Letters to the Editor
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Acronyms
Perhaps I don't waste enough time on the web, but the acronyms - which I assume denote the origin of the story - generally don't make any sense.
Not a bad feature, but there's no need to make it so cute.
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Really?
K-Fed on Broadway is one of the top 5 stories that I need to know about?
Sorry, I'm weary of anything sponsored by the Air Force.
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Acronyms!
Just about to say the same thing ... why acronyms? Not user-friendly. :)
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ibid
Not an auspicious introduction to the new feature. K-fed on broadway really matters to most of us. Right Now!
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Why?
I guess the question I have is why would Salon devote such prime front page real estate to a feature that will drive readers to another site? FWIW - I'd rather the space be used to point me to some gem on the Salon site that I might otherwise miss.
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Acronyms
The acronyms are no different than station call letters. They represent the source of the story. Not that hard to figure out if you own a radio or TV.
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Oh, good. Spoon-fed knowledge
First War Room turns into a run of the mill blog full of youtube clips and snarky references(A lot of "heres what someone said. Yeah, right, dude..." type entries), mostly to other blogs. And now Salon gets this cutesy little feature.
This is a great little snapshot of everything wrong with media today. Boil it down and feed it to me in little bites with sugar on top. Its the cable news crawl at the bottom of the screen.
HuffPo is becoming my go-to source these days. Their site is ugly to look at, and doesnt flow well, but the content is getting better and better.
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Ok, that's it.....
Sigh. I canceled my salon subscription out of disgust over the direction the tabloid was taking. But like an abusive relationship, I kept coming back for King and Glenn and sometimes Broadsheet and sometimes the film reviews, always hoping that the general tone would improve and I could return to the fold. But this is the end. Any one of these "5 Things" (currently: Spitzer resigns, "is this his call girl?", Ferraro's flub, moralizing from the Pope, and K-Fed) could come from the front page of yahoo. Except yahoo might not put a fuzzy picture of a "call girl" in there for extra titillation. So salon is now sub-yahoo, advertising wise. Okay, I guess I could possibly live with that, if Walsh were to come out and say "hey, advertising revs are down, we need more click throughs, and we're happy to pander for the Air Force even as we claim to denounce Bush's wars, all 'cause we really, really need the bucks". Does she say that? No. She tells us these are things we really "need to know about, right now" and that we'll find it indispensible.
That's got to be the most condescending, dishonest crap I've yet read on this site.
So it's time to delete the bookmarks, break the habit, stop when I catch myself typing in the url. Cold turkey. Bye bye. It's been a nice decade. Hope you live happily ever after.
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Another reason to bookmark HuffPo...
I'm with the other poster. This is why I'm spending much more time at HuffPo, even if it's clunky to navigate.
Seems like Salon's getting ever so much more "USA Today" rather than New Yorker, sad to see...
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Audiofile...
...I still miss it.
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who cares
about K-fed, the pope and who spitzer is screwing. And ferraro is old news. Top 5 bullshit stories is more like it.
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Judging by the 5 things up there...
...I find it unlikely that this will be of any use to me.
Two of the five are on Spitzer (one on what his call girl looked like!)
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This feature might have looked clever...
...in, say, 2002. It looks dated and irrelevant now. A complete waste of space.
I am so not renewing my Premium subscription.
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Acronyms
...are not like station call letters. At all. I don't care if I catch the national news on WABC or WXYI.
After clicking through, I figured out that PPLE is "People", GWKR is "Gawker", and EOTS... well ok I didn't click through. Perhaps click-throughs are the point? That's why Paglia is published here, right?
My point was that this feature is needlessly cute. Are Salon's coders really realizing an economy in writing GWKR instead of Gawker?
And yes, there is a point to be made regarding Salon's opinion as to which "top five stories [I] need to know about."
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Bravo Mountainviewer et al.
Walsh's cynicism is heartbreaking.
The day a photo of Spitzer's callgirl becomes most important to me, please shoot me.
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the concept needs work
Clearly "Spitzer resigns" is a top story. But the rest? You say I need to know about a picture of a woman that might be his hooker? Or that I need to know about the Vatican's "seven more sins" thing?
Joan, stop hanging around with cable news people. It's rubbing off on you and harming your judgment.
How about cluing people in to things that they ought to know about, but aren't being informed about if they watch cable news? Sounds like you want to blurb the same five things that CNN/MSNBC/Fox/Drudge are blaring about.
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If I wanted news about Mariah Carey!
I wouldn't be reading SALON!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And yeah, the acronyms really suck.
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I'm in agreement...
this is really awful. It's a sad day when those things are my top 5 things I need to know. The Spitzer callgirl is more like an US magazine exclusive. And Mariah Carey on SNL? I enjoy some of the lighter, "fluff" pieces on Salon, but this takes it to a new extreme. It's probably time for me to find a new, must-read site.
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Eliot Spitzer's Call Girl?!
*Not* one of the most important stories of the moment, imo.
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Jeez people, chill out
Not that I'm always so chilled out, but hold back a bit.
I agree that "Mariah Carey on SNL" is pretty lame, but I am guessing Salon is reserving its #5 spot for entertainment and culture news. This is exactly what Yahoo does on their home page -- their first 3 news headlines are hard national/international news, the next couple are interesting, and the last 1 or 2 are culture news. So how about we give Salon the benefit of the doubt on this?
Personally, I like the concept. Let's see how it goes. Salon is trying to encourage people to check in repeatedly throughout the day. This is MUCH better for advertising sales than if people only read the site once a day. God forbid Salon should try to make a profit!