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Saturday, January 29, 2011

Courier gets (welcome) makeover at mycentraljersey.com


The Courier's new online look appeared Friday at mycentraljersey.com.
The Courier's Plainfield beat reporter, Mark Spivey, told me the other night at the Board of Ed meeting that changes to the website at mycentraljersy.com were imminent.

How imminent I didn't realize until I refreshed a page Friday night and it came back with a new, more attractive, more legible page and faster loading page.

Check out the difference -- compare the new design at top of this post to the old design below -- you can reach the site here --



The new design is welcome relief from the green-grey-orange of yore.
I have long hated the green-grey-and-orange incarnation the site has had since the merger of the former Courier and Home News sites into one a ways back.

It was cluttered (even though I normally cruise with ads and popups turned off), and quirky beyond belief. I often had to quiz mark or someone on the editorial staff to find where an item was stashed.
(For instance, who would think that to find Mark's weekly beer column, Draft Picks, one would start with the menu item called 'My Life'?)

The editors have put up an online tour with video (see here), which I hope you will check out.

On the less fun side, I found that several features (turning to additional pages on a story, printing, drop-down lists) did not work in my default browser, FIREFOX, though they all worked find in Google's CHROME browser. I will die on the barricades before I'll open that turkey and Web security disaster, Microsoft's INTERNET EXPLORER.

I am hopeful that Mark will be among those retained as Gannett downsizes; the only question is how having half the newsroom staff is going to affect coverage on the ground

As I remarked to Mark before his interview for the 'new' job, Plainfield had proved an inexhaustible source of Page One stories and helped make him 'reporter of the year', despite the fact that we don't have all those desirable advertisers. (Truth is, the benefit to the Courier is that Plainfielders SPEND with all those desirable advertisers, no matter what kind of shopping experience our business districts offer.)

So check out the makeover, and hold out high hopes Plainfield coverage won't suffer in the new world order.




-- Dan Damon [follow]

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2 comments:

olddoc said...

If Mark Spivey is lost to Palinfield it will have a catastrophic impact upon this city equal to this years record January snows.

Anonymous said...

He had a chance to report on corruption in Union County and Plainfield corruption a while back and was virtually handed all he needed to shed light on the crooked side of politics . . . he chose the dark side!