The Globe rolled out a tweaked boston.com home page. It's quite something. At least on my monitor, the first screen now has six ads and just three stories, six random headlines and half a photo.
Also, for you bloggy types, they've ditched the daily link to a local blog post, but given more emphasis to the Your Town listing of Globe-specific mini-sites on communities that are not in the city whose name still sits in their masthead.
The Herald reports.
I wonder if that means they'll get rid of some of the ads (here's looking at you, tag.contextweb.com) that often slow down page loading?
Oh, yeah, the Times confirms the paper is for sale.
It's one thing to call Matsuzaka a fat, bloated SOB, but quite another to say he got that way by gorging on "dumplings and shumai." So, Pink Hat Hell reports, boston.com has changed the reference in a Tony Massarrotti post to "cheeseburgers."
Word out of boston.com is that they've opened up six more Your Town sites, in Hingham, Malden, Medford, Melrose, Norwell and Scituate. Still not a single "Your Neighborhood" site.
The Boston Globe may be cutting back local news coverage in the city, but out past 128, they've just added a new Your Town page.
Howard Owens, no longer GateHouse Media's online strategist, explains why GateHouse felt it had to sue the Times over boston.com's Your Town sites.
Take a look at boston.com's Theater Arts page this morning:
Via an alert reader who pays attention to the arts.
This report would make you think boston.com was having some issues - of the ten largest newspaper-based Web sites in the U.S. it was the only one to show a drop in traffic for December as compared to the year before.
But as a Globie graciously informs me (graciously because my original headline on this post was "As if the Globe didn't have enough problems"), the number is misleading: boston.com had unusually high traffic in December, 2007 because of that whole 19-0 Patriots/Super Bowl thing (remember those days?).
Dan Kennedy posts a copy of the Times' 100-page answer to the GateHouse link lawsuit, explains why both sides are wrong and should settle before they both manage to break the Internet.
How to walk on ice for people too stupid to figure it out for themselves.
I could stare at that first slide all day (or maybe I should, you know, work). The third slide is worthy of a Three Stooges short - and it packs quite an existential wallop, when you think about it (will the guy with the ice pick help out the guy trying to tuck in his chin as he falls backward on the ice, or will the hapless loser forever find himself falling, falling, falling?). The second slide, eh, it exists solely so you can get from the first slide to the third.
After finally reading GateHouse's complaint and editor Greg Reibman's affidavit, I'm not worried about finding some guy at my door with a document in a blue jacket (speaking of documents, here they all are).
At first, it looks like boston.com is on top of things this morning. They've got a nice new headline: "State of emergency issued due to damaging ice storm," and a photo and cutline to match. But click on the shiny headline, and what do you get? A short metro update from 6:55pm last night.
I suppose there's a reason boston.com has posted a GateHouse video about how great the Newton Tab is. Maybe it's the ads they've wrapped around it.
Here.
I'll take a closer look after work today, but in the meantime, if you spend any time with it, what do you think? Oops, one immediate comment: Your existing boston.com login doesn't work on the site, you have to create a new account. I understand the technical issues involved, but, still, why?
When building a new Web site from scratch, multiply the amount of time you expect the project to take by four, then add three more days to whatever deadline you come up with. That might explain why boston.com's Micro-nano-quark-sized-hyper-local Newton site is now scheduled to launch on Monday, instead of today.
GateHouse Media honcho Kirk Davis stops just short of threatening a lawsuit, but tells Boston Daily he'll be watching the Globe's impending Mega-micro-hyperlocal Newton site with two eagle eyes, to make sure boston.com doesn't try to stomp on his Wicked Local territory. He even gets off a good crack about the 800-pound gorilla now being more like a 200-pound gorilla, which is kind of funny in an ironic sort of way, coming from a guy whose own employer's stock is now worth like negative 3 cents a share, but whatever.
And here I sit, wondering if the issue is simply one of scale. I link to and quote from Wicked Local sites all the time. While my motives are pure as the driven snow, (of course!), I do make money from this site. But I'm no financial threat to GateHouse, whereas the Globe, yeah, a bit of a different issue. Still, Google makes money from putting ads next to GateHouse content on its pages, too.
Dan Kennedy analyzes the brewing battle in more detail.
After all, Clark knows all about weathering downtown.
Ed. note: Yeah, like I never make typos, but this is a good one, darnit.
Chuck Tanowitz reports boston.com is going to be launching a series of city- and town-specific Web sites built atop content from users and links to content from other sites and with lower ad rates in an attempt to bring in local advertisers.
The first one, in Newton, launches next week and "will be an aggregate of news and information from online sources around the city, whether that's from the Newton TAB, this site or any of the other blogs around town." The site will have an editor, responsible for selecting only the finest, choicest Newton items, a Wiki, a Newton specific calendar and forums.
As Chuck notes, there are some interesting intellectual property issues (you post something on the Wiki, who owns the copyright?) as well as some interesting business/community issues (the goal seems to be to offer a site with lower ad rates than boston.com, so what happens if it succeeds in driving Wicked Local out of business?). Also: Will boston.com realize Newton is a city rather than a town before the thing launches?
Adam Reilly has the details on the layoffs in circulation, marketing and advertising - and on an organizational shift involving boston.com.
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
