For years, the Galesburg Register-Mail’s Website was a clone of the Journal Star’s somewhat clunky, but still generally usable site. They’ve just switched to a new, cleaner-looking design. I didn’t use their old version enough to judge whether this one is more usable than the old version. It looks nicer. I see that they are going to offer a page a feeds and will email headlines to those who sign up. I also note that they are using the domain name of galesburg.com. As we know, peoria.com is taken.
GateHouse Media is big on getting its newspapers on the Web, if for no other reason than it makes it financially harder for someone else to come along and create local online-only news organization, which are sprouting up everywhere.
Hat tip: Robbiedobbles.com
Tags: galesburg, GateHouse, Newspapers, register mail
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
Looks like a clone of the Rockford Register-Star’s site… http://www.rrstar.com/
I think “still generally usable” is a bit of a stretch. I can’t tell you how many times my browser has frozen up when I tab-open some articles I want to read over my lunch-halfhour. Hell, I can’t tell you how much of lunch-halfhour is wasted waiting for the site to load. Drives me friggin’ nuts!
Sure, I wish it looked better, but even if it did get a makeover and still didn’t load, what’s the point?
I agree with PeoriaIllinoisan, “generally usable” is a stretch. The website is painfully slow during peak traffic times and often, locks up my browser (numerous, IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera). God forbid an article get “dugg” or “farked”. If the Journal Star is serious about providing an internet based news service in conjunction with their print service, it is time to invest in the hardware and bandwidth required to accomplish this.
If they are burying their heads in the sand and view the internet version as a lesser cousin to the printed version, they will be disappointed. If the Journal Star offered a full version of their paper online today for the equivalent price of their printed version, I would subscribe in a heartbeat. I can not see myself doing so with the shoddy service and apparent disregard for the web based version, as it stands today.
Kudos to the Register-Mail!!
A major hardware/software upgrade for the Journal Star’s Web site was in the pipeline when Copley announced it was selling the paper on Oct. 31, 2006. A giant hand reached across the miles from California and yanked all the money back almost immediately.
I agree that slow page loads/browser crashes are a serious problem there in early afternoon. I’ve heard it can be bad in the morning, too. I also know that the JS Web people are aware of the problem.
I have no idea what, if any, upgrades GateHouse plans in Peoria.
Thanks for the shout out. I don’t read the JS a whole lote (especially now that i am farther away in the QC) but always have trouble with the speed. Ditto for the R-M. The new system they use seems to be faster at least.
I am sure zope is million times easier than what they used to do. But certainly is not perfect. As Miller noted, they didn’t seem to even customize the theme a bit. I have never used it and am not a Python expert so I couldn’t even speculate on how to fix it.
[...] Thanks for the transparency, Springfielders. No doubt the new sites in Springfield and Peoria will resemble what’s used in Galesburg. [...]