An analyst with the marketing research firm Forrester recently talked to the Custom Publishing Council about online content management strategies that publishers are using to achieve growth.
While the strategies look intelligent, closer examination of the analyst’s examples reveal that they still need a little work.
Did the Sun run out of gas?
Here’s one of the analyst’s examples: The Baltimore Sun integrated widgets next to their content about gas and oil-related content help readers find the cheapest gas prices in the region.
What a smart idea. Let’s see what other useful information we can get from the site. How about a topic that matters even more to people these days: jobs. Well, first we need to find articles about jobs or the economy, which requires searching through their ponderously indiscriminate “Topic Galleries” (Jo-Ann Stores Incorporated; Joachim, Joseph; ah, here we are, job layoffs). I see it’s a beta version. Note to Sun: it would help to bold important topics or otherwise organize the thing.
“Job layoffs” delivers 112 stories and a keyword cloud of related topics, not one of which is about how to get a job. Hey, maybe your reader is out of work. How about some help?
Well, silly reader, go to the classifieds. Back on the home page, in the left-hand column, where you’d expect them. But here again we’re confronted with a less than well-conceived set of topic headings. Fifteen categories. There are thousands of different job categories in this country. How did they come up with 15? One is “executive,” not too helpful.
So I clicked on “Part-time” (yes, it’s one of the 15) and found—ta da—a work-at-home assistant for an insurance company at $2,500 a month. That would take the sting out of losing your bank job. You can even apply online.
Better still, once you get into the system you can go to “Advanced Job Search,” which lets you enter key words and locations. There you discover that 741 job openings were posted in Baltimore within the past month. Maybe you won’t need to sell apples on the street corner after all.
Need a Grown-Up
The Sun’s strategy just needs a little work. The Washington Post’s strategy requires more serious thought. The Post is teaming with Sphere to show readers who is blogging about a particular writer’s article.
The example shown by Forrester was an op-ed column “Obama’s Brain Trust” by E.J. Dionne, Jr., published on November 25. One of the three entries under “Who’s blogging” isn’t a blog post at all, but a Washington Post article about the appointment of Timothy F. Geithner, President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, as Secretary of the Treasury. But it’s been given a new headline—hold your breath—“Wall Street JEW Tapped To Head Treasury.”
Monstrous. It’s from hypercrypton, a virulently anti-Semitic Website.
Clearly, Sphere is using an automatic feed to generate the “who’s blogging” feature. At least, I hope they are. But where are the grown-ups at the Post? Is the staff stretched too thin to moderate their Website?
What is the reader to think? That the Post regards anti-Semites as entitled to their say, right next to the eminent Mr. Dionne? Would the print version have run an ad paid for by the Ku Klux Klan next to an article about our President-elect?
Please, Post online editors, if you’re going to open the doors to all and sundry, at least run a disclaimer: The following contains vile, dishonest, and potentially dangerous subject matter. Reader discretion is advised.
