboro instead of an afterthought. The attempt shore up its print franchise at the expense of web development was a strategic blunder on a pretty grand scale and has put the paper at a real disadvantage in the business of the future.

I'd love to interview N&R publisher Robin Saul about this important local story.

UPDATE: Robert Reddick fwds what he describes as an unscientific survey he did of newspaper links in Google, which shows the N&R way, way behind the N&O and Charlotte O, and trailing even the Winston-Salem Journal by a substantial margin.

Comments

[polifrog]

Off topic:

Do any of you know how to make an RSS feed from, say, digitriad work in google reader? It won't "see" the feed. I've had the same problem with blueridgenow.

[Mad Dog]

Ed,

Maybe WFMY has been spending all of its time on News 2.0 HD (also laughable IMO)instead of Dig Triad?

MD

[Account Deleted]

Interesting to hear JR's thoughts because I've often wondered what happened to their excellent digital strategy circa 2005/06.

[David Hoggard]

Glad you linked to Roch's watch dogging of WFMY.

You say laughable, I say pitiful. It is as if they could give a crap about basic things like facts, plagiarism, spelling and grammar as long as Frank Mikens looks good on HD.

Valuing form over substance has never been so starkly illustrated.

[Billy Jones]

And what their advertisers are seemingly unaware of is that the online advertising they (N&R, WFMY/Dig Triad) sells them is actually detrimental to their advertisers' online marketing efforts.

I remember being furious with my former boss for spending ad dollars with WFMY and Dig Triad that undercut years of SEO efforts and took me over a year to undo. I was angry with him for not consulting with me first even though that was something he paid me to do and angry with them for selling him a bunch of crap designed to make his business dependent on them for online marketing.

Both companies are selling bad products.

[David Wharton]

Here's another WFMY howler. The reporter didn't know what neighborhood she was in (Aycock, not Fisher Park), and took the developer at his word that the neighborhood had stopped previous proposals. Not true. The neighborhood helped him get water/sewer hookups for one plan, which he then declined to build, and was split on a later one, for which he got approval from the Historic Commission (and declined to build).

[Fec]

The Wife's N&R ad rep walked in yesterday and asked how she felt about Go Triad being made into a section of Thursday's paper, rather than the current standalone mag which used to be distributed on racks. The Wife replied that she didn't like the idea at all and would probably spend her ad budget elsewhere.

[Craftyboro]

another slightly off topic question.

Can you get the News and Record Blogs to feed into Google Reader?

I got John Robinson's old editors feed but cannot seem to get the rest of them. I tend to seem them on FB and link to them there........

[Roch Smith, Jr.]

I started a long comment which I might post later, but I think I can summarize thusly: The problem is the people in charge. When the Digital Media Director is an M.B.A. whose achievements are in sales instead of someone who can recognize a malformed RSS feed and fix it in the 10 minutes it would take as opposed to the at least three weeks that it has been a problem, then he's not the right guy for the job and the guy who hired him probably doesn't have a clue either.

The N&R doesn't need better deciders, it needs capable doers.

[Roch Smith, Jr.]

"UPDATE: Robert Reddick fwds what he describes as an unscientific survey he did of newspaper links in Google, which shows the N&R way, way behind the N&O and Charlotte O, and trailing even the Winston-Salem Journal by a substantial margin."

I had started a post on my blog with some examples, but I'm not very enthusiastic about offering any help to the N&R lately. Still, if it helps to illustrate the incompetence of the decision makers there:

Take for example, this direct quote from the News & Record's important story of last week as it appeared in the print edition of the paper: "County Republican Chairman Al Bouldin said he’s spent the year since his election trying to mend fences with Conservatives for Guilford County." Search for it on the internet and there is only a single result, to where it is found on a local blog.

[Bill Yaner]

From the recent movie made on the bullying in schools, there's been quite a dialogue going on about it. I participated in the N&R editorial blog for about a year, but found the site dominated by a handful of bullies who took over every discussion with insults and abuse of anyone differing from their views.

Haven't been back for a while, but if that's still its level of "discussion", then it deserves to be largely ignored and rightly deemed irrelevant.

One man's opinion.

[Fec]

All public forums succumb to the bullies if not moderated.

I'm happy to remove notable articles from the GPV.

[polifrog]

Crafty:

Can you get the News and Record Blogs to feed into Google Reader?

I got John Robinson's old editors feed but cannot seem to get the rest of them. I tend to seem them on FB and link to them there........

That was my problem across many newspaper sites.

I generally use an "add link" button in my tool bar, but it frequently does not work.

To make matters worse Google has seen fit to remove the "add link" button from Google Reader.

The work around:

Copy the RSS feed link from the feed you want to follow then open Google Reader --> click (navigation) --> (Browse for stuff) --> (Search) then paste your link into the "Search by keyword" feed search blank.

The result will be a readable feed that will add to Google Reader.

Ridiculous.

Sorry for the distraction.

[Craftyboro]

Where is my IT department when I need it!

[Craftyboro]

Got it, thanks.

By the way they still have a link up to Ed Cone's N&R feed which has not had a post in over a year.......

[Craftyboro]

and John Robinson's Editors Blog is stuff up with his photo.

Seems like an accidental web presence.........

[Sue]

N+R feeds are easily viewable in Google Reader. An example:
http://blog.news-record.com/staff/offtherecord/index.xml

Just substitute the blog name (what comes after the slash). I think there used to be a "get the RSS" link somewhere, but I just looked at my Google Reader and there it was.

[Sue]

Well, I hate to be uncritical, but look at this page:
http://www.news-record.com/nr/rss

I did a search in the N+R site for "rss feed" and the link above has all the RSS feeds for their blogs. Don't know the last time it was updated, but there are a bunch there, including yours, Ed.

[polifrog]

The thing is that we were getting an "oops, there is no feed" page (Something to that effect) when entering the RSS feed links from some newspaper sites.

It's a google thing, not an N&R thing.

[Craftyboro]

Thanks Sue, I finally figured it all out. I was clicking to grab the feed and it kept erroring out.