I should probably go for the jugular on this one.
Pondering the Richmond Times-Dispatch's new community weblogs this morning, I realized what I hate the most about the TD's website -- especially when I contrast it against the Washington Post and NYTimes sites. I hate the lack of heft in the layout of the pages, and I hate the overzealous use of red and blue.
It is, in fact, one of the things I have hated about the print version of the TD -- it always feels marginally less serious, less solid, less substantial than its big city cousins.
As for the paper's new community weblogs, I fall back to my go-to move -- with a few exceptions, there is no voice there. A bunch of regurgitated press releases does not a weblog make. I have a mild impulse to remind myself to give them a chance to get established, but you know what -- a news organization that has put a lot of thought and energy into launching a new product should get it right the first time. And the TD doesn't get it right. Not by a long shot.
Leave it to the Hanover Sheriff's Office to win the award for the most interesting post in the entire TD weblog world:
During rutting season (October through December), bucks move almost constantly in search of does. Deer are unpredictable.
In addition to six hundred new community weblogs, the TD has also launched a slew of new topical weblogs -- traffic, schools, gardening and cat shaving are all represented.
Over at the poorly named Book Bag Blog, Colleen Curran, who is marching in the TD's Bataan Blog March, shows her peeps what it means to have a frickin' voice. (Yes, the whole "writing with a voice" means something to me, dammit.)
Hey, John Murden, you can stop worrying now.
