Newspaper services continue to evolve
Less than a week ago, BeaumontEnterprise.com changed the way in which on-line readers access obituary information. We’d like to think we made it better.
A couple of readers have complained about the format, but overall, the response has been pretty underwhelming. Most readers have apparently accepted it and moved on.
Much of life today involves change and keeping up with it. That’s particularly true in any business environment and newspapers are no exception. When I came to work at The Enterprise we worked on typewriters – with carbon paper – still had an AP wire machine in the newsroom and had black and white pictures on the front page every day.
Thank goodness we’ve changed.
The new on-line obituary format comes to BeaumontEnterprise.com readers through a service called Legacy. We explained a bit about it in an article in this past Sunday’s newspaper.
As the story explains, the service allows on-line readers to view obituaries for up to 30 days at no charge, finding that information either by date or name. It also offers all manner of enhanced service to our customers, including on-line guest books and the opportunity to post photographs or even audio tributes to the dearly departed.
I suspect resistance to the change has, in part, to do with unfamiliarity.
Clicking on the Obituaries link on our Web page no longer brings up all the obituaries for that day. Instead it brings up a list of names.
To view those obituaries, simply click on the link below the list that says, “Browse full text of obituaries.”
From that point, if you want to see obituaries published prior to that day, click on the box at the top that says, “Modify your search.” That allows readers to select obituaries from the last seven days, last 30 days, last 60 days – or a specific date range. That function also allows searching by name or keyword. The keyword search would allow readers to find obituaries of special interest by searching for words such as: Army, Masonic, Baptist, Kirbyville . . . or whatever term of interest might pull up the selected information.
The site even has an enhanced area spotlighting obituaries of regional or national interest, such as that of Lady Bird Johnson. The same area has information on the deaths of service men and women killed in action and a section on the 9-11 tragedy that could provide educational enhancement to those who might have been too young at the time to remember our nation’s greatest tragedy.
There IS a charge for some of the services, such as archived obituaries more than 30 days old or photographic tributes posted in perpetuity. BeaumontEnterprise.com readers, however, still get everything they had in the previous format . . . and much more.
That was our purpose: to offer more, not less, of the information our readers want.
A couple of readers have complained about the format, but overall, the response has been pretty underwhelming. Most readers have apparently accepted it and moved on.
Much of life today involves change and keeping up with it. That’s particularly true in any business environment and newspapers are no exception. When I came to work at The Enterprise we worked on typewriters – with carbon paper – still had an AP wire machine in the newsroom and had black and white pictures on the front page every day.
Thank goodness we’ve changed.
The new on-line obituary format comes to BeaumontEnterprise.com readers through a service called Legacy. We explained a bit about it in an article in this past Sunday’s newspaper.
As the story explains, the service allows on-line readers to view obituaries for up to 30 days at no charge, finding that information either by date or name. It also offers all manner of enhanced service to our customers, including on-line guest books and the opportunity to post photographs or even audio tributes to the dearly departed.
I suspect resistance to the change has, in part, to do with unfamiliarity.
Clicking on the Obituaries link on our Web page no longer brings up all the obituaries for that day. Instead it brings up a list of names.
To view those obituaries, simply click on the link below the list that says, “Browse full text of obituaries.”
From that point, if you want to see obituaries published prior to that day, click on the box at the top that says, “Modify your search.” That allows readers to select obituaries from the last seven days, last 30 days, last 60 days – or a specific date range. That function also allows searching by name or keyword. The keyword search would allow readers to find obituaries of special interest by searching for words such as: Army, Masonic, Baptist, Kirbyville . . . or whatever term of interest might pull up the selected information.
The site even has an enhanced area spotlighting obituaries of regional or national interest, such as that of Lady Bird Johnson. The same area has information on the deaths of service men and women killed in action and a section on the 9-11 tragedy that could provide educational enhancement to those who might have been too young at the time to remember our nation’s greatest tragedy.
There IS a charge for some of the services, such as archived obituaries more than 30 days old or photographic tributes posted in perpetuity. BeaumontEnterprise.com readers, however, still get everything they had in the previous format . . . and much more.
That was our purpose: to offer more, not less, of the information our readers want.
posted by Sheila Friedeck at 3:40 PM
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