You might notice something different about the Advertiser today, and I'm not talking about the splash involving something other than knife crime.
No, I'm talking about the shape - it's an inch or so longer and wider than it used to be, thanks to our move to a new printer this week.
It may seem a minor cosmetic change, but it does actually make quite a lot of difference to the legibility and layout.
Another thing we've been doing differently for the past couple of weeks is the letters page.
It's no secret that the number of people emailing or writing to newspapers has dropped and the number of people leaving comments on their websites instead has soared.
Rather than fill the letters page with political point-scoring or charity appeals, we've started to take the best of the web comments and run those in-paper instead.
Believe you me, you don't want to wade through all the contributions we receive on thisiscroydontoday, but there are some intelligent posts buried amongst the insults and in-fighting and it makes sense to highlight those.
Talking of which, we've had some fun and games with the web comments this week.
Although it's not particuarly good business practice to criticise your readers, nobody pays to look at our website so I don't feel the same obligation to be polite -and we've got some right oddballs contributing at the moment.
I can't believe that, in this day and age, people still think you can bash out comments anonymously.
People's IP addresses allow us to see exactly which computer they are using to post from, and this week we had one chap conducting a conversation with himself using three different names. Yes, I mean you 'Angry, Purley.'
Finally for now, Caterham reporter Brian Haran is buying everyone drinks tonight to celebrate his 50th birthday (readers included.)
In an attempt to sugarcoat this unwelcome milestone, he's pointed out that he shares his birthday with Modfather Paul Weller. However, a quick Google check turns out he actually shares it with soft rocker Billy Joel. An easy mistake to make.
2 comments:
Abandoning the letters page is a pity though I suppose it fits with the paper's repositioning to the lower end of the market.
There is more to it than political point scoring and charity appeals. Now there is nowhere to comment about something not previously covered in a news story, and of course many are repelled by the farmyard behaviour of the majority who inhabit the web site and decline to become involved knowing it means being subjected a tidal wave of abuse.
A decently written and well reasoned letter is likely to be read and taken notice of by those who matter, and may well generate a response. A one sentence web comment will be dismissed as a rant.
Sorry Ian but I do wonder what purpose the print version of the Advertiser is intended to serve any more, and so often now do I think about canceling my order.
Nick
It's not a question of abandoning the letters pages - well-written contributions will, of course, still be used. It's just a fact that the art of letter-writing is dying out and paper's are certainly not immune. If there are decent contributions on the website, I'd rather use these than just fill space with the political point-scoring ones I mentioned.
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