Make PressDemocrat.com Better, Pt 3: Local News Focus

by Andrew Meyer on November 9, 2008

When I visit PressDemocrat.com, I go for one thing: Sonoma County news. Someone in Mendocino County might visit the site for Mendo County news, which is great, but not the reason I visit. Ok, with that said, how do I locate Sonoma County news on PressDemocrat.com. Ahh… herein lies the problem. Local news granularity is sorely missing on the site.

When scrolling down PressDemocrat.com’s frontpage, you won’t find sections for “Santa Rosa news” or “Windsor news”:

PressDemocrat.com homepage

When you go to the “Local” page under “News”, you won’t find sections for “Santa Rosa news” or “Windsor news” either. You will find a section for Petaluma news, but that’s because its a feed for Petaluma360 one of PressDemocrat.com’s other sites:

PressDemocrat.com local news section

I can’t wait until PressDemocrat.com adds clear local news granularity to the site. I’d love to visit the homepage and find sections for “Santa Rosa news” or “Windsor news”. I’d like it even more if Northern California news got the above-the-fold treatment over national news. I’d like it even even even more if Santa Rosa news, Windsor news, etc, got their own pages.

Note: I’m strictly talking about PressDemocrat.com, not the print edition. The Make PressDemocrat.com Better conversation I’m starting has nothing to do with the excellent print edition. They are completely different worlds.

  • What you say is true. I used read the PD first thing in the morning and then check my internet news aggregator. Now I check the internet aggregator first and then the PD. I find that the PD front section is useless. It carries news stories that were on the internet news aggregators 24 and 48 hours ago. I do read the Empire section of the PD because it has more or less local news that is harder to get on my internet aggregator (probably because I haven't bothered to tune the aggregator for local news yet). I don't even look at the sports section much anymore because it's all available on the net on a more timely basis. If the PD really wanted to keep my eyes on their news they would put up a portal that lenses local, national, and world news based on its impact on Sonoma county. Stories could be linked to local blogs and commentary like Memeorandum does.
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