What the heck is a cPod? Well, it’s not the City Pages’ new portable audio device:
Welcome to our humble debut episode of cPod - wherein we ask our reporters and editors to talk about the stories they’ve written for the current issue. Check back each week for a new update and for a bit of an inside listen to the voices behind your favorite bylines.
So it’s an audio podcast (or “netcast” if you prefer) of the City Pages staff giving audio and interviews to augment their stories? Nope. It’s not at all.
The “cPod” is a huge pop-up window that only works in your browser with a tiny Flash-based audio player you can only hit “Play” and “Stop” on. It contains audio with the people that wrote articles in the previous City Pages giving a summary of what’s already been written. Did you read the City Pages yesterday? If so, you’ll hear nothing new. It’s basically teasers for what’s already written. Also, there’s a ton of loud background noise as if they did the entire thing at Cuzzy’s, where some CP staff and K-Hoff are regulars. After it concludes, you can listen to that background noise for another minute longer. It’s weird!
You can’t subscribe to it and you can’t aggregate to it, so it’s not a podcast. If it was good content, maybe this would be a problem. This leads me to my latest RSS analogy:
Your content is like a magazine. Your magazine sits in a kiosk (or browser) with a bunch of other magazines and newspapers. If you want some loyalty these days, let people subscribe to your magazine and have it automatically delivered to them in addition to letting them go to the kiosk every single time. Then your content is delivered to their door every time you publish something and it doesn’t cost them the effort to remind themselves that they want to check to see if you have a new issue.
Oh, and for truncated RSS: I can’t imagine anything more annoying than subscribing to a 3×5 card that comes in the mail that tells me to go to the store and pick up a magazine.
I might be joking here: It just dawned on me why City Pages hasn’t ever understood this. Traditionally, in order to get the City Pages, you’ve always had to go to a City Pages kiosk. You’ve never been able to subscribe to it.
P.S. Paul Schmelzer is a nicer, more tactful and eloquent guy than I am (with a pop-up window screenshot in the comments).
P.P.S. Web Editor job opening at the City Pages on Craigslist. [via IM with Taylor]
P.P.P.S. Thanks for the photo credits on pages 3 and 38 of this week’s CP. I do appreciate that.
Comments 3
I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that the explanation for this is because City Pages is part of a huge media conglomerate and — just like the Web site of at least one other local media outlet owned by a huge conglomerate — internal politics and institutional stupidity (forgive my harshness) are what brought this embarrassment to the light of day.
But, that’s just one man’s guess.
Posted 04 Oct 2007 at 14:53 ¶Ha. I like the 3 x 5 card analogy!
But if Mr. Schmelzer is so tactful, what’s with the truncated RSS feeds on Eyeteeth?…
Posted 04 Oct 2007 at 15:25 ¶It does kinda seem like one of those, we had this idea over at Cuzzys, during lunch, and threw it together. Maybe our your suggestions will help them make it a better idea.
Posted 04 Oct 2007 at 19:33 ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 1
[...] files. At best what the City Pages launched was an mp3 blog. And that’s generous. “It just dawned on me why City Pages hasn’t ever understood this. Traditionally, in orde… “I want to hear what didn’t make the piece” - Paul Schmelzer - Garrick Van [...]
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