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More fun with the Oregonian

by Steve, October 2nd, 2009

A couple years back, the Oregonian’s hackneyed Web front-end, OregonLive.com, started experimenting with a local implementation of Reddit, a link-sharing social network. It never gained critical mass, and it was easy to game the system to get (and keep) links on the front page of OregonLive.

Hey, we had our juvenile fun, but it was to a point: the Oregonian simply doesn’t have a clue how to operate in the 21st century new media world.

OregonLive made a number of tweaks to their Reddit system, including moving the links to the very bottom of the front page and giving up on hosting Oregon Reddit (it’s just a category at Reddit.com now). We can still have a little fun with them.
olive-reddit

They (obviously) still don’t get new media at the Oregonian (they had a daily podcast for a couple months starting in August 2008, which petered out last March), but that’s just a critique of their delivery.

The real knock on the O is the same knock on pretty much any old school daily: their pretension of objectivity makes them shills for the status quo.

Journalist, author and pundit Dan Savage had some fun recently with what he calls a “drug war” story in the Oregonian, and gave Oregonian reporter Bryan Denson the honor of “Stupid Fucking Credulous Hack of the Day” not once, but twice in the same week.

I thought that story deserved a link on the front page of OregonLive, and voila!

Dan also published a long and humorous e-mail exchange with Denson, which is an object lesson in the insularity of reporters at the O. (Here’s Savage’s Wikipedia page, just for future reference, Bryan.)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 8:47 am and is filed under Humor, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Responses to “More fun with the Oregonian”

  1. Comment from McAngryPants:
    October 2nd, 2009 at 1:04 pm

    wow. Just wow. For years I kept wondering when the O would get their www shit together. I can almost picture in my mind’s eye the room filled with 50 year old fat men leading the O’s web efforts. Bet they wear short-sleeved dress shirts. *shudder* I really do with OregonLive.com wasn’t such a bag of garbage. It has had (and arguably ‘has’) the chance to be something great.

  2. Comment from Steve:
    October 2nd, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    The Oregonian has about a zero chance of doing something great on the Web as long as Newhouse keeps them in the Advance Internet straitjacket. (Remember, the 50-year-olds at the O have very little to do with OregonLive.com.)

    I’ve come to accept their crappy Web presence, but that’s the least of their problems. Their uncritical coziness with the powers-that-be is what ultimately makes them irrelevant in the new media landscape.

  3. Comment from Steve:
    October 2nd, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    (Oh, and sorry about yer Leafs, McAngry!)

  4. Comment from Wacky Mommy:
    October 3rd, 2009 at 9:32 am

    Pretty funny posts. Ah, they’re such a mess, it’s almost enough to make a formerly disgruntled newsroom clerk feel sorry for em.

  5. Comment from Wacky Mommy:
    October 3rd, 2009 at 9:32 am

    Almost.

  6. Comment from McAngryPants:
    October 4th, 2009 at 6:52 pm

    Gonna be rough in a couple of weeks when I drive up to BC to watch them play the Canucks. *sigh* ANYONE can be a fan of a winning team. pfft!