OT - Who was it who worked for the Johnston Press?

Owners of the Yorkshire Post, Sheffield Star etc etc.

I remember the thread about them being in trouble and someone saying they worked there. Just wanted to say that the reason the papers aren't doing so well online is the ridiculously aggressive advertising. You have to disable adblock just to view the article, which I kind of understand from a financial viewpoint, but then when you do you get about 20% article and 80% ad. They're in the header, footer, sidebar, in the article itself (multiple times), and then as you scroll down they just keep appearing.

I broke down one article about BFC in the Star in developer tools and the page was 6mb in size, which is ridiculous considering the gold standard is <1mb (I'm a web developer). Over 5mb of it was irrelevant and often scammy advertising.

Not only has it made me remove all the JP sites from my newsfeed but it will be very harmful to SEO as well.

Just wanted to mention it as it it's been a massive annoyance for ages whenever I'm trying to find BFC news, which is a shame because the actual journalism is usually okay.

 

It was @W1zz

 

I fully agree, it gets worse and worse. I live in Boston, Lincolnshire currently. I used to gladly read local small town drama in the Boston Standard but recently when you open up pages you get a full screen advert (on mobile this), that you cant press X on until 5 seconds, then it redirects you to another website altogether, when you eventually navigate your way back you have an advert scrolling at the bottom and full size adverts inbetween nearly every paragraph. Will never view their news again. Said paper is owned by the i Paper, arent they owned by same company that youre referring to?

 

Yep, Johnston Press. Same layout and same ads.

 

Local papers are surely doomed? The Chronicle contains zip of interest - unless you follow the saga of Penny Pie Park, which appears to be turning into Barnsley's own brexit-style saga! The online doesn't have as many annoying adverts but it is a boiled down version of the printed edition with even less of interest. Bernard Ingham's columns make the Yorkshire Post appear like the Old Fart's Daily.

 

I absolutely agree, they’re shockingly slow and overloaded. Too many ads, pop ups and third party click bait links.

Unfortunately, it’s these that bring in revenue, to help pay for the creation of the news that your reading online for free (rather than paying for a newspaper). They did try putting some titles behind a paywall, like what some publishers do, but that project was scrapped.

But yes, the sites in their current state are bad. Hopefully the new regime (JPIMEDIA Ltd) will do something to improve them.

 

Many other media sites bring in revenue without running clickbait and scam ads. Is it just a result of the company being in trouble and having to resort to whatever pulls in the most revenue in the shortest time regardless of long term damage? It's just such a shame that's all

 

I think most newspaper website are the same though. Navigating through the tabloids websites is near impossible because it takes so long to load the ads. I just stay clear of them nowadays.

 

You know it's a sad state of affairs when there's less pop-ups on a free porn site than your local paper's website!