Some people just don’t get new media

Filed under Old media, Online industry in SA, Web 2.0 by hilton | 4 comments | March 18

And they shouldn’t even try…

The Herald (not a bad paper, not a great one), is… wait for it… now part of the online world. Yes they’ve got a website and had one for a while. But now they’re actually writing about Facebook and (gasp) YouTube.

I noticed this story today… I couldn’t have come up with a cheesier headline, even if I had two weeks to try… “Miss PE finalists queens of dotcom world”. CHEESE.

But the actual story is hilarious… and I quote…

THE Herald Greenacres Miss Port Elizabeth 2008 finalists are not confined by geographical boundaries as they are proving to be a big hit in the “dotcom” world.

When their slideshows were posted on The Herald‘s website, www.theherald.co.za, they attracted a lot of attention from web users, receiving 1573 “visitors” in just two days.

No one could’ve written something as pandering and ridiculous as this…

Besides the fact that the one finalist’s mantra is to “Live life to the fullest and enjoy every moment, with no regrets.”, the trendy folk at The Herald have discovered web stats (or as they call the one well-known offering: “Google analysis”):

According to a Google analysis the pages were viewed 108 times on March 10, the day they were uploaded, reaching 1573 “hits” on Wednesday, March 12.

Boy! Gee! Golly! Gosh! I wish my video got over 1500 “hits”.

It gets better (no-one could’ve scripted this better):

“This is astounding,” said senior photographer Eugene Coetzee, part of the web development team at The Herald. Coetzee produced the slide-shows for the website and linked them to YouTube and Facebook‘s groups.

“I didn‘t expect it to be such a hit as it was just an experiment … this enables you to hear what they sound like too.”

Yeah, I guess that’s why they call it VID-EEE-OHHHH. Someone… Anyone… Please help these clueless people…

At least the Dispatch knows what’s potting…

4 comments

  1. Darryn Mar 18

    hehe - yea, i cringed when i read that article.

    when they first published the link to the “web 2.0″ site (http://www.theherald.co.za/MissPE/final.html) - it consisted of their profile pictures along with 19 WMV files trying to load at once. needless to say firefox died. at least now they’re linking to the files. but c’mon - if you’re going to be throwing around buzzwords like youtube…you can at least make use of it where it matters…

  2. Mark Mar 19

    Hahaha… that put a smile on my face. Poor sods, absolutely clueless. Reminds me of my dad.

  3. kamani Apr 11

    I guess you wish they had a Miss Despatch…. dont worri its coming…ha ha ha

  4. Darren May 18

    Even worse … they’ve set up their blogging systems “DISPATCH BLOGS LATEST” with no/limited SPAM controls ..
    Have a look at the scrolling headlines which include all the classic SPAM BLOGS … anal sex, live sex, bla bla bla …
    Eish!

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