Comments on: Does your newspaper hide from its readers?

By: led strips

led strips — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:54:38 +0000

So funny, so true. We have a contact form, and email addresses. No phone though. Perhaps we should use Skype.

By: Doug Fisher

Doug Fisher — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:19:44 +0000

Couldn’t agree more with Mindy.

Let me put in a plug for keeping those contact lists — in addition to taking steps to make contacting the “visible” people on a newspaper (reporters) easier.

There are lots of invisible people on a paper, mostly copy editors and some line editors/assistant line editors. Also, some of the folks in the Web area. I always appreciate having a contact list so that I can get hold of those folks.

(Of course, then we could start a whole conversation about whether, online at least, there ought to be a readable list of every staffer who has written or edited a story.)

Speaking of places with bad contact policies, the AP has got to be among the worst, shielding almost all its staff through an “info” form on its main Web site.

By: Mindy McAdams

Mindy McAdams — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:33:19 +0000

Allow me to add a related gripe — a mailing address for the newspaper can be damn hard to find on a lot of these Web sites. When the Web site has a hokey regional name, and there’s no city name, sometimes I can’t even figure out where the thing is based! City? State?

Going to “Contact Us” or “About Us” on many sites does not get you even close to unearthing a street address.

I guess they are hiding from postal mail too.

By: JohnofScribbleSheet

JohnofScribbleSheet — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:24:52 +0000

“if we’re in the communication business, why do we make it so difficult for people to communicate with us?”

So funny, so true. We have a contact form, and email addresses. No phone though. Perhaps we should use Skype.