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Worcestershire Journal – Telegram and Gazette eEdition (update)

BY Karl ON Wednesday, June 3 | 5 comments

For the last few weeks, the T&G has offered a free trial of their electronic edition, an online version of the paper that looks and handles a lot like a real newspaper. As I previously noted, it seems to be an decent offering if you’re into that sort of thing.

Now they’ve gone live with their paid version. You can get a week of free viewing before paying $6.95/month.

My two major gripes are still present:

  • When a story is continued on an inside page, you don’t get a hyper-link to the next part of the story.
  • The electronic version, just link the content on telegram.com isn’t available until 5:30AM. We still get the printed version delivered to our house by 4AM.

T&G eEditon subscribe button

Another nit: four weeks does not equal one month. If you click on the subscription button, you’re brought to a form that tells you that your credit card will be charged $6.95 every four weeks. That turns out to be $90.35 per year. (13 x $6.95), instead of $83.40 (12 x $6;.95). To their credit, they offer an annual subscription rate of $69.96/year.

One last thing: on the subscription form, there is a link to online help that lets you send a message to the T&G staff. There’s a nice Dr. Phil touch where they ask you to tell them your troubles:

T&G eEdition online help form

T&G eEdition online help form


Disclaimer: I write (without pay) a blog about Holden and Phillipstion for the T&G’s OnTheCommon.com site, but I am not an employee of nor am I otherwise affiliated with the T&G

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Worcestershire Journal – The T&G Electronic Edition

BY Karl ON Monday, May 18 | 6 comments

The Telegram and Gazette is offering a free preview of its new electronic edition, cleverly titled eEdition. Basically, it’s a replica of the printed version of the newspapers, allowing you to see the pages as printed, search text, and move around page by page or skip to sections of interest.


The New York Times and Boston Globe have similar offerings.
A few thoughts on the T&G eEdition:

  • If you are looking for the same experience as reading the physical, printed paper, this isn’t it. It’s an electronic version, giving you something more and something less.
  • It works best on a large monitor so that you can scan the whole page.
  • Being able to see the whole page, with photos in place, is quite nice. I typically read the RSS feeds from the paper and so don’t always get to see the pictures in the same context.
  • It takes some fiddling to get the zoom level right to read large text, then small, then large again. A good, high-resolution computer monitor helps.
  • It would be much better if the jumps (‘continued on page A10′) were hyperlinks. As it is, you start to read the story, then go to the widget on top of the page, select the section and page you want to go to, find the continued article, and resume reading.
  • The ability to search for text is nice.
  • The print options are good, allowing you to print the portion that’s visible on your screen, the whole page, or the whole paper.
  • The Preferences settings don’t make a lot of sense. The background selection, for example, doesn’t seem to work.

The free preview lasts until May 25, at which point, I assume, it’ll switch to some paid options, with some kind of deal for print subscribers. There is, however, no information about the eEdition subscription on the site.

In sum, if it’s free for print subscribers, I’ll probably use it in addition to the RSS feeds and going directly to the telegram.com site. If it’s a separate subscription, I’m staying away.


Disclaimer: I write (without pay) a blog about Holden and Phillipstion for the T&G’s OnTheCommon.com site, but I am not an employee of nor am I otherwise affiliated with the T&G

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Worcestershire Journal – Blame Boston. No, Blame Worcester. … Aw, snap…

BY Karl ON Tuesday, April 21

The New York Times corporation is reporting a 27% drop in its  ad revenue, leading to a $74M loss in the first quarter.

The Times said its New England Media Group, which includes the Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette, contributed to “significant losses” at its news media unit. The Times bought the Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993. The paper could lose $85 million this year. The Times has threatened to close it.

We should note that the story on the Times’ site doesn’t mention Worcester at all, while other wire service reports include our fair city.

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Worcestershire Journal – The math of getting there on time

BY Karl ON Thursday, April 16 | 1 comment
= + + +

What cats and dogs really think about hoomin

Where

Time
The amount of time that you are late

Equals

Speed limit
The number of cars doing the speed limit.

Plus

Cruisers
The number of police cruisers on the road.

Plus

School buses
The number of school buses you have to follow.

Plus

Work Crews
The number of work crews you encounter

Divided by

Importance
On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the most important, what you were doing to make you late in the first place.

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Worcestershire Journal – New telegram.com – am I in Worcester?

BY Karl ON Wednesday, April 8 | 1 comment

The newly designed Telegram.com site is clean, quick, and fresh. That’s good.

What’s not quite so good is the content. This morning’s news leads include no stories about central Massachusetts. Granted, opening day for the Sox is a big deal and we need to celebrate however we can. Nevertheless, we could also use some hometown news.

The one news staff story, “Reformers target ‘pay-to-play’ ethos, by John Monahan, focuses on the goings-on in the Great and General Court, but the last five paragraphs discuss ethics in Connecticut politics.

The other two front-page stories come from the New York Times and AP, good stories for inside the paper.

I wrote about this problem a few weeks ago and thought then, as I think now, that we go to the Telegram, online or in print, to find stories about Worcester and surrounding towns because daily local content isn’t available elsewhere. Google News, for example, shows just two stories in the past day about Worcester, neither of them terribly compelling.
Google News search for Worcester MA
Newspapers are in trouble for a variety of reasons, too many to review here. One way out of these troubles, for any paper, large or small, is to provide content that no one else provides. in the case of a small city daily, that means featuring stories about our city. (The buzzword for this is hyper-local.)  If I want stories about cyber-sleuthing from the New York Times, I’ll read the New York Times story about cyber-sleuthing. The T&G staff reporters and freelancers know this area. The paper should be showcasing that knowledge.


