Caveat Lector - Politics, Government and the Free Press – by Mark B. Evans

by Mark B. Evans on Jun.01, 2009, under Editor's Blog, TucsonCitizen.com

Why blog at TucsonCitizen.com?

What is TucsonCitizen.com?
The site is a collection of blogs and bloggers who post news, information, opinion and more on the site
everyday. Blogs will range from politics to UA sports, and from knitting to star gazing.

What’s in it for you?
• Readers. Thousands of people a day come to TucsonCitizen.com. Instead of a few hundred or a few thousand page views a week, you will have the potential to generate tens or even hundreds of thousands. The reach and impact of what you write and post will exponentially increase. And isn’t that the point?
If you blog because you want to inform, you will inform more people under the TucsonCitizen.com umbrella than out in the cybersphere by yourself.

• Marketing. Most blogs stand alone in the cybersphere, employing various means to attract attention, most usually relying on Google keyword searches, RSS feeds and word-of-mouth. TucsonCitizen.com will market the site to Tucson using one of the most powerful marketing tools in the city – Tucson Newspapers – providing exposure that few bloggers can afford on their own.

• Site support. All bloggers have to learn to be a bit of a web monkey to make their blogs look good. Most, however, quickly reach their Peter Principle after learning how to upload photos and video. The web is a much more powerful broadcast medium than that. We can help you podcast, vodcast, live stream newsmaker interviews, create multimedia photo slideshows, create interactive graphics, find and use government data and much more. If you have a cool idea for your blog, we can help you get it on your page.

• Compensation potential. It is the intent of TucsonCitizen.com to return a percentage of the site’s advertising profits to its bloggers. Details on how and when that will occur will be available soon.

What’s in it for Gannett and Tucson Newspapers?

• Readers. TucsonCitizen.com will be a place where Tucson’s citizens can go to get information, perspective, opinion and advice that they can’t find anywhere else. We are excited about the potential the new TucsonCitizen. com has in giving Tucson’s citizens a voice in their government and their lifestyles. If you have something to say, we can deliver you an audience.

If you have a blog and are interested in what we can do for you, or you want to start a blog for TucsonCitizen.com, e-mail site Editor Mark B. Evans at mevans@tucsoncitizen.com, or call 573-4561.


22 Comments for this entry

  • RADC MAXIMUS
    June 1st, 2009 on 8:02 pm

    This is way too involved to post a simple comment, I suggest you open the blogs to direct comment and reply, similar to the old website, or face oblivion. Too bad. See Ya. I’ll try back later, in a week or so.

  • ppdd
    June 1st, 2009 on 8:38 pm

    It shouldn’t be hard to post a comment – it’s running WordPress, which powers millions of blogs. If you can’t handle it, maybe you didn’t have much to say.

  • RADC MAXIMUS
    June 1st, 2009 on 8:45 pm

    Thanks Pud- I’ll keep that in mind. I like responding DIRECTLY to fools and idiots. Thanks again.

  • ppdd
    June 1st, 2009 on 9:17 pm

    I see the level of discourse had instantly returned to the norm.

    I assume this is the minimal setup for the site – I run the exact same software, and there is more you can do with it. I’m guessing they are just starting. There should be a registration system that will allow you to bypass the CAPTCHA.

  • RADC MAXIMUS
    June 1st, 2009 on 10:47 pm

    Thanks pud , let’s hope so.

  • RADC MAXIMUS
    June 1st, 2009 on 11:24 pm

    The content of this site will degrade proportionally to the access to the site. Just an observation.

  • LionelB
    June 2nd, 2009 on 3:20 am

    If this is what it’s going to be, I will try elsewhere.

  • Mom
    June 2nd, 2009 on 3:38 am

    Horrifying. Simply horrifying.

    By the way, the reason for the captcha is that they chose a vehicle (wordpress) that attracts the lowest of the automated spam machines. Without captcha, all you’d see is a hundred ads for Viagra, Casinos and Auto insurance.

    Not to knock wordpress. Intent is to knock the morons who decided it would be a good idea to deconstruct the TNI run site without attempting to find the talent or the money to build a professional looking site. But then again, they aren’t going to do that with the writing, so why bother with the blog?

  • RH
    June 2nd, 2009 on 8:09 am

    I willl still visit and read, since reading is more of my forte anyway, am not hung up on ranting and raving as those on the right wing/104.1 FM fans are, since I never need any ego stroking as they do, of course they will not like having to use this format for most part but they can still tune to 104.1 FM or call into Jon Justice and get him to stroke their ego, and listen to their whining, crying about everything under the sun!

  • Bubba
    June 2nd, 2009 on 8:25 am

    This is a gigantic failure.

  • Art Jacobson
    June 2nd, 2009 on 8:26 am

    I’m surprised by the tone of these comments. This is a Beta site that will be worked on for the next month and I’m willing to cut the IT guys some slack. This can be an interesting and influential site if we don’t snark it to death from the get-go

    My own preference has always been to require commenters to sign when commenting.

    Art Jacobson

  • Ado
    June 2nd, 2009 on 8:35 am

    Hey, what happened to the old format and old articles and comments?

