Secret Blogs

I've missed another one! Yeah, new blogs spring up all day long, often laboring in obscurity for their short lives before being abandoned, but it appears that WMC/5 has ventured into the corporate-sponsored employee blog with Bill's Blog, written by anchor Bill Lunn.

So far, it's only been dedicated to bird watching. Lots of long posts on bird watching. I guess if that's Bill interest, then it's his blog to expound on. But for a venture into the "our employees blog on the corporate dime" it's an odd way to go. WMC/5's newsroom is chock full of excellent bloggers (She links to all the others.) who "get" how to report on their jobs, express their views, while not riling too many executive feathers.

Compare to the WREG/3 blogs by Tim Simpson and Pam McKelvy (no link for you!) or the WPTY/24 blog by anchor Cameron Harper, which is actually blog-like and newsy.

While I'm on this, I wish the television news stations could be bothered to plug these blogs with text links on the front page. I know that television is visual and so their websites tend to be infected with lots and lots of graphics. But such stuff slows down page loads really badly, enough so that I use things like AdBlock and FlashBlock in my browser to stop it. So, I sometimes miss announcements because they appear in some graphic that I've turned off.

Again, the folks behind these sites need to visit other webportals, or read up on Internet design philosophy, to make their sites more user (and not advertiser) friendly. Please your readers first; the advertisers will flock to you to get to them. Cater to advertisers and you drive off readers.