Thanks to Jeff for his review of the T&G site yesterday.

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Go to the Real Worcester Blog >>

Top 5 Falafel Shops in Worcester

Everyone knows that Worcester has a ton of great vegan and vegetarian-friendly restaurants, but something that is often over-looked is how many great falafel shops there are in our wonderful city. Below are 5 of the best places for falafel. Falafel is the Middle-Eastern equivalent of a hamburger, it’s greasy, cheap, and you can pick [...]

Atlanta police round up Wall Street protesters

T&G - Oct 26 11:00 am

ATLANTA – With helicopters hovering overhead early this morning, police moved into a downtown Atlanta park and arrested around 50 Occupy Wall Street protesters who had been encamped there for about two weeks.

State seeks waiver from ‘No Child’ mandates

T&G - Oct 26 7:00 am

MALDEN – Members of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted yesterday to ask for a waiver from some aspects of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the federal law that has identified 90 percent of this state’s school districts as failing even as the state scores at the top of the [...]

Oxford man said he stalked girl

T&G - Oct 26 7:00 am

OXFORD – A 38-year-old Oxford man allegedly called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Virginia to report that he was following a Millbury school bus because it carried a 13-year-old girl he longed to be with.

Three generations rescued

T&G - Oct 26 7:00 am

ERCIS, Turkey – After 48 hours, a miracle emerged from the rubble: a 2-week-old baby girl brought out half-naked but alive from the wreckage of an apartment building toppled by Turkey’s devastating earthquake. Rescue workers erupted in cheers and applause Tuesday at sight of the infant and#8212; and again hours later when her mother and [...]

Cherington is introduced as new Red Sox GM

T&G - Oct 25 8:10 pm

BOSTON – The last time a new Red Sox hire got a standing ovation from his co-workers was in the spring of 2002, when the clubhouse at City of Palms Park in Fort Myers erupted in cheers as Grady Little was announced as the team’s new manager. The last time before today, that is.



AG: Health Care Costs Not ‘Value Based’

Worc Biz Journ - Jan 29 1:50 pm

Attorney General Martha Coakley’s Office released an initial report today outlining factors that she claimed lead to variations in health care costs across the state.

Westborough Warehouse Set For Auction

Worc Biz Journ - Jan 29 1:50 pm

A 200,000-square-foot warehouse with some office space will go up for auction next week in Westborough, according to Quincy auctioneer Daniel J. Flynn & Co. Inc.

Staples Settles Class Action Suit

Worc Biz Journ - Jan 29 1:50 pm

Framingham-based Staples Inc. announced it has settled several class action lawsuits concerning overtime pay for middle managers for $42 million.

State To Help Fund Gardner Project

Worc Biz Journ - Jan 29 1:50 pm

The state will provide several hundred thousand dollars for infrastructure improvements to support the construction of a commercial office building in downtown Gardner, according to state officials speaking at an economic summit in Leominster this morning.

Legislators Unsure About Casinos in Central Mass.

Worc Biz Journ - Jan 29 1:50 pm

State legislators appearing at breakfast this morning in Westborough seemed hesitant about pursuing expanded gaming in the state and especially about possibly hosting a resort-style casino in Central Massachusetts.

GDP Up 5% In Quarter, Mass. Down Slightly

Worc Biz Journ - Jan 29 1:50 pm

The nation’s gross domestic product, or the measure of the goods and services produced in the United State, posted a 5.7 percent increase between the third and fourth quarters of 2009, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysts.

Framingham Firm Prices Offering

Worc Biz Journ - Jan 29 1:50 pm

HeartWare International Inc. said it would price the public offering of more than 1.5 million shares at $35.50 per share.

Stop proposed rules for filling vacancies

T&G - Jan 20 12:40 pm

The move to change the Worcester charter will eliminate citizen candidates by making it cumbersome and financially impossible for an average neighborhood person to serve this community.

Wayward bird didn’t get enough help

T&G - Jan 20 12:40 pm

On Dec. 16, I believe what was a Cooper’s hawk flew into my place of work in Sterling. The bird, obviously confused and disoriented, flew around the building, crashing into trusses and fans in the ceiling. The animal control officer was called. After a few minutes he decided this was more than he could handle, [...]

Quaboag ball was a grand old time

T&G - Jan 20 12:40 pm

Occasionally a special event comes along that pulls together a community in common support. This was experienced at the Quaboag Plantation 350th Anniversary Grand Ball on Jan. 2. The six towns that made up the original Quaboag Plantation when it was formed in 1660 – the four Brookfields, Warren and New Braintree – came together [...]



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Lunch Specials at Quan Yin

Worcester’s original all-vegetarian restaurant, the Quan Yin, has very affordable lunch specials every day.

Sale at HBML

There’s a big sale going on at HBML – we have a huge table of items for $1 as we make room for new merch. Visit us online at HBML.org. HBML Worcester’s Greatest Junk Shoppe 420 Pleasant St. Worcester, MA 01605 Open Wed-Sat, 3-9pm



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