Wednesday, July 22, 2009

KC Star now says it will ignore the readers who voted in online survey on comics....

Last month I noted the Kansas City Star was conducting an online poll for readers to vote on which comics should stay and which ones should be dropped.

The survey results are in, but the Star now says it will ignore the readers who logged on to register their opinion.

To show that it cares and listens to its customers, the Star recently conducted a poll to ask its loyal readers to provide feedback regarding their least-favorite comics.

However, according to a recent article by Readers' Representative Derek Donovan, the newspaper will now take that reader feedback and....ignore it.

"It (the poll) generated many thousands of responses. However, as I wrote before, the results of a group of volunteer respondents aren't really valid market research, and choosing the comics is in no way a democratic process," Donovan noted.

"...When will results of the survey be published? They won't, as with past surveys. They're just for editors' reference, and they aren't scientific anyway," he added.

Gee, almost makes you think the survey was a stunt designed to make readers think the paper cared about their opinion.
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11 comments:

Anonymous said...

A lot of papers do this. It empowers the reader, but doesn't do much good.

Anonymous said...

I don't read this to say they are ignoring the readers.

I read this to say that they are going to drop comics, and they will take the voters views into consideration. It asked "Which ones could you live without", not saying we will remove the ones you specifically choose for your paper (although that would be good service to print a custom comics page for each person).

Just like the All-Star balloting for MLB, the fans only count for a portion of it. Of course them choosing 10 that I get to pick from is editing to begin with.

Anonymous said...

Give us a break guys. We've laid off so many people that we can't generate enough in house, to keep our hit count where we want it.

We're not ignoring those who volunteered. We've already sold your names to 6 different targeted advertisers. We appreciate you, we were just never going to pay any attention to what you said in the first place.

You'll get over it.

Anonymous said...

No doubt the results would have been published if the poll came out the way the Red Star and Sickle wanted it to. Donovan is such a schmuck. He can write a column of useless nothingness in 500 words. That is such a Star asset.

Anonymous said...

I call that poll a hoax to generate hits. Desperate people do desperate things. Circling the drain is scary for iffy swimmers.

Anonymous said...

One of the higher ups favorite comic must have come in first or second place for the axe. They used to publish the results of these, so I find it amusing that they not only will disregard the results of this poll, but won't publish the results of it either.

Anonymous said...

Oh, come on. The paper asked for comments to get a better idea of what readers' favorite comics were. It said from the beginning that it would take the comments into account but wouldn't be bound by them -- which would be ridiculous, because it wasn't a scientifically valid poll and wasn't meant to be. Businesses seek customers' comments all the time. People who see a big bad conspiracy in this obviously need to get a life, get a hobby, and find something more important to be concerned about.

Anonymous said...

I don’t think the Scar is ignoring as many readers these days. Their descent to the bottom is stunning. I didn’t think anyone could be worst than Rhonda Lokeman, but heck, I was wrong. The whole affirmative action crew is worse. Sorry Rho, I made a snap judgment, but don’t come back. I might be force to reevaluate you again.

Anonymous said...

6:14 PM writes: “obviously need to get a life, get a hobby, and find something more important to be concerned about.”

Didn’t you get the memo? Arrogance is out. Telling other people what to do, while you may be a loser yourself is overreaching. Call the DNC for details, they have the skinny on their new course of action.

Anonymous said...

I would like to know how a phony ‘poll empowers the reader‘? (First post) What an odd statement. Where is my proof ///Sweetheart/// when I need him?

Anonymous said...

The KC Star ran this poll to fill out a page.

Once the Star changed the comment policy to save face,
they were forced to run useless polls to fill space.

A little poetry for the ankle-bitters from KC.