Header graphic for print
Real Lawyers Have Blogs On the topic of the law, firm marketing, social media, & baseball

Law blogs and legal publications should heed mistakes of newspapers

The way advertising is presented in online newspaper sites is killing them.

Per Robert Niles at USC’s Online Journalism Review:

News publishers like to point to television, free news online, English literacy rates and slew of other reasons to explain their readership losses. But the contempt that newspapers show for their readers by burying their editorial content beneath their remaining advertising surely is not helping keep readers around.

He provides examples of the garbage we’re served up.

Everyday I check the website of the Pasadena Star-News. And every day, the front section of the website’s homepage is obscured by a pop-up widget urging me to take a survey about the site’s new design. Click the red ‘X’ in the corner to close the widget window, and the op-up appears every time you return to the page. (If you click the button declining to take the survey, the window disappears for the remainder of your session.)

If I register with the LA Times website, the Times insists on spamming me with commercial e-mails for products about which I do not care. If I opt-out of the e-mails, the Times cancels my website registration. (Which is why I don’t have a Times website registration anymore

  • http://www.onecle.com Ken Chan

    So, a self-proclaimed computer geek that teaches at USC can’t figure out how to register with the LAT website without getting spammed to death? [1] E-mail accounts are free nowadays. Sign-up for one that you use exclusively for registration purposes. [2] Set-up a filter for your e-mail messages if you cannot opt-out.

  • http://kevin.lexblog.com Kevin

    You’re making my point Ken. Why should newspapers feel so special that they set up ways that require action by readers that would not be needed on other news sites and blogs? It’ll be their demise.
    Hell, by the time it took me to register to comment on the SF Chronicle site, I just decided to forget it. Emailed the reporter complaining about their registration system. To his credit he asked what they should do to improve things. But for everyone that emails to complain, there’s 10 that’ll just never come back and tell others the Chronicle doesn’t get.