Posted January 21, 200817 yr I'm going to start this thread negatively--After having ths pent up for a while; here's why I dislike what these websites do for their respective cities: 1) The Negativity. I would consider cleveland.com and cincinnati.com major sources for local and out-of-town people's news and perspective on the cities. I have to admit, there have been a few headlines and user comments from cleveland.com that I have let get to me. If someone like me can get bothered who would kill for this city (But I would do it outside the city limits to not raise the homicides), I wonder how this site make the average person/suburbanite feel?? 2) The "comments" section on cleveland.com...................... 3) The News Aspect. In its own nature, news is generally negative in order to sell anyway. Personally, I would have no problem going to the pd of enquirer websites to keep up with news. Check out toronto.com for a kick-ass city website that is made for the people in the city (as well as visitors) and has an immensely positive feel. News is a few clicks away for those who want it (toronto star). Here's their mission statement http://www.toronto.com/article/500725. 4) Now I apologize if anyone here works for either site, but I would say the search function and general layout need improvement. My biggest complaint is that events listing are sporadic and sometimes wrong, and places are hard to find (and with occasional inaccurate information). 5) Stay out of the suburbs. Let PostivelyCleveland and the GCCVB handle that. MY SUGGESTIONS: Phase out the news stories: 1) Eliminate the ability for comments. 2) Create a separate tab along the top to link to news/the newspaper sites if desired. Once news is no longer the primary goal, it will be easy to focus on what else needs improved on the site. (More on local events, editorials, restaurants, sports, neighborhoods, history, attractions, etc) NOTE: I could not find a Columbus that compares to Cleveland or Cincinnati. The best I could find was www.experiencecolumbus.com/ (the tourist site) and downtowncolumbus.com/
January 21, 200817 yr I agree about the comment section on Cleveland.com-it should go. Nothing but negative energy. The couple times I have tried to post something that was even remotely pro Cleveland I was blasted. How much editorial control does cleveland.com really have? Isn't it for the most part posting PD news?The PD is a paper produced by suburinates, for suburbanites and cleveland.com reflects that.
January 21, 200817 yr In Youngstown, the official city website is: http://www.cityofyoungstownoh.org/ It's mostly a utilitarian site. Our major newspaper's website, http://www.vindy.com/ provides discussion forums which are a major source of highly concentrated negativity in the area. The Vindicator itself can also be biased, sometimes. This person dissects a recent story about an anonymous suburban man who was shot while seeking "female companionship" in the city.: http://youngstownmoxie.blogspot.com/2008/01/poland-man-shot-in-stomach-in.html
January 21, 200817 yr advancenet, the overlord of clev dot com, allows all that provacative junk so people reply. drives up the hits/pageviews or whatever you call it. i notice it's the same on all their city sites. i also suspect the moderators add to it themselves to keep it going. that's why a bunch of us gave up -- we abandoned the lakefront development forum and came over to this site.
January 23, 200817 yr advancenet, the overlord of clev dot com, allows all that provacative junk so people reply. drives up the hits/pageviews or whatever you call it... i also suspect the moderators add to it themselves to keep it going. Man that's frustrating. So new ownership may be the only way to change...I wonder the price tag for that change? A private large sum donation to give the website to different owners would do wonders for the public opinion of this city!
April 28, 200817 yr Well, cleveland.com is moving up in the world: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exclusive: Top 30 Newspaper Sites for March By Jennifer Saba Published: April 21, 2008 10:50 AM ET NEW YORK The Wall Street Journal online and the Web site of The Dallas Morning News made big gains in March with unique traffic. Both sites saw their traffic rise at least 90% compared to the same period a year ago. The data is the latest from Nielsen Online, which ranks for E&P the top 30 newspaper Web sites by monthly unique traffic. The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and Village Voice Media also pulled in some impressive gains in monthly uniques, up 89% and 139% respectively. Brand or Channel -- Unique Audience (000) -- % Change (YoY) NYTimes.com -- 18,869 --30% USATODAY.com -- 10,709 -- (-2%) washingtonpost.com -- 8,929 -- 13% Wall Street Journal Online -- 6,850 -- 99% LA Times -- 5,729 -- 22% New York Post -- 4,677 -- 31% Boston.com -- 4,184 -- (-1%) Chicago Tribune -- 3,825 -- 31% SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 3,793 -- (-10%) Daily News Online Edition -- 3,314 -- 54% Newsday -- 3,240 -- 44% Village Voice Media -- 2,814 -- 139% DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 2,727 -- 96% The Houston Chronicle -- 2,690 -- (-26%) International Herald Tribune -- 2,587 -- 33% Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 2,384 -- 28% Chicago Sun-Times -- 2,206 -- 8% The Politico -- 2,095 -- 58% Azcentral.com -- 2,016 -- (-4%) Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- 1,967 -- (-8%) tampabay.com -- 1,908 -- 6% Star Tribune -- 1,763 -- 18% MercuryNews.com -- 1,662 -- 36% Orlando Sentinel -- 1,642 -- (-31%) Philly.com -- 1,554 -- (-12%) Sun-Sentinel -- 1,524 -- (-9%) Detroit Free Press -- 1,484 -- 38% Cleveland.com -- 1,460 -- 89% MiamiHerald.com -- 1,451 -- (-17%) The San Diego Union-Tribune -- 1,432 -- (-19%) More below: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003791789
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