Since I
canceled my Democrat and Chronicle subscription, I'm looking for the best way to get information about my local suburban town online.
Here's how the D&C wants to meet my needs. They've got a page for
my town. This page has stories and some links. The
obituaries link goes to the generic (all-Rochester) D&C obits, so I still have to plow through a long list to see if any of my acquaintances have passed from this earthly realm. There's an event calendar on the page, but it's remarkably useless, since it doesn't have information about where the event is held. And, like the obits, when I click on an event, I'm transported to the regional D&C event calendar.
Of course, the D&C doesn't provide a
RSS feed for this content, so I have to bookmark the page and visit it regularly to be sure I'm up-to-date on happenings in my town. As usual with any interaction with the Smugtown Gazette, I'm constantly reminded that the D&C isn't here to meet my needs -- I'm here to meet their needs. In this case, they apparently need more page views, so they stubbornly refuse to create RSS feeds.
In sharp contrast, the Messenger-Post
has a page that might be a little less pretty, but is a lot more useful. First, it has a RSS feed so I can be informed when a story about my town is posted. More importantly, the M-P has reporters post regular round-up stories on deaths, events and the police blotter. That's all I need, and I'll be getting it from a paper that has a small fraction of the resources deployed by the D&C.
Comments
Post new comment