In reviewing the printed edition of the May 6, 2011, Corvallis Gazette-Times we found the focus to be too much on national news and not enough on local news.
The front page had one article of global news, nationwide news and a local news story. The front page photographs while not exciting, were nicely done. The captions were informative. The use of color in the front page snippets that directed you to other stories in the paper was nice.
There are six main sections; Front page, Community & Northwest, Business, Opinion, Sports, and Classified. This paper is very standardized nothing out of the ordinary.
The second and third pages of the newspaper were organized with each page having nationwide and local news. There was not a great deal of annoying advertisements, which was pleasing. We liked that there was a "Crime Watch," area inside of the first page. Included was the daily comics and Sudoku puzzle, enjoyed by many.
On page five, the "In Business Section" was a nice color photo showing a new local business.
The three sections that were allowed color photos were the first page, In Business, and Sports section. While there wasn't a huge amount of photos, the ones displayed seemed appropriate to the story. We would have like to see more cropped up close shots instead of overall pictures.
Throughout the paper there were short and long well written articles. We felt the long articles could have trimmed some of the context and placed it in an "At a Glance."
A total of 20 advertisements were placed in the paper, not including the basic classified "make money type of ads." The advertisements were all in black and not very impressive. The ads varied from Psychic Reader, Permanent Makeup, National Guard, Insurance, Fitness center, Good Samaritan, to Landscaping and only two ads had discount coupons attached.
We believe the target demographics of the Gazette-Times to be the age group of 40 and older.The news articles were not of interest for younger people. There were articles that were nationally based, I did not find a great deal of articles about the internet which might have drawn a younger crowd. It seemed like the paper could use some fresh new young writers.
We did not find any stereotypical articles or offensive articles. The ads on the pages did not always fit the articles on most pages. For example, we weren't sure how an ad for a Psychic reading fit in to the section, "Daybreak."
The next review we did was the online version of the Gazette-Times. At first glance, the click through ads jumped out more than the online articles. It was not as organized as we would like it to be, it seemed as though they were just trying to fill in space. Also, we could not find a place to look for previous papers, or maneuver around the current day. It took awhile to figure out how to use the advance settings.When using the advance setting to search for previous papers by date what would appear were singular articles instead of the front page of the original version.
While some articles showed a singular website , you have to cut and paste to get there. Has anyone taught them how to use links? A couple of pages had sponsored links if you scrolled completely down to the bottom of the page. However, there were not any in the content of the story.
When we found an "At a Glance" it was positioned in a bad place on the article. For example, in an article on tornados, the At A Glance was on the left side and in a very large text box. It swallowed up the regular article.
Of course, since this was online, color photos were throughout and much better. There were stories in the on-line version that were not in the paper version, they came from a different source but were much more interesting.
Dineens thought:
I feel like the paper version of the Gazette-Times is just another newspaper. Unfortunately, it does not do anything special to make it appear any different from the standardized paper. The colored photo's are good, would love to see more. I would also read it more if it had more local stories.
I would have like to see the local human interest story on the front page. It was an article about a little boy named Mason with cancer, and the community race to raise money to help with his medical costs. The Philomath Sunday Market story could have been put on page three it wasn't as important.
The internet version needs some serious work. Has anyone been trained in the art of digital journalism at the Gazette?
The Gazette needs links within its stories, the streamlined stories coming from other places should not be more interesting than the stories in its own paper. One should be able to access the full previous paper more easily.
I feel as if the editors are "old school." If they wish to keep up with the new age of journalism they should have a crew that specializes in the online version. I almost have the urge to send them a copy of Jeff Jarvis's book "What Would Google Do?"
Although this assignment was difficult, it gave me a chance to really see the differences between print and online addition newspapers.
Carla's thought: When looking at the sports pages I felt it was stating, don't mess with the sports page! Because there was only two real advertisements on the pages. One area of advertising is very surprising, most advertisements are located in the front sections. The sports only had two outside advertisements on it.
It seems very odd that the GT puts on their web page; to refer to the actual newspaper. Instead of the paper encouraging the reader to go the internet for more information.
The editor must be a huge sports fan. Of all the information for sports took four pages.
I would prefer the paper version because if I want to go back on an article I can get it. If I try on the internet site, its almost impossible to find. Even searching for stories they don't always come up.
I would be more inclined to by the paper version if more local news was printed.
Internet version has the stories, people are able to comment on each article, they are kept up to date. Paper version is in your hand and its organized, and you can easily go back and reread if you desire. The disadvantage would be its not totally current.It hard to say which audience is best served by way of internet or paper, I suppose it would depend if a person was an online style reader.
I felt like I did take away some new information from this assignment. Comparing of other online papers to the GT. Another is how much the I appreciate the written version. It would be great if the online version of the newspaper was set up like the paper version.
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