After 23 years of inactivity, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat re-launched today as an online-only publication. There are some slight stumbles out of the gate – as to be expected with a massive site-wide launch – and some even bigger miscues.
3 things the St. Louis Globe-Democrat is doing right
- Very clean, simple design. Contrasted with the abomination that we call the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website, the Globe-Democrat looks like a sterling example of the proper use/overuse of whitespace.
- They haven’t gotten anyone fired for posting an anonymous comment yet. A subtle dig at Kurt Greenbaum, the Post-Dispatch social media director who went a little too far… Also, there are only like 4 comments.
- Engaging social media tools to help promote/drive traffic/content. Aside from being a glorified blog, the Globe-Democrat has its content producers out pimping the site on Twitter and Facebook.
3 things the St. Louis Globe-Democrat is doing wrong
- Promotion. Outside of happening to follow the Globe-Democrat and some of their writers on Twitter, I haven’t seen anything about the site launch online in other locations. You’d think ad buys across other sites would be important, right? Hell, Facebook ads alone could drive hundreds of thousands of St. Louis eyeballs to the site on a relatively low budget. I’m not suggesting that they advertise on television or in a competing newspaper, but they’ve gotta get themselves out there somehow.
- Michelle Malkin & Pat Buchanan are columnists. Well, looks like the Globe-Democrat is still St. Louis’ right-leaning paper. But why launch a site with nationally syndicated columnists who self-publish a lot on blogs of their own? Why go to the Globe-Democrat to find content you likely already read elsewhere?
- No RSS Feeds at Launch. Uhhhh… how in the world do you launch a website – a news site, even – and not have RSS feeds active? That’s kind of a big deal, and a gross oversight on the web team’s part. In fact, I can’t believe that we’re on the verge of the year twenty-freakin’-ten and something as important as an RSS feed was overlooked.
Conclusion
While the Globe-Democrat is “back,” I’ll continue to get my news from the St. Louis Beacon, an online publication that gets it (and has fully functioning social media tools/active RSS feeds).
… and if you thought the racist comments on the Post-Dispatch were bad, just wait until the commenters come out to post on a right-leaning kissyface online ‘rag.
