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Donovan to NBA; No joy in Hogtown

By William M. Hartnett on Jun 1, 2007 in newspapers, sports

Gaaaaa! Then again, I wasn’t feeling so good when Steve Spurrier left, either, and that turned out OK. (And, no, I don’t remember the Ron Zook era. I erased those years from my brain.)

And in a journalism-related digression from this sports-related digression … While browsing Florida’s many papers for news about Billy Donovan’s departure from UF for the Orlando Magic, one thing became depressingly clear: Newspaper web sites are bad.

I consider myself a pretty savvy web user, particularly when it comes to labyrinthine newspaper sites, and I knew exactly what I was looking for: Stories about Billy Donovan. Still, it was a slog. I went to one site looking for a particular blog that I know exists and wasted 10 minutes unsuccessfully looking for it. I finally had to open my RSS reader, pull up an old post, and click through to the original site. Pretty poor showing, unnamed newspaper that, for the record, is most definitely not the one where I work.

One other observation: From the credit where credit is due department, the Orlando Sentinel appears to be rewriting its web headlines with SEO in mind, as opposed to simply dumping the space-constrained print headlines on the web. Smart.

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