New Citizen Website
 

It looks like the Citizen Newspaper has gotten an online facelift...

www.citizen.com

Why Why Why????
 

I'm already confused by the new design and still trying to find the funnies.

Yikes maybe they want us to actually buy the paper

my vote old format

Fewer links to stories up front, more ads. Clunky.

Well I did get a last look at the old format this morning.

This is visual evidence of the sale from Fosters, I believe.

Further proof that traditional media lacks understanding of this tool. I've lived here nearly two years. Now I can say I've visited the web site twice. Please post the next redesign notification.

New Citizen Website
 

As the new website says, it is a work in progress and they did release it before all the enhancements were finished. I'll give them awhile before i decide whether I like it or not

That may be true, but this isn't 1998 anymore. "Under Construction" websites are not something you see from professional sites these days.

Bingo.....you hit it. The Citizen has had over 9 months to get the site up & this is where they are at.

"Yikes"! I think you are right!

This is what they say about their newly designed website:

"Frankly, we want people to buy our paper, as that is what pays for all the newsgathering and photography. Placing everything that is in the print paper online takes away the incentive for people to subscribe and, without subscribers, we cannot pay for a news organization."

http://www.citizen.com/news/article_...9bb30f31a.html

They need to learn about on-line revenue . . .

I find it terrible. I as many live at the lake in the summer and use the citizen to catch up on what's happening . The new format doesn't show anything when you open so, I tend to close it out rather than dig deeper. Maybe that is their intent but then why bother having website at all. Hope they improve to at least get people to want to open the site every day

I Hate it !

Here you go....the www.cmonitor.com.....has become the new default and defacto (whatever that means) news website for the lakes region .....by filling the lakes region Sunday-Monday NEWS VOID with its' traditional style newspaper website.....www.concordmonitor.com .....(the formal version!).....Hey...check it out in the opinion section...starting on May 4, the Concord Monitor will become a paid website. Oh well, for two bucks you can always buy a NY Times or Wall St Journal anywhere in the country and get your lakes region news from them?

Laconia Daily Sun
 

check out www.laconiadailysun.com there website is awesome. You can bring the real paper right up online and read it.

Ready to pull the plug!
 

We have gotten the Citizen for over ten years. It used to be delivered in the afternoon so we could read it in the evening. Things change.

"To improve our service the Citizen will now be delivered first thing in the morning so that you can get the latest news bright and early!!!"

What that means is that you get yesterdays news in the AM. But the real good news is that it is delivered so late that you don't get a chance to read it before work and so, hold the presses, you now get to read it a day late!

A new twist.

The Citizen has just announced that we will now have the "WEEKEND CITIZEN". That means that the Saturday and Sunday papers will be combined! What a deal.

Last weekend it came on Saturday. No cupons (Deb and the girls are mad) and no funnies!!! I'm BS! No Garfield or Dilbert!!!

The Laconia Daily Sun and the Conway Daily Sun (both freebies) are often thicker than the Citizen.

If this keeps up we will just pick up the SUN at the convienance store.

Misty Blue.

Here's my two cents: About nine months ago, the Laconia Citizen was sold by Foster's newspaper of Dover NH to a small town newspaper conglomerate from Pennsylvania for what was probably a pretty cheap price, and the new owner got to use the existing Citizen website for nine months. Nine months has passed and the new owners are now on their own with the website, so it looks like it is now crunch time while they try to get their "free readership" to switch from a free newspaper website to a paid newspaper website. Does the readership control the newspaper, or does the newspaper control the readership?

Will the new www.Citizen.com be able to get their readers to go from free to paid or will many readers just switch over to reading the three, all-free New Hampshire local newspapers: www.laconiadailysun.com, www.conwaydailysun.com, and www.berlindailysun.com? Only time will tell?

And, the www.concordmonitor.com just announced that it too will be switching from free to paid starting on May 4, so how's about that? So, that leaves us with the mostly free www.unionleader.com which is the largest NH newspaper and one which many readers probably love to hate, due to its' Fox News style of reporting and editorializing, plus its' brief and unintelligent news writing style, but everyone just reads it anyway, because that's all that there is for New Hampshire.

It all makes the good old days of walking to the store and paying 25-cents for a fat daily paper seem like those were truly the good old days!

Death of the Not-so-free Newspaper
 

I wouldn't be surprised to see small newspapers that are still charging for print copies to go away completely within the next five to ten years.

Revenue for newspapers has been steadily decreasing for print editions, except for free hardcopy papers and online editions. Since many businesses know that more people are most likely going to read a free newspaper rather than one that costs $.50, they will purchase advertising with them since there is more readership. Advertisers are more likely to advertise with a paper with a circulation of 15,000 (which is free) than one with only a few thousand (subscription-based or non-free newspapers).

Free newspapers have taken advantage of this and charge less for advertising to entice more business, hence why the free newspaper is so much more successful in getting a significant amount of advertising which pays to print the paper and their employees.

The only difference in this local matter is the content being printed since each newspaper has a different style of getting and relaying the news as well as editing techniques. In the Lakes Region there is one free daily paper and several free weekly papers.

Some people may fear the loss of a newspaper in a community, however, largest companies such as AOL are slowly expanding into communities to gather news and put it online for free of charge (check out www.Patch.com). This type of reporting is being referred to as "hyperlocal" journalism and, in my opinion, will be the way of the future - although free periodicals will still be around because they are free.

