So the Free Press came out w/ their 2.0 production which featured a revamp of the online and print editions. You may recall some of my earlier rants about this rag generally centered around poor content, grammar, and spelling. Layout was never their biggest problem. So what do you do when you have a problem w/ spellcheck? Revamp it all and distract readers w/ an abundance of colored photos! Oh yeah, and charge for it! The online site now features a format similar to the New York Times where readers get a certain amount of free articles and then must pay for access. The big difference of course is that the Times is a world class paper and the Free Press is a pile of shit. Why would you pay to read AP stories? If I need to know about the making of a cocoa Baron in Winooski I can just go to the WCAX site which I will now do. I like reading local stories online but I am not so interested that I would pay for them. There are other free sites just as good and frankly & Days had made strides in journalistic integrity that make them a true competitor both online and in print locally.
So how about the print edition? Well the new "smaller format" is like a poor man's New York Post. And by poor man I mean given up on the concept of currency like a Tibetan monk. It is closer to the weekend circular I get from some local Charlotte/Shelburne group. Plus my local paper has a better sports section. I read the letter from the editor Jim Fogler and I wanted to karate chop him. So The selling points for the new paper are smaller paper that will be easier to handle and use less trees? It may be easier to handle which is questionable but if you have the same amount of content you would not use any less paper would you? Unless the type was smaller? Plus the addition of color must create the need for more ink and different ink delivery systems which are generally difficult to recycle no? Well, at least there is step 2 where they add more content to the Mon-Wed papers. WTF?!?! Why would you add more in the middle of the week to the print edition? If you are like most people you work during the week and get most of your news via the internet. Print content is saved for the weekend when you want to get away from the computer and have the time to sit down and read a paper, hence the very bulky weekend editions of the NY Times and Boston Globe among others. So the Free Press looked at history and went the other direction... smart! Point 3, "...renewing our commitment to in-depth local news coverage.". The first 12 articles in the paper are pulled from the AP or the ultimate news rag the USA Today! You have to get to page 12A to sift through ads and AP articles before finally getting to a local story. That is commitment! Of the actual articles there is as always some good and some pretty silly. One article about Facebook ads has this gem... ""Just like ROI, impact is difficult to measure in the social media realm, unless you have taken the time upfront to think about what impact and ROI mean to you." That was an actual article in the business section, or the Innovate section, the business page is only 1 page, but I digress. It was not an opinion piece or letter to the editor. It was a real article I assume they paid for. That is one of the dumbest sentences I have ever read. Unless you think upfront about what ROI and impact mean to you? Are you f*ing serious? If you are an investor who has not thought about "impact" and or "ROI" (return on investment) before making said investment than you are a train wreck and I have a $2 million dollar kazoo I would like to sell you. And ROI does not mean different things to different people. You give your money to a borrower as an investment and you hope that that money is repaid with some monetary upside. What is returned to you is the "return" and that return is in the form of currency not hopes and dreams or unicorn smiles unless you are an idiot.
Again, this is our local history being written. Our paper of record and a reflection of us. That is why I am so disappointed when this publication repeatedly falls on its face. 2 thumbs down... I will be switching to the Rutland Herald or the Valley News.
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