    This format really sucks. Where is my old avatar? What the devil are you guys trying to accomplish? This is neither user friendly nor desirable. Are you really trying your level best to drive people away? First you guys made folks not want to buy your hard copy newspaper with your support of every liberal cause that happened to dance across the news desk, now you are doing your damnedest to make your online forum irrelevant and obsolete. Want to have a look at how a newspaper runs a forum, I suggest you check out:

    http://www.mLive.com/forums

    Absent a usable format(and this sure is not), I’m not inclines to hang around here much longer. There are simply too many much better places to go on the web…

  • Ado
    June 2nd, 2009 on 8:42 am

    “By the way, the reason for the captcha is that they chose a vehicle (wordpress) that attracts the lowest of the automated spam machines. Without captcha, all you’d see is a hundred ads for Viagra, Casinos and Auto insurance.”

    Huh? What are you talking about for goodness sake? The old format did *NOT* have spam problems. I never was bombarded with advertising that was not part of any newspaper’s normal income from ad sales. The old saying that comes to mind is:

    “IF IT AIN”T BROKE, DON”T TRY TO FIX IT.”

    • Mom
      June 2nd, 2009 on 12:44 pm

      “The old format did *NOT* have spam problems. I never was bombarded with advertising that was not part of any newspaper’s normal income from ad sales. The old saying that comes to mind is:

      “IF IT AIN”T BROKE, DON”T TRY TO FIX IT.””

      … was my point exactly. This new format (hosted by Wordpress.org) is a spam magnet. I have a wordpress blog which I’ve nearly abandoned because of all of the spam you have to filter through. In order to be able to put “instant” comments on the board, you have to use captcha to foil spam machines… on formats like wordpress.

      The old format was great, but it was owned by TNI. Which the Citizen is probably not going to be a part of anymore (anyone have details?) because they are no longer print based.

      Mark Evans et al took the easy and cheap way out and put up a ready made blog template. It takes about 30 minutes and requires NO tech support (read: requires no skilled persons because it doesn’t get alot better or different than this).

      It was not only broke, it’s dead. If there is any mercy, the courts will take this experiment and crush it, forcing Gannet to sell either to someone willing to put out a real paper or someone who knows how to put out a professional looking website.

      The monkeys have taken over the asylum.

  • SizzlinSaguaro
    June 2nd, 2009 on 9:02 am

    Ado, no, that style of forum was state of the art in 1996. It’s ugly. busy and very complicated to navigate. Not to say that this default wordpress theme has something to be desired, but accroding to here http://tucsoncitizen.com/mark-evans/2009/06/01/this-is-a-beta-site-please-be-patient/ a new site is being created.

    • Mom
      June 2nd, 2009 on 12:53 pm

      Either you, or Mark Evans, misunderstand the word Beta if you are implying that the next version will be very much different. If it is, then this is not Beta but rather a placeholder (please let that be so).

      The short explanation of a Beta site is that it’s a site that’s been released to clients for testing before its official release. It is the prototype of what is going to be released to the public. Users provide feedback, so that any issues, dislikes, suggestions can be reported to the developers and fixed.

      Which is what we’re doing.

      The implication of Beta in the header is that this Wordpress theme is being tinkered with at the CSS level and the permanent site should look something like this in the end if the tinkerers are satisfied with the Beta comments.

      I say tinkerers, by the way, because this is not the world of web designers. It is the world of web hacks (not hackers, hacks). Pop a template up, tinker with widgets and voila! A fake website.

      Grumble grumble grumble…..

  • mark-evans
    June 2nd, 2009 on 1:11 pm

    This is day two of a long process to redesign the site. Creating a very basic Wordpress site was the fastest way to get going. If we could have thought of a better name than “beta” we would have called it that. The new site will look nothing like this one. The home page will have a whole new look. Each blogger will have the ability to make their page look however they want. On the front end, Ryn and I are blogging and signing up bloggers, learning how to use some of the 200-plus Wordpress plugins and add ons, and teaching new bloggers how to blog and use the WP features. On the backend, the IT and online guys are not only trying to debug the temporary site and build the new site, but making sure the old site still works because there are thousands of archived stories there that are still getting clicks. All the while, they still have to oversee the Tucson.com and azstarnet.com web sites.
    So, while it would be great if we could get this done in a day, it’s a large undertaking and we’re working on it as fast as we can.
    That’s why a wrote a post explaining what we’re doing and asking for patience. I’m told patience is a virtue. Give it a try.

  • nobubba
    June 2nd, 2009 on 10:20 pm

    I couldn’t find a “Contact Us” link so this must be the place. You have a bad Classified link in the header. Needs the extra “http//” removed. Beta on, brothers (and sisters.) Best of luck with the new project.

  • Glock&Spiel
    June 3rd, 2009 on 4:59 pm

    TC will need to step up it’s game. This won’t quite cut it I’m afraid.

  • Joel
    June 11th, 2009 on 7:28 pm

    Hello. I see the tea-baggers in their clean white gloves and perfect smiles, the anti-downtown (I can’t get my butt off of the couch) crowd and the arts mob has found a happy home. What about the rest of Tucson? Are you going to open the gates or just keep a few voices going forever like broken records?

  • timo
    July 7th, 2009 on 10:59 am

    Kuddos to tucsoncitizen.com!  I’m elated that our beloved Tucson Citizen will continue as an electronic townhall to share ideas of our unique region.  Also, thank you Gannett Corp. for keeping it alive. 
     

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