Ottawa Citizen's Web Site Not About the News

I discovered a curious thing this past week. In the hours after the announcement of the deal that would end the transit strike I happened to browse the Ottawa Citizen web site. Much to my surprise there was no mention of this news. All that was there were outdated articles about prospects for ending the strike, how awful it all was, and so on. But about the end of the strike itself? Nothing.

This was not true on other sites. The local CBC page had it as its top item. Even a Toronto newspaper, the Globe and Mail, had an article up later that same evening. (NB: I'm not linking the actual articles since they are now longer top news items, and therefore wouldn't be useful.)

Even the next day there was nothing of substance to be found on Ottawa Citizen's web site. This was a strange omission that could hardly be a simple error. The story was too significant to allow an error of that magnitude to persist for more than an hour or two. It therefore had to be intentional.

I do check their site almost daily to find items of local interest. In doing so I did notice a change a couple of weeks back. At first it seemed to be little more than a new design for their web presence, one with the usual glitches in performance and article delivery. My opinion began to change when some articles, ones that promised some depth of coverage, appeared to abruptly end after a few paragraphs, clearly before what had to be the conclusion of the article but without any indication that the posted article had been truncated. I grew suspicious.

My suspicion increased when I noticed that of this latter class of article that was also published in other papers of the same chain (Canwest), notably the National Post, were similarly cut short. There was a pattern being established.

I did not see any announcement anywhere that there had been a policy change, but then I did not bother to dig any deeper. Online access to the Citizen isn't that important to me. What interests me more is the wrong-headed thinking that seems to be going on here. The type of thinking that many newspapers around the world have toyed with to a degree.

Now, when I say that, to me, online access to the Citizen is unimportant, I do not mean that I value the printed newspaper more. Quite the opposite. I have never subscribed to the Citizen, only occasionally purchasing single copies. I am certainly not going to subscribe now because of their new tactic. In my opinion they are making the mistake of mischaracterizing their market.

Canwest apparently sees their web sites as a marketing tool for selling newspapers. They seem not to understand that if they fail to provide the news on their web sites to those of us who get our news that way (and we are a growing proportion of the population) we will not buy the newspaper, but rather we will go to other web sites that do provide the news.

Their current business plan depends on printing on paper and so, like many others in their position, they use every other venue as marketing and advertising to drive paper subscriptions.

This strategy is unsustainable. If I want to read about the transit strike now, I will go and get it now. Unlike the distant past I am no longer obliged to wait until the next day to read about it or to scan the radio dial wait for the television newscast. Now means now; if I can't get it now then it isn't news. Here is a snippet about what I said about this last July:

Closer to home there's the Ottawa Citizen. They opt for ordering by time within category (though not always), and their news feed on the right used the elapsed time before present format. Not ideal, but sufficient for a general source of local news. The CBC is an oddity. Especially for local news, apparently news doesn't happen when they're not in the office; you often have to wait until the following business day for news to appear, and even their RSS feed is severely delayed. CBC online is not a good source of timely news.

How the times have changed! With their current strategy the Ottawa Citizen (or Canwest) is loudly declaring that they are in the newspaper business, and not in the news business. That is a recipe for failure now that their competitors are better adapting to the web. For their own benefit I hope they come to their senses soon. As it is I have little reason to peruse either the Citizen's web site or the print edition.