Wednesday, June 4, 2008

McClatchy's online web sites lagging behind the competition... Sacramento Bee rated D-

Douglas A. McIntyre ranked the top 25 newspaper web sites. No McClatchy newspaper makes the list until way down at #23, where you find the Sacramento Bee. Here is what McIntyre said about the Bee's site:
Sacbee.com is a very poor attempt to get and keep an online audience. The amount of news on the homepage is extremely modest. That is followed by unrelated videos and blogs. Local news is not organized in any way, leaving the reader to fend for himself. The very small amount of available content carries over to almost all of the sections. The use of interactive features and multimedia tools to get and hold the reader is limited and poorly done. The site does show headlines for the last several days, which is useful. This may be the worst attempt to create an online version of a newspaper that 24/7 found. Grade D-
I'd like to see the ranking include total hits, because that is the test of whether your product appeals to readers.
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(For some reason I didn't see #24 and #25 in McIntyre's list.)