New Pro Jo Website Wet Behind The Ears
Jeff Derderian, GoLocalProv Media Critic
New Pro Jo Website Wet Behind The Ears
Really?
This is from the paper that had a storied tradition for decades - that used to have a morning and evening newspaper, which was saying something for a town this size.
This from a company like Belo that has unlimited resources and time and talent to make their new site something spectacular?
Yup.
The new Pro Jo.com or shall we say "providencejournal.com" was unveiled Monday complete with a new name.
That is the first problem.
Why on this earth would someone like The Providence Journal change the one part of their branding that has stuck with people when it comes to digital news and change the name and get away from projo.com. Who thinks of this stuff really?
Some guy in Texas? It does smell of the parent company reaching up from Texas - the guys at A.H. Belo.
Confusing Start
The new format seems confusing.
First off I don't understand if the new internet version is free forever. The "eEdition" is just free for a month, or if I buy the paper 7 days a week do I get the "free section" or do I get both meaning the "free section" and the "eEdition"? People I have spoke to so far agree that it is confusing in terms of what you can look at, for how long and which edition of the on-line version you have to pay for.
Costs too much to give it away
And people will have to pay for sure. The plan centers on charging people for some parts of the paper. The publisher in essence saying that the work they do each day that is generated by reporters, editors and photographers doesn't come cheap and they can't afford to allow Rhode Islanders and other people around the country and world to read their content for free. The paid content model has not worked well for other newspapers.
That is not a stop the presses moment.
No one with a clue would say - oh well newspapers are going great and making truck loads of cash so we really don't have to charge for content. In fairness to the Journal, it is the way many struggling papers are going. And the country's most respected newspaper - the New York Times - was forced to do it. It's clear this is a trend that is not going away.
According to Publisher Howard Sutton, the paid version is coming: "The eEdition, a paid-subscription tool that gives web visitors digital access to in-depth stories, photographs and advertisements that appear in print. The Journal is moving to the paid eEdition to protect the investment it makes every day in gathering and publishing Rhode Island news."
The problem may be is that there are so many other places to get news for free on the web these days that people who now want to charge you for clicking away on their site after giving it away for free for so long run a huge risk of driving more people away.
People who know much more about web design than me agree that the look of the new Pro Jo site is not so hot. One person explained this way. They said the look takes on a meaning of a generic blog site. Meaning it is a cookie cutter format where you plug in data and basically work around the same shell of a web site. I am not saying The Providence Journal did that, but the overall look could be faster to the eye, more engaging. Clicking around takes work and it seems clunky.
On a positive note, anything they have would be better than what they had. The old site was clearly outdated, hard to read, with small print. After working on this project for more than a year, many were expecting more of a "wow" moment.
Peeking at some of the comments you can see some early indications that not a lot of people are happy. People saying the two-punch combination of having to pay for some of the content and the overall new look has brought them to a point where the state's so called "paper of record" has lost its shine.