Media General’s recently married and recently promoted Rusty Coats sometimes gets irritated at the vitriol spewed here negatively toward TBO.com. So when TBO earns positive acknowledgments, he makes sure to send those interesting notes along to us.
Last week, the Society of Professional Journalists named the finalists for the Green Eyeshade Awards. The regional journalism competition recognizes outstanding journalism in 11 southeastern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Rusty wants us to note that for this year in the “Online” category, TBO is nominated FIVE times, while the newspaper across the street is nominated only once. Here is the complete list of finalists in the “online” category:
ONLINE
BREAKING NEWS
• Polk County Deputy Shot – Billy Townsend, TBO.com staff, TBO.com, Tampa, Fla.BEST USE OF MULTIMEDIA
• A Killer’s Grip – Clarisa Gerlach, Tim Price, Tampa Tribune Staff, WFLA Staff, TBO.com, Tampa, Fla.
• Carnival Center – Staff, The Miami Herald
• Sweet 15 – Jigsha Desai, Lauren Suhles, Kevin Cowan, Joe Howell, Knoxville (Tenn.) News SentinelNICHE JOURNALISM
Epic – Randy Johnson, Mark Caskie, Pace Communications
GoVolsXtra – Online and Sports Departments, Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel
Tampa’s Local Music Scene – Ryan Bauer, Tim Price, TBO.com, Tampa, Fla.COMMENTARY/BLOGS
• New Around Town – Leigh Dyer, The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer
• Suitcase Stories – Chris Chmura, TBO.com, Tampa, Fla.
• Video Games as Art – Josh Korr, St. Petersburg (Fla.) TimesINVESTIGATIVE
• Following the Coldest Trail – Mike Wells, Tim Price, Vidisha Priyanka, TBO.com, Tampa, Fla.
• House of Lies – Staff, The Miami Herald
Now of course the press release simply lists the finalists. It was up to me to go find links to the actual work that earned all the accolades. And, because it’s TBO, I found only two of them. Click through those links above. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Are you shaking your head? Armed with even the TITLE of the stories, you are still unable to use TBO’s search feature to find even half the award-nominated stuff. As I have said before, some of the multi-media work TBO and other newspapers create is absolutely fantastic. You can’t beat the reporting and production. But it would be nice to be able to find it.
I try not to be so hard on them – but I get soooo frustrated just trying to DO anything there. If you end up on an older Tribune story, it seems it’s purely by chance. And please note – the St. Pete Times search was fruitless, too. Perhaps this goes for most newspaper sites, so it’s fair to compare them. But when so much more can be done online, it seems a bit like announcing an award for the boat with the smallest hole in the hull.
Anyway, here are the two stories of the fruitful searches (you will want to use IE – firefox makes some of these pages look screwy): Suitcase Stories, Following the Coldest Trail.
Oh, and Congratulations to TBO.com! It really IS great reporting and use of multi-media.
Loren Omoto
2 years ago
Hi, Tommy – and thanks for the shoutout.
TBO.com is just as frustrated with the weaknesses of on-site search as you are. We’re working to make it better, with more precise results.
Meantime, there’s this thing called “the Google” — even the President’s heard of it. Here are the results if you do a search through that site:
Polk County Deputy Shot
A Killer’s Grip
Tampa’s Local Music Scene
Hope that helps.
dreaming
2 years ago
unfortunately, this kind of silliness is why tbo remains a horrid mess. its inside baseball awards convince its keepers that its one of the greatest websites ever. one can only laugh, somewhat sadly, at the folly. nothing against the content, but for the love of god, why cant they redesign it to make it useful, or at least readable? this is not inventing the wheel. copy the nyt website if they have to. copy the sptimes website. ive never seen anything as amateurishly bad as tbo….
Pam
2 years ago
Am I the only one that’s about had it with the damn pop-ups on TBO.com. Very annoying.
rsi
2 years ago
While the content on TBO is very good, the navigability and interactivity of the site is so frustrating I have given up on it completely.
Loren Omoto
2 years ago
Hello, from one of the “keepers.” I actually had posted a response earlier, but made the mistake of linking to the missing stories and WordPress saw my multiple URLs as spam.
Besides the URLs, I thanked Tommy for the shoutout, and now I’ll also thank the posters here for their input. Search is a big todo for us, but it’s taking some time to get it tuned. You’ll see design and navigation developments within the quarter.
tommy
2 years ago
Thanks for contacting, Loren. I found your earlier response, and saved it from the spaminator.
Josh Korr
2 years ago
I don’t know if this is the case for the TBO folks too, but the reason you can’t find my entry via Google is because “Video Games as Art” is the contest entry title — it’s not the title of any of the blog posts that make up the entry. Here they are:
The Auteur Problem
Auteurs and Eberts and no-video-game-Tim-Burtons, oh my! (Part I)
Part II
All narratives are equal, but some narratives are more equal than others
To Wrap It Up
Josh Korr
2 years ago
Doh! I messed up the links to the last two. Lemme try again:
All Narratives are equal
To Wrap It Up
C.W.
2 years ago
“Meantime, there’s this thing called “the Google†— even the President’s heard of it.” Damn, Loren sounds like a defensive little punk. How’d she avoid being one of “the 70″?
dave
2 years ago
Hey Tommy, and I thought it was only me who can’t use TBO’s search program. I am aware of at least one other major newspaper from out of state that struggles with their search system.
Loren – perhaps your company might consider hiring Google to perform search functions.