Such A Disappointment

I've been having a serious chocolate craving for the last couple days (possibly due to all of Clare's mentioning of YPPs.) At any rate, I raided my change jar today, and drove down to Bells grocery store to get my fix. Normally I would have driven to Wal-Mart, but the comparative distance between our house and Wal-Mart, and our house and Bells made the decision a no-brainer today.

In addition to some mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey's Milk Chocolate Kisses, I also picked up the latest issue of the Oglethorpe Echo, the local paper for Oglethorpe County. And let me just say, I was fairly disappointed with ALL of my purchases! The chocolate, usually so delicious and satisfying, tastes somewhat old and stale. And the newspaper? Oh, where to begin?!?

Now I'm not a newspaper man myself, but I am a writer, and I was horrified at the number of typos in that newspaper that were allowed to slip past the copy-editor. Some of them I could possibly accept, because they were in the police blotter section, and the person responsible for the publication of that segment was most likely just copying and pasting from the police Web site, or some other similar source. So in that case the errors originated with the source of the information, the authors/posters of the particular entries. These could have been corrected, but I'm sure they were allowed into the paper "as is", without any copy editing, under the assumption that a) they were correct in the first place, and b) there probably wouldn't be time to go through and edit them all anyway. The rest of the errors in the newspaper, however, do not benefit from the same excuse!

Then there is the overall layout and organization of the paper itself. Talk about a nightmare! Stories are crammed in together, with no apparent consideration for a cohesive layout or structure. Some stories continue down the page, while others are continued across the page. Random stories seem to have been inserted anywhere there was an opening, with little to no regard for text flow or the use of negative space, yet alone whether or not they had anything to do with their surroundings. They also crammed 2 or 3 pages full of all sorts of boring legal notices that should have been listed in a separate legal brief or something, because only the involved parties and maybe a select few others are likely to be interested in what they have to say. Were they that desperate for filler material, or is this a weekly section? (I don't know, because this was the first time I purchased this paper. But I've got to admit, if this is the caliber of a typical issue, I am sorely disappointed.)

Now I know some of you out there are probably thinking, "Well, if YOU think you can do a better job, then why don't you?!?" And to that I say, "Perhaps I should." Perhaps I should apply for a position with the paper, either at their "real world" location, or with their allegedly soon to be online version, a site apparently hosted by Tripod.

I had a site hosted with Tripod once...back in the early 90s, when the Internet was just moving away from all grey backgrounds and linear text; when pictures took 5 minutes or more to load, and the "blink" tag was the latest and greatest programming trick! I mean, come on! I'm sure Tripod has improved exponentially since those days, but it's still more widely known for it's free, ad-supported Web sites that are developed by thousands of individuals with rudimentary design skills and unhealthy obsessions with whatever singers/bands are pimping themselves to masses.

Okay, sorry about that. I may have come across a little strongly there, but I was incensed by some of the Tripod "Top Sites," like this one dedicated to Britney Spears. THAT is a top site? My only response to that is "WHY?!?" The design is fairly ghastly; broken links abound throughout the site; text sizes range from fairly legible to ridiculously tiny; the pictures and videos offered are old, and many of them are blurry or of low quality; the "Private" members only section login link leads to an "Address not valid" page; and in addition to Windows Media Audio and RealAudio files, listed under the incorrect header of "MP3s", the site offers MIDI files. MIDI...the elevator music of the Internet, also popular back in the days of the infamous "blink" tag! And THIS is a "Top Site"? Sure, maybe the site was developed by an 11 year old girl (or boy) with more good intentions than talent, but if that's a "Top Site", then I wouldn't want to associate my business Web site, my potential livelihood, with such an organization!

Okay, once again, I apologize for the rant. Sure, I'm not a top-notch designer myself, by any means (and I too make typos and errors from time to time), AND that horrid Britney Spears site probably does see many more visitors than this humble blog of mine, but things like that just get under my skin.

Anyway, I'm going to wrap this thing up before I go off on another tirade for some inane reason. (Maybe it's just this old tasting chocolate that's got me all worked up. I was so looking forward to getting my chocolate fix, and now it's just ruined! *sigh*) As usual, thanks for stopping by, and I hope you all have a great weekend. I'm off to Clare's in a little while with Monica to "babysit" for a couple hours while Clare and Josh are out being interviewed for another newspaper article which I'm SURE will be much better than the ones I read today. Peace.