MinnPost Is A Bit Underwhelming
I guess I’m not the only one who is a bit underwhelmed after the first week of MinnPost.com.
- Mark Glaser at MediaShift says MinnPost could be the next wave of journalism.
- The Center for Citizen Media blog is disappointed, saying "it has nearly zero to do with edge-in community journalism."
- Former Stribber Steve Yelvington (found via Minnesota Monitor) pans the site as "a mid-20th century product in a strange 21st century world, and I found it needlessly dull."
- A parody site, MinnToast.com, launched on the same day as MinnPost.com.
Maybe it’s unfair, but I guess I was expecting a bit more. Though as I said last week, the lineup of journalists is impressive but the site is painfully spare on journalism. Stories, people! As of this writing, these are the stories by section that the site currently features:
- Region: 7.
- World/Nation: 4.
- Politics: 1.
- Health/Science: 1.
- Business: 0.
- Arts: 2.
- Posts: 28. Clearly, here’s where the meat is. Posts are shorter, blog post-like news stories that adhere to traditional journalistic standards. Some of the posts on this page are also listed in other sections.
- Sports: 0.
- Multimedia: 2. Stories that include video. These stories are also listed in other sections.
- Community Voices: 4. These are citizen opinion pieces.
Let’s be generous and let them double count their stories: That’s a mere 49 stories over the course of the week. The stories are of the highest journalistic standards and writing of course, but if, as editor Joel Kramer has stated, they are targeting news junkies, shouldn’t there be more content?
I personally was looking forward to the sports coverage because I’m a sports nut. During a time when the Minnesota Vikings boast the likely rookie of the year in Adrian Peterson and a head coach who may not last the whole year, zero sports stories?
Of the three sports-related "posts" on the site, two are Jay Weiner stadium pieces and one is about the 1927 Yankees?!?
Jay Weiner is great at what he does, but I’ve read the stadium story a thousand times before. It’s not that stadium stories aren’t important, it’s just that they’re not sports stories–they’re politics stories.
Steve Yelvington‘s criticism is that MinnPost takes traditional journalism and puts it online without taking advantage of the medium.
I couldn’t agree more; innovative MinnPost is not. But I’d be fine with that if it sated this news junkie’s media addiction. I’m certainly going to give it a lot more time, but after a week, MinnPost is not the fix I was hoping for.
I feel like Minnpost is giving me a glimpse into the mind of an average baby boomer.
I feel like Minnpost is giving me a glimpse into the mind of an average baby boomer.
With something like 50 journalists on tap, how did they generate less than a story a person?
With something like 50 journalists on tap, how did they generate less than a story a person?
I don’t want to be too hard on MinnPost, and I imagine the spartan content is due at least in part to limited funds, but if the idea is to compete against the Strib and PiPress, they gotta do better than that.
I think shorter, more frequent stories might be better, given the way people consume news online, with maybe a weekly in-depth piece.
And, yeah, they’d do well to recruit some younger, more diverse reporters to give a better perspective.
Still, it’s only a week. I perfectly happy to wait and see. 🙂
I don’t want to be too hard on MinnPost, and I imagine the spartan content is due at least in part to limited funds, but if the idea is to compete against the Strib and PiPress, they gotta do better than that.
I think shorter, more frequent stories might be better, given the way people consume news online, with maybe a weekly in-depth piece.
And, yeah, they’d do well to recruit some younger, more diverse reporters to give a better perspective.
Still, it’s only a week. I perfectly happy to wait and see. 🙂
“The stories are of the highest journalistic standards and writing of course…” Thank you, David, for noting in passing that the journalism is very good. That was our goal. Re your complaint about amount of content, we are doing exactly what we said we would do — emphasize quality, not quantity. We said we would do two major local stories, one world/nation essay, one community voices pieces, and eight posts a day. That’s what we’re doing. The quality is high because we’re selective. It’s high because the writers are taking the time to produce good stories, rather than grinding out volume. And it’s high because we’re not reducing their stories to chicken nuggets. We do not intend to compete with the Strib or PiPress on quantity, only quality.
“The stories are of the highest journalistic standards and writing of course…” Thank you, David, for noting in passing that the journalism is very good. That was our goal. Re your complaint about amount of content, we are doing exactly what we said we would do — emphasize quality, not quantity. We said we would do two major local stories, one world/nation essay, one community voices pieces, and eight posts a day. That’s what we’re doing. The quality is high because we’re selective. It’s high because the writers are taking the time to produce good stories, rather than grinding out volume. And it’s high because we’re not reducing their stories to chicken nuggets. We do not intend to compete with the Strib or PiPress on quantity, only quality.
“The stories are of the highest journalistic standards and writing of course…” Thank you, David, for noting in passing that the journalism is very good. That was our goal. Re your complaint about amount of content, we are doing exactly what we said we would do — emphasize quality, not quantity. We said we would do two major local stories, one world/nation essay, one community voices pieces, and eight posts a day. That’s what we’re doing. The quality is high because we’re selective. It’s high because the writers are taking the time to produce good stories, rather than grinding out volume. And it’s high because we’re not reducing their stories to chicken nuggets. We do not intend to compete with the Strib or PiPress on quantity, only quality.
Joel:
Fair enough.
Maybe it’s a problem of expectation, then. The buildup to your launch SOUNDED like the site would be larger than what you’d planned. Maybe I was just pouring my hopes of regaining the coverage we’ve lost with the newspaper layoffs into a vessel that wasn’t intended to hold them all.
I guess it’s obvious that I WANT more, especially because the quality of the stories are so good.
Damned if you do, I guess. 🙂
Joel:
Fair enough.
Maybe it’s a problem of expectation, then. The buildup to your launch SOUNDED like the site would be larger than what you’d planned. Maybe I was just pouring my hopes of regaining the coverage we’ve lost with the newspaper layoffs into a vessel that wasn’t intended to hold them all.
I guess it’s obvious that I WANT more, especially because the quality of the stories are so good.
Damned if you do, I guess. 🙂
David, perhaps it was expectations, maybe it is a question of quality over quantity that lead you to leave the unsweetened blog post. However, Capecchi piece on Facebook in College was solid, Brauer’s piece on Coleman new PR consultant was superb writing.
You are right, sports fans need not stop by, they will spend a lot of time looking for the sports section.
Yelvington is spot on about not usign the medium. My two cents is I’d be all over every practical new media platform, Twitter groups for certain reporters. I’d have reporters use Utterz on the site to give insight into the making of the story.
I am not sure they should be competiting against the other two daily newspapers with web properties. That is less interesting to me than offering something different.
David, perhaps it was expectations, maybe it is a question of quality over quantity that lead you to leave the unsweetened blog post. However, Capecchi piece on Facebook in College was solid, Brauer’s piece on Coleman new PR consultant was superb writing.
You are right, sports fans need not stop by, they will spend a lot of time looking for the sports section.
Yelvington is spot on about not usign the medium. My two cents is I’d be all over every practical new media platform, Twitter groups for certain reporters. I’d have reporters use Utterz on the site to give insight into the making of the story.
I am not sure they should be competiting against the other two daily newspapers with web properties. That is less interesting to me than offering something different.