Failure to load

If you’re going to do something, do it well.

What’s the point of doing a half-assed job? If you put forth the effort to do something — whatever that something may be — then why would you not put forth the effort to make it good?

This applies to any task one is attempting to undertake. Cleaning your room? Writing a paper? Finish your task, and do it well. Don’t give up halfway through or do a poor job.And for goodness’ sake, if you’re attempting to promote yourself or your company, don’t slap a website onto the Internet, just remember to update it with breaking news, and then completely fail to make it in any way decent.

Yes, Indianapolis Star, I’m talking to you.

My go-to news source is USA Today, but since I spent the summer trying to write about regional topics, I started looking at the Star more often. My parents canceled our subscription a while ago, so I, and the rest of the people in Indianapolis who don’t care to pay for it, am left with the website, unfortunately.

Much as I usually prefer reading news online (yes, I’m one of those people), I cringe every time I need to access the Star. The loading time is ridiculously slow, and the search function is so useless it might as well not exist.

Today I logged on to see that the background had changed from something plain and simple (if boring) to a falling money motif that’s probably making the page even harder to load.

It’s probably why I clicked on a story link before I started writing this, and it still hasn’t loaded. The annoying pop-up ad, however, came up almost immediately.

After a summer of trying to read the Star online at least once a week, I have to start questioning its editors’ judgments.

It’s incredibly bad for business to have a slow-loading, hard-to-search website. With the current journalistic push toward web-based news, if you don’t jump on the boat, you’ll be washed away with the tide. Look at it this way: The Star recently laid off 62 employees.  The tech guys must have been among them.

Seriously, there’s absolutely no reason a newspaper — especially one owned by Gannett — can’t manage to have a decent website.

There can only be two reasons for this. Either the Star really did lay off web people and whoever remains is having a hard time keeping up, or the paper’s editors don’t understand current journalism trends.

Either way, Gannett should hire back some of those laid off. Maybe hire some recent college graduates or those who are about to graduate (hey, we’re all looking for jobs) who understand online journalism and can fix the site.

But don’t go through the effort of creating and maintaining the website if you’re not going to make it good. That’s really worse than not attempting it at all.

Better to be a dinosaur than to make it obvious that you just plain don’t care.

­— hanns@indiana.edu