Wed
Jun 25 2014
10:04 am
Shopper Links
By: Sandra Clark

Our webmaster, 74, is bicycling across Virginia. Honest. So here are our links until we find her or she finds Wi-Fi.

Bean has produced 1,200 words of the best hard-news story we've ever had. And she's writing a follow-up for July 2.

Betty Bean: (link...)
Sandra Clark: (link...)
Marvin West: (link...)
Victor Ashe: (link...)
Larry Van Guilder: (link...)
Lynn Pitts: (link...)

Topics:
R. Neal's picture

So will Amy Broyles nominate

Submitted by R. Neal on Wed, 2014/06/25 - 10:14am.

So will Amy Broyles nominate Tony Norman to replace Indya?

R. Neal's picture

P.S. When you find your

Submitted by R. Neal on Wed, 2014/06/25 - 10:16am.

P.S. When you find your webmaster, could you ask her if there's any way she can archive these columns with a permanent link? :)

Bbeanster's picture

Not sure I understand your

Submitted by Bbeanster on Wed, 2014/06/25 - 10:25am.

Not sure I understand your Amy Broyles question. Or else my humor button's off today...

R. Neal's picture

Oh

Submitted by R. Neal on Wed, 2014/06/25 - 10:28am.
(in reply to Bbeanster)

Oh, duh, guess he'd have to move to another district. Never mind.

Anyway, County Commission will appoint a replacement for Indya, right? Wonder who it will be....

Sandra Clark's picture

Grumpy

Submitted by Sandra Clark on Wed, 2014/06/25 - 10:26am.

Randy -- When I've asked her that before, she says there's only so much functionality one can expect from a free website. She likes that word, functionality.

R. Neal's picture

This website is free and it

Submitted by R. Neal on Wed, 2014/06/25 - 10:27am.
(in reply to Sandra Clark)

This website is free and it has that functionality! :)

Hayduke's picture

There are a lot of good

Submitted by Hayduke on Wed, 2014/06/25 - 9:50pm.
(in reply to R. Neal)

There are a lot of good options for a better newspaper site with usable archives. Free Wordpress themes are plenty good enough, though I'd probably blow a whopping $50 on a nice Genesis 2.0 theme and drag The Shopper kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

The current site is really doing the community a disservice after all the work that goes into reporting to have everything disappear into an unsearchable and barely legible void a week later.

Let me know when your webmaster gets ready to retire.
edit: or let someone set it up and she can do the updates. It will have to be easier than the current system.

Somebody's picture

I'm trying to imagine why the

Submitted by Somebody on Thu, 2014/06/26 - 7:45am.
(in reply to Hayduke)

I'm trying to imagine why the shopper is limping along on a free website when Scripps is listed as owning the enterprise. That'd be like a GM subsidiary having to hitch rides wherever they go.

Sandra Clark's picture

Shhhhh

Submitted by Sandra Clark on Thu, 2014/06/26 - 8:59am.

We're owned but left alone. It's nice that way.

Limping toward the 20th, errrr 21st Century. -- s. clark

jbr's picture

Less is more. It seems The

Submitted by jbr on Thu, 2014/06/26 - 10:49am.

Less is more. It seems The Shopper and Metropulse are the closet things Knoxville has to News Channel 5 and The Tennessean. Not the volume, but the sort of stories on occasion.

Stick's picture

Channel 5 I'll give you, but

Submitted by Stick on Thu, 2014/06/26 - 11:25am.
(in reply to jbr)

Channel 5 I'll give you, but the Tennessean is simply awful. I had a chance to sit down with the printed version recently over a three day period, and I was shocked how far it had fallen below an already low bar.

Sandra Clark's picture

Love you guys

Submitted by Sandra Clark on Thu, 2014/06/26 - 11:33am.

Plenty of criticism for The Tennessean and KNS for declining quality ... and nobody likes my website -- even though we're uploading the whole paper, news, ads, graphics, free and timely until this week's unfortunate woodsy bicycling incident.

You want it free, now and unfiltered.

Try that at Starbucks.

Stick's picture

I said nothing about the

Submitted by Stick on Thu, 2014/06/26 - 12:56pm.
(in reply to Sandra Clark)

I said nothing about the quality of the Shopper, and I appreciate what you do. As for News 5, they're facing the issue of declining revenue in an increasingly fragmented media landscape like everybody else. However, their response has been to distinguish themselves and attract eyeballs by practicing real investigative journalism whereas the Tennessean has devolved into celebrity culture and stenography with predictable results.

Min's picture

Yup.

Submitted by Min on Thu, 2014/06/26 - 4:51pm.
(in reply to Stick)

This x 1000.

Hayduke's picture

If I wasn't a fan of the

Submitted by Hayduke on Thu, 2014/06/26 - 2:24pm.
(in reply to Sandra Clark)

If I wasn't a fan of the content I wouldn't be so frustrated with the user-hostile site. I really hate that I can't find or link to an old article or search for anything.

A new site would:

  • Attract a lot more readers from search engine traffic
  • Keep the readers on the site to look at more articles and ads
  • Not require any filtering.
  • Could still link to the old full-page view system.
  • Let you upload as much history as you want and generate ad revenue on all those pageviews. And you'd be showing current advertisements with it instead of expired coupons and long-gone sales.
  • De-skill the process so editors, writers, or whoever you wanted to give permission could post articles, ads, or whatever without being dependent on the one person who knows how.
  • Work on mobile devices.
  • Be up and running and better than what you have now in about a day.

You could do all that with free software, but I'd blow the extra $33.71 on a theme like this:
(link...)

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