Technical difficulties set them back a bit, but AnnArbor.com – the new site emerging from the ashes of the old Ann Arbor News – is now live… For those who have never been online before, they even have a nifty video tutorial on how to use the site.
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I could have used something like that tutorial here on your site. It was a year before I figured out that I could scroll down and see more than the first 20 lines or so.
The site looks great. However, the acorn logo on the masthead is concerning. Do Obama’s brownshirts at ACORN have anything to do with the site?
I’ve heard that they wouldn’t be covering Ypsilanti at all. Has that been substantiated? And, if that’s the case, should the city use another paper as its official communicationschannel? As I understand it, Council just decided to make A2.com Ypsi’s official newspaper of record.
I contacted Tony Dearing by email this morning after I set up my new AnnArbor.com on-line account. When you sign up, there’s an option to include your neighborhood information via a drop-down box. There are no Ypsilanti neighborhoods listed in the drop-down box.
I never expected to hear back from Mr. Dearing, but to my surprise, he emailed me back within a few hours:
” . . . In terms of everything not on the site right now that needs to be on the site, Ypsilanti is my highest priority. I would hope that we’d be able to add a strong Ypsilanti presence and good Ypsilanti coverage by September. Until then, I have to beg your patience with us.”
There is no Ypsilanti “neighborhood” link as of yet–but there are a number of posts covering Ypsilanti, scattered among the various departments. Not to plug myself, since I’m one of the Ypsi folks, but if you do a search with the “ypsilanti” tag appended at the end of Ypsi posts, you can see them all:
http://www.annarbor.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=1&tag=ypsilanti&limit=20
AnnArbor.com ought to at least engage in truth in advertising. The site claims it will do lots of neighborhood converage, and says they are defining it by elementary school districts. But Ypsilanti has neighborhoods, and elementary schools, yet they are not planning on covering it. They’ve had what, 6 months, to work out a plan, and they want Ypsilanti residents to wait til Septmeber?
A product that is supposed to be a source of information, and one that’s the heir to really newspaper, that starts out with such exclusionary boundaries seems bound to fall short of ever being inclusive.
Shaaa naaa naah nah, shaaa nah naaah nah, hey hey, gooooooh fucky yooooosif yipseeeeeeeeelannnntiiiii!
What are the best daily newspaper alternatives for me? I was thinking of the NYT, but it will cost $770 a year. Holy crap that’s a lot. The Washington Post is a bit cheaper ($520 a year, I think–unless that was based on a cheaper, initial per-week charge). USA Today is $215 a year, but I’ve always hated it.
Did the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News already cut back delivery to several days a week?
Please, any recommendations are welcome.
I read the NYT online each day, for free, and while it’s not local, it has extensive coverage of actual news, good writing, and ease of use online. And yeah, the Detroit papers have cut back to just a couple days a week of print copies; they can still be had for delivery. Don’t know if this helps, Dirtgrain.
IMHO …
Until the A2 News learns to tell the difference between Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township … especially with regard to the identification of persons involved in criminal activity … I’ll stick with YpsiCitizen.
If you like the smell of ink … subscribe to the Courier.
If you want what’s happening locally … grab any of the free entertainment rags in bar windows or restaurant doorways or grocery racks.
If you want hard news with in-depth reporting, check out the NYT online.
For important state government news, it’s mi.gov … the horse’s mouth.
Where does MarkMaynard.com fit in?
I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. They’ve hired some good people. I’m just hoping that ad sales come through so that they can keep them.
The folks that publish the Ypsilanti Courier started publishing the all new twice-weekly “Ann Arbor Journal” newspaper. If you need to hold a paper to get your news, this is an excellent choice. Unlike the AnnArbor.com print edition, all of the A2 Journal papers will be complete, with editorial pages, sports, news, notices, etc. – everything you would expect to find in the paper.
There is plenty of coverage of Ypsilanti from annarbor.com – http://www.annarbor.com/news/crime/
I get all my news from Thundarr the Barbarian reruns.
The AnnArbor.com neighborhood coverage right now is partially syndicated in from http://outside.in . If you look through that site you will see how it pulls in news, how it decides what is where, and if you look carefully you will see just how many mis-categorizations there can be to attach a story to a place.
Here’s their Ypsi page
http://outside.in/Ypsilanti_MI
You will note that if you compare to the Ann Arbor page
http://outside.in/Ann_Arbor_MI
that outside.in has not subdivided Ypsi into neighborhoods; there is one feed, but not separate neighborhood oriented feeds.
“I get all my news from Thundarr the Barbarian reruns.”
Oh yah? What’s his horse called? Don’t you dare look it up.
The Detroit Free Press publishes a PRINT edition daily, including Sunday.
The paper is delivered on Thursday, Friday and Sunday….but on the newsstand the other days of the week. IMO the best newspaper for the money anywhere.
YpsiCiti.com is good but needs to be updated more frequently and would really get more hits with a “comments” feature. I have suggested it some time ago, and they said they were working on it.
The Ypsi Courier is a nice weekly, but for daily news right now it seems Ypsilanti has disappeared off the map. Maybe that means we can stop paying taxes!
Sunshine?
Smokey?
Periwinkle?
I think it was Vickla or something like that.
I think it was Vickla or something like that.
I believe you are thinking not of his horse, but of his comapanion: Ukla the Mok.
Every Living Person Has Problems.
Boy, that Princess Ariel was a knockout, wasn’t she? Riding around bareback with all her sorcery and prominent breasts and perfectly coiffed darkness and tiara.
I know, I know. But I was only fifteen. Anyway, she was better than that old frumpy Teela.
JudyS: YpsiCiti.com does allow comments, but it doesn’t seem to be a very user-friendly system, and they don’t seem to get many. I’ve left comments on several of their stories.