I woke up this morning and realized I needed to check to see if I could use the water out of my tap to brush my teeth. We are under a boil order here in Boston due to a major water pipe break. Of course, I’m not going to go outside to get a paper before brushing my teeth. So I did what I think a large number of technically literate people did - grabbed my iPhone and went to Boston.com’s mobile site to see what the status was.
And I saw a huge fail.
Boston.com #Fail
Boston Globe's Mobile Site Fail
Scrolling down didn’t really help either:
No where on the first page of their mobile site did the Globe decide it was important enough to talk about the DECLARED STATE OF EMERGENCY IN BOSTON. That’s awesome. As if people care if they could get sick from drinking their water. Car bombs in NYC, Pops and the Celts losing (sigh) are all sort of important, but I’m pretty sure the fact that the governor has declared a state of emergency and that people are not supposed to drink tap IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN any of the stuff you put above it (with the possible exception of the Sox/Orioles pre-game coverage.)
It’s clear that the mobile site is tailored to a local audience - three of the four first things were about Boston area themes (Sox, Pops and Celts.) But if you are going to bother to “be local” why not include the most important local news? I’m pretty sure people care.
If news papers want to continue to exist they need to do better than this. The Globe has recently been in the hot seat, with threats from their owner the Times to shut the paper down and tense negotiations with different unions. People in Boston were pretty upset that we might lose our major paper. But guess what - if the paper can’t deliver the news effectively in today’s mobile world, I’m not sure it’s really adding that much value. I realize that a major component of news papers’ declining fortunes is that they are losing paper-based ad dollars and that the ad dollars from their online properties can not replace the revenue decline due to lower CPMs. But unless I’m mistaken, it’s the content that drives readers - online, on paper or on the phone - and if you can’t deliver good content quickly in the right medium then you have no reason exist.
At least the regular Boston.com had coverage front and center on the water issue this morning. Maybe the team that runs the mobile site should connect with the web site’s team and find out what’s really going on - then publish that so that people like me, who want to use your mobile site - can actually know what is going on.