The Newseum displays the front pages of more than 800 newspapers worldwide each day on its website. Run your cursor over the map to see the front page of that newspaper and then click on it to go to that paper.

A good example of this is the Hippo news based out of Manchester.It's more directed at lifestyle articles than hard news but has grown 10 fold in the page volume since it was first introduced.

Weekend Citizen
 

The first issue was less than stellar which was admitted by the staff. Now the second weekend was the same or possibly worse. As soon as I can convince my wife we will be dropping the Citizen!

The only thing I will miss are the gaffs of misspelled or wrong words, sentences that make no sense. If the writers and or editors are products of local schools God help us.

OK, now that we (me included) have beat this to death, I am having another thought. This is a small local paper making an attempt to survive. The web site does have e-mail addresses for the management. How about sending in suggestions as to how they can improve the print and/or web editions?

I feel the New Citizen Web site is to difficult to read

1998? I attended a seminar in 1992 that taught to never use "under construction". Finish the work before putting it online. That is unless one wants to be found with key words "under construction" in search engines. :laugh:

When we get our news off paper, it's expensive, its outdated, it's a single sided view we get. We can save our trees, for the birds and the bees, when we get news from the Internet. (Words I promoted in 1994 when the Berkshire Eagle would not print my full page add promoting an online real estate marketing system I designed.) Now my web site gets more traffic than theirs:D

Week two, still junk
 

'Got the "Weekend Citizen" on Saturday. It did have cupons in it this week. Tell me if I'm wrong, but don't the cupon people PAY them to insert them in their rag?

There were no funnies! How do you get through a Sunday without the funnies? No Dilbert, Blondie, Sad Sack, Garfield or Mark Trail. SUX.

The first page was about the earth shaking news about a retired couple who like to ride bikes to the coast! Zowwie!

The paper was so thin (remember this is the Saturday AND Sunday edition) that it didn't quite cover the bottom of the bird cage which is good. "Blue Boy" was "dropping" me hints to the misspellings and incorrect english! That's right Blue Boy, never start a sentance with a gerend.

The paper is a tiny, poorly written, overpriced, badly delivered piece of junk. It is useful to light up the wood stove.

Misty Blue.

Really??
 

If you actually read the article, you would have learned that they were 82 years old and were biking more than 500 miles to go to the husband's 60th college reunion at Princeton.

Misty Blue, I'm not sure how fit you are, but I think that is quite a feat based on their age. I encourage you to please post back again when you are their age and are cycling several hundred miles.

Also, would you rather read a story such as this one or an article about someone killing someone else in the community and have the police no provide addition information with the possibility of the killer still being on the loose?

I agree this paper is useless. No comics, no real news, very thin. It is really the old Saturday paper, but watered down with a few inserts for the price of a Sunday paper.

Although there were coupons, we are getting less coupons than we used to get. We used to get coupons both Saturday and Sunday.


They clearly are all about cutting costs and could care less about quality. Have you seen the font they have used the past two days on the Daily Citizen? I wonder if it is to keep the A section no more than 8 pages. Luckily my husband and I have good eyesight. I feel for anyone who doesn't-how have they read the paper the last two days?

It looks like the Union Leader and the Concord Monitor have both gone the same route as the Citizen by redoing their websites from a traditional newspaper style to a freebie website style. This winnipesaukee.com has a google news search feature for lakes region news from the same newspapers that is still a freebie.

All this probably bodes pretty good for the always free www.laconiadailysun.com

May 3, 2011; the last day ever for the freebie NH traditional newspaper website, the day the free Concord Monitor and free Union Leader news websites followed the Citizen and got replaced with "very low content-freebie sites."

Here's a suggestion: For the same two dollars, the price of the weekend Citizen, C-Monitor or U.L., you can get the weekend Wall St Journal, that comes out on Saturday morning, and it's not just about national business.

So when does craigslist come out with a local newspaper for each and every one of its' classified ad areas? (That's a joke!)

Enter the Dark Ages of New Hampshire internet news! After about 15-years of free NH news on the internet, will enough readers be willing to make the switch back to actually paying to read the newspapers, which have all gotten much smaller in content over the last 15-years. Paying for a newspaper....what a concept?

Just go take a look at www.cmonitor.com, www.citizen.com, or www.unionleader.com and you will get the picture that the news content is no longer there......at least....not for free anymore. It looks like the internet comments in the Union Leader are no longer posted in their free website, and the internet comments were easily the best part of the U.L., so that will make a very big change in the number of people hurling e-mail opinionated mudballs via the U.L. It should change its name from Union Leader to Union Loser!

terrible why bother

Apology
 

NH boat70

May I apologize for any disrespect to the couple who made their remarkable bike ride. Many years their Jr. they shame me with their stamina.

While this was a happy story, my point was that it was not NEWS. (BTW I did read the article)

The whole paper was tiny and had almost no news content in it. I pay for six days of the Citizen AND the Sunday Citizen. I am recieving five days of the normal paper and nothing substancial on either day of the weekend. I do not intend to renew.

Again my apologies for any misunderstanding about this couples wonderful trip. I would never, and those who know me realize, show disrespect to such a wonderful couple and their accomplishment.

Misty Blue