Pet peeve about newspapers’ online sites

Kirstin Dougan writes \”As a LIS student and someone who reads a lot of news-related blogs, I have noticed a disturbing trend.


A lot of online newspaper sites don\’t clearly indicate what city or state they are from. Of course, some of them are obvious (e.g. Detroit Free Press), but some, like the \”Journal-Standard\” (in the LISNews article on the Freeport Public Library), give no indication what city they are published in.

Often the byline includes the city and not the state, which, if it is a small town, is not usually enough to pinpoint what state it is in. Perhaps they assume that only locals read the online stories, however, with the proliferation of blogs and ezines, this is not true. Am I the only one who wants to know _where_ some of these stories are occuring? (without having to dig for a colophon that may be many clicks away or non-existent)

More….

Kirstin Dougan writes \”As a LIS student and someone who reads a lot of news-related blogs, I have noticed a disturbing trend.


A lot of online newspaper sites don\’t clearly indicate what city or state they are from. Of course, some of them are obvious (e.g. Detroit Free Press), but some, like the \”Journal-Standard\” (in the LISNews article on the Freeport Public Library), give no indication what city they are published in.

Often the byline includes the city and not the state, which, if it is a small town, is not usually enough to pinpoint what state it is in. Perhaps they assume that only locals read the online stories, however, with the proliferation of blogs and ezines, this is not true. Am I the only one who wants to know _where_ some of these stories are occuring? (without having to dig for a colophon that may be many clicks away or non-existent)

More….

So here is my plea: Can we as librarians do anything to change this? Shouldn\’t it be required for a newspaper to clearly indicate their physical location on their website? (Does anyone else have this same pet peeve?)


So, I don\’t know that you\’ll find this appropriate to post (or perhaps someone already has brought this up). Feel free to edit if you post it, or let me know if there is an answer out there! 🙂


PS The Journal-Standard mentioned above helpfully lists the phone number of the article\’s author, but without area code…a lot of good that does, unless you are a local. Grrr. \”