So Misguided

Independent newspaper. Does anyone recall what that means?

The Tyee has a new campaign this summer to get 5000 new subscribers. There’s a video component and a website all about spreading the word.

I like the design but there are a couple of things that don’t work for me.

1. I like to indulge in crappy entertainment fluff, I mean news. Mocking the garbage in favour of pristine news doesn’t appeal to me, but maybe I’m not the target market.

2. In order to enter to win prizes for telling my friends, I have to send them an email using a form on the Tyee site. There’s no privacy statement. Are they going to spam my friends after? I don’t know. Why can’t this blog post count?

The part I do really like is the design of the site. Nice, clean layout. Easy to read text. And the text content is good. The video though is a little too earnest for me. Maybe we should AdHack it.

See The Tyee Video.

Hey Monique,

Came across your posting, and thought I’d address the privacy concern.  In the flurry of creating all the forms, we left that out.  So we’ll definitely be putting some privacy wording in there, as it’s definitely not our plan to keep any information from the ‘forward to a friend’ actions.  Only people who choose to subscribe to the Tyee’s enewsletter, or who register to comment on our stories, agree to ever receive email from us.  And of course we never rent, sell or share any information.

Thanks for catching that, and keeping us on our toes.

Cheers,
Michelle

Michelle, you’re doing an awesome job.

Thank you for clarifying the privacy policy.

I find the Tyee to be a good source of news that often you won’t find covered elsewhere (or not till weeks later) but I do find it dry and too self-contained. Their idea of funky content is just sad, like watching Bob Newhart in a mosh pit, only Bob would make it amusing somehow. It needs some fresh voices that are actually fresh, not just thirtysomething and with a burning wish to be iconoclastic.