Sunday, August 03, 2008

Finding the Naked City

I've been trolling through our new charlotteobserver.com Web site, which looks a lot better, IMHO. But is it just me, or is it harder to find The Naked City? Granted, this smacks a bit of Al Franken's old schtick ("How does that affect me, Al Franken?")

You'll now find blogs from those of use working in the Editorial department (Jack Betts, Kevin Siers, Ed Williams, Daily Views) under "Opinion" at the top of the page -- but you'll no longer find our blogs listed on the Opinion main page. (Columns, yes. Blogs, no. Who knows why? I'll ask around as soon as our excellent online folks recover from their exhausting roll-out-the-new-site week.)

Nor will you find us on the main homepage unless we've posted in the last few hours.

If you're an occasional Naked City reader or a newcomer who found it skimming through the online newspaper, let me recommend bookmarking the site or setting up an RSS feed. Otherwise drilling down to find this blog might take longer than you care to spend.

And here's a kicker some of you anonymous commenters will surely want to know: We're moving to a new blogs platform sometime soon and registration will be required for anyone commenting. I'm told this will allow commenters to keep the same moniker and to look back on all their comments. Love it or hate it, I have no control over it. Just wanted to warn folks.

Until then, it's easier to have a conversation if you'll post using a name so we don't have to refer to "Anonymous 2:57 p.m" and so on.

Now, feel free to go back to commenting on the Overstreet Mall and uptown retail. As to the use of "vibrant" -- I agree it's overused and under-defined, and you'll note I didn't use it. "Vibrant urban village" is a phrase that has grown especially cliched among planners and developers.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad that the Observer blogs, or at least this one, will finally weed out those hiding behind anonimity.

JJR said...

How DO I set up an RSS feed for your blog to include you on my iGoogle homepage? I don't see a link for it, so there must be another way...

Unknown said...

Rather than using the iGoogle homepage, I used Google Reader and found Naked City by searching "Naked City Charlotte Observer."

Unknown said...

Scratch that. Search under "Mary Newsom" in Reader.

Jumper said...

Suggestions for the new website:

Links to other McClatchy stories that aren't in the print edition.

Put Naked City in the main blog list!

Give that Rochelle Reynoldson person's blog one more chance.

More links to science & technology stories.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad that the Observer blogs, or at least this one, will finally weed out those hiding behind anonimity.

Well, it won't, really. All it'll do is force people to have accounts. Unless there is going to be some ridiculous requirement that people fork over proof of identity, you can look forward to seeing posts from "eric" and "jr" and other pretty anonymous names. I've not decided yet what name I will register under; certainly it will not be my real name. I've seen how people act around here and my name isn't relevant when it comes to the value of my opinions.

But it should hopefully have a calming effect on certain people who insist on throwing around words like "hick" and "redneck".