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The annual fuel economy report of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

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This just in: Area man still frustrated while trying to find basic contact information on newspaper website

I look up the physical addresses of a lot of newspapers while putting together Paper View Monday updates. Actually, make that try to look up a lot of newspaper building addresses, because the process is immensely annoying and frequently futile. Often, I simply give up and make cat videos instead. As I put it the last time I whinged this particular whinge, “Nearly every newspaper site I visit seems to protect the physical location of its office with the sort of paranoid zeal more commonly associated with Dick Cheney’s undisclosed location.”

In case you were anxiously waiting for a six-month update, it’s still hugely aggravating. And today I had the added pleasure of trying to find individual staff contact info at a particular newspaper that is generally praised for its otherwise admirable online efforts. Best I could find: An explanation of the e-mail address format used by the paper (firstname.lastname@annoyingnewspaperwebsite.com), but no staff list to which I could then apply that convention.

(I also learned, while wandering sections of the site that appear not to have been updated since 1997, that while they accept press releases via e-mail, one should always follow up with a phone call to confrim that the press release was received. Because that’s not annoying or superfluous.)

All I ask for: Street address somewhere obvious, perhaps even in the footer of the index page itself, and a “contact us” section that actually indiciates how I might go about, you know, contacting you.

Because ads on the site weren’t annoying enough

Not content to annoy only the thousands of drive-by visitors who land on the juggernaut Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros lyrics post with my AdSense-fueled pursuit of the dirty dollar, I just added it to my feed, too. Now even my most loyal and long-suffering readers will be confronted by my shameless, if not terribly profitable, capitalistic tendencies. (Earnings to date total just $14.00.) Why all the recent money-grubbing? Just embracing the current newspaper fashion of charging readers more for much, much less, that’s all.

Now, I’m not saying whether I agree or disagree with Seth Godin’s recent contention that ads are the new online tip jar, but I will say this: I won’t be mad at cha if you feel like dropping a few ad clicks on me.

Tropical Storm/Hurricane Fay: A real inconvenience

Tropical Storm Fay, likely to become Hurricane Fay, couldn’t be headed toward Florida at a more inconvenient time. Not only are most South Florida schools scheduled to start Monday, but my employer is scheduled to begin a relatively small number of layoffs, too. Relative to the nearly 300 employees who took buyouts and worked their final day last week, anyway. “Less than a dozen” people will be laid off in the newsroom, we’re told. Then there was the fun news, also last week, that our corporate overlords are taking what certainly appears to be but the first step toward an eventual complete exit from the newspaper business. So, yeah, bad timing, Fay, really bad timing.

As always, head to Stormpulse for all your hurricane tracking needs. It’s good enough for The Palm Beach Post and the Orlando Sentinel, among a growing list of others, so it should be good enough for you, too, pal.