The water’s fine

So my mom handed me the CLT observer this morning and told me that there was a “very sweet piece” about an elderly lifeguard that I should read. So I picked up the paper – the story ran on the front of one of the inside sections, I forget which.

It’s a really nice article – Ed McCarthy is an 83-year-old lifeguard at the YMCA. He’s the world’s oldest lifeguard, and he didn’t pick up swimming until his 60s. The other lifeguards and people who swim at the pool say he’s quite the hottie in his Speedo.

There’s video to accompany the article. I watched it online early last week. Nice video, too. McCarthy talking about his job and why he enjoys it. The hottie lifeguard is interesting to listen to.

If you look at the article online, it links to the video.

If you look at the print version, at no point does it tell you anywhere (before or after the jump) that there is video if only you go online. No where. There are multiple photos, there’s a brief section of bio, and no where is there a “Hear Ed McCarthy talk about life guarding at charlotte.com.”

Why is there no online refer? Why?! You have this great online content, and you aren’t selling it! Don’t assume your Sunday reader is the 40+ thinks-the-Internet-means-going-”on the line.” If print papers want to get readers to the Web site, they have to point them there. They can’t – and won’t – find that content on their own. Give them a reason to, and maybe they will.

Update: The office copy of the Observer’s Wednesday paper has gone missing, so I haven’t had a chance to see what this article looked like in print. Anyone else see it? What did you think – what does the online reader miss that the print reader saw?

My mom has a recently acquired taste for boxed Sangria, and I was thinking of her when I read Charlotte Observer Food Editor Kathleen Purvis’ story on boxed wines and how they hold up.

I read the story online, and I haven’t seen the print edition yet, but I can tell that some things weren’t translated to the Web. For instance, the results of their taste test. So I know that the wines were “pretty good” and cheaper and tastier than the wines tested last year, but I don’t know which one of the seven contenders came in top.

Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the story.

I love love newspapers, but I read most of my news online. And this isn’t the first time that something hasn’t made it on to the Web after it’s been alluded to in the text, usually a stand-alone graphic. Sometimes it’s not that the other component doesn’t make it online, but it isn’t packaged with the article, or isn’t easy to find.

But the end result is that it leaves the reader with questions and doesn’t tell the story the way the writer and editors intended (and did, in the print edition).

How does this happen? There needs to be more communication on all levels. Making sure these extra elements get attached to the story isn’t any different than making sure the right photo gets posted with the article.

My summertime reading includes a history of The Charlotte Observer (up to its 100th anniversary, in 1986). Reading about the changes that the Observer has gone through puts the changes newspapers nationally are going through into perspective. (And also presents a pattern of newspapers continually refusing to change with the times.)

The book is full of inside stories and gems such as this one:

In October 1915, Coffin got a letter from William Henry Jones of Yanceyville, a recent graduate of UNC, asking for help in getting a newspaper job, preferably on the Observer. … He wrote Jones:

If you really want to start newspapering, don’t be surprised if you have to wear the same suit of clothes for two years. … Still, you’ll be mighty welcome. Come on in – there’s nothing the matter with the water except all the sewers empty into it.