Olive is software to put facsimiles of the newspaper print editions on line. By clicking on an article, a reader can see a more screen friendly copy of an article. Both the Duluth News Tribune and the Star Tribune have Olive editions. I subscribe to both, partly to get the comics rather than the text of some of the articles.
But for years the Olive edition has had a major flaw; a flaw that still exists in the current version rolled out last year. I don't know where they get o• writing about people like Je•rey.
The Olive edition of the 2017-04-17 Duluth News Tribune converted a USA Today article about North Korea to:
"The secretive state also showed o• a submarine-launched missile that it successfully fired last year.
"Analysts said that the weapons on display raised new questions about North Korea’s capacities going forward. Je•rey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif., called the show 'a bewildering array of new missile-related hardware.'"
I did change the quote marks to match the standard for quoting material that includes quotes.
Given all the product recalls, the unfriendly skies of the airlines, and much more, I would say the only efficiency in far too many corporations is move as much revenue as possible to the CEOs and board members. Gosh, I wish I could get $250,000 or more for showing up for six board meetings a year. And many of these people, including the CEO's are on the boards of several companies.
Showing posts with label Forum Communications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Forum Communications. Show all posts
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Friday, February 10, 2017
Corporate efficiency?
Forum Communications (owners of the Duluth News Tribune) implemented a new “improved” version of the Olive Edition. This is a program that allows readers to toggle between a facsimile of the printed paper and individual articles. I sent the following to the person who responded to my help message:
"I do find the new version a lot harder to use. I prefer the way the Star Tribune is set up. For example, the Strib version has a section icon at the top left. Much easier than using the arrows to go back or forth page by page. Also, when I first opened it, it didn’t automatically set the page to my screen size. It took a bit of fumbling before had the page size adjusted properly.
"Olive still can’t translate the text correctly. Most of the articles that I looked at still drop the first letter of a story.”
That paragon of efficiency, Netflix, sent me email that my next DVD would be arriving three days ago!! Which it had! Maybe their email system went down. And that system was most likely set up by some corporation.
I downloaded Stitcher because iTunes was just getting too difficult to use. I was finding it being less responsive to downloading and playing podcasts. Even Stitcher has lots of hidden things that don’t work easily and clearly. Many of the operations don’t work as described in the help articles. I think I finally have my podcasts organized that I can download new episodes and can play them offline without a problem.
I’ve been at two different groceries this week where the register system did not work properly. Fortunately, each had it come on line quickly or had a workaround.
Good old Apple! I’m never sure what it will take to get a hotspot from my phone working. Sometimes our iPads or laptops will recognize the hotspot immediately. Sometimes it will take several minutes and multiple times turning the hotspot off and on again. As somebody in a coffee shop loudly proclaimed months ago about gas prices: “It makes no sense!”
In defense of the oil companies and all the corporate and locally-owned stations, it does make sense. Gas is an auction commodity. Demand goes up, the price goes up. Demand goes down, the price goes down. Of course, there is also the seasonal switching of blends that decreases supply, causing the price to go up.
And those much maligned government agencies. Working as planned.
Our social security checks are always posted to our bank on time. (The bank does mark the payments as available immediately, but may take many hours to post them to our “ledger”)
If we order a book or DVD from the Duluth Public Library (either from the system or from MNLink*), they send us email within an hour or two of items being available at our branch.
*MNLink is a consortium of the local government libraries that make their collections available to other libraries in the system. Often an item is delivered to the requesting library within two days of its being returned by the previous borrower.
And snowplowing has gotten better. Our local streets are plowed several times after a storm and getting around may be a hassle for awhile and driveways may be blocked. One thing that has improved is that a sidewalk plow generally comes around a day or two after a major storm. It even makes up for those residents who rarely shovel their sidewalks.
Finally, the Duluth Transit Authority buses are fairly close to on-time even when the streets are not in the best condition. And oh, yes, those friendly and courteous drivers are Teamsters.
"I do find the new version a lot harder to use. I prefer the way the Star Tribune is set up. For example, the Strib version has a section icon at the top left. Much easier than using the arrows to go back or forth page by page. Also, when I first opened it, it didn’t automatically set the page to my screen size. It took a bit of fumbling before had the page size adjusted properly.
"Olive still can’t translate the text correctly. Most of the articles that I looked at still drop the first letter of a story.”
That paragon of efficiency, Netflix, sent me email that my next DVD would be arriving three days ago!! Which it had! Maybe their email system went down. And that system was most likely set up by some corporation.
I downloaded Stitcher because iTunes was just getting too difficult to use. I was finding it being less responsive to downloading and playing podcasts. Even Stitcher has lots of hidden things that don’t work easily and clearly. Many of the operations don’t work as described in the help articles. I think I finally have my podcasts organized that I can download new episodes and can play them offline without a problem.
I’ve been at two different groceries this week where the register system did not work properly. Fortunately, each had it come on line quickly or had a workaround.
Good old Apple! I’m never sure what it will take to get a hotspot from my phone working. Sometimes our iPads or laptops will recognize the hotspot immediately. Sometimes it will take several minutes and multiple times turning the hotspot off and on again. As somebody in a coffee shop loudly proclaimed months ago about gas prices: “It makes no sense!”
In defense of the oil companies and all the corporate and locally-owned stations, it does make sense. Gas is an auction commodity. Demand goes up, the price goes up. Demand goes down, the price goes down. Of course, there is also the seasonal switching of blends that decreases supply, causing the price to go up.
And those much maligned government agencies. Working as planned.
Our social security checks are always posted to our bank on time. (The bank does mark the payments as available immediately, but may take many hours to post them to our “ledger”)
If we order a book or DVD from the Duluth Public Library (either from the system or from MNLink*), they send us email within an hour or two of items being available at our branch.
*MNLink is a consortium of the local government libraries that make their collections available to other libraries in the system. Often an item is delivered to the requesting library within two days of its being returned by the previous borrower.
And snowplowing has gotten better. Our local streets are plowed several times after a storm and getting around may be a hassle for awhile and driveways may be blocked. One thing that has improved is that a sidewalk plow generally comes around a day or two after a major storm. It even makes up for those residents who rarely shovel their sidewalks.
Finally, the Duluth Transit Authority buses are fairly close to on-time even when the streets are not in the best condition. And oh, yes, those friendly and courteous drivers are Teamsters.
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Corporate slip-up
David McGrath wrote a local view, “A few ‘no thanks' are in order today".
I sent him a note of thanks, but when I sent it, I realized that the address was wrong. The first four characters of his address were not included. In the Olive Edition of the DNT the email address was split. (Olive is software that displays the printed edition as is and then will open up single articles. It has many of its own problems.)
I thought it might be that the opinion editor was being careless. That would be ironic because he always seems to find something to change in almost all of my letters or commentaries. So much so that I have given up sending anything to the DNT.
I looked at the DNT on my iPad this morning, but I am using my MacBook Air to write this blog entry. The Olive Edition opens with an error on this computer, and nobody has fixed the problem yet. So, I looked at the web edition, and surprise! The email address is correct at the bottom of the article.
That means that the opinion editor probably never saw the result once it left his computer to the automated process to be put in all the various formats.
And probably nobody double checks all of these errors because the owners won’t provide enough resources to check and correct all of these irritating errors.
I sent him a note of thanks, but when I sent it, I realized that the address was wrong. The first four characters of his address were not included. In the Olive Edition of the DNT the email address was split. (Olive is software that displays the printed edition as is and then will open up single articles. It has many of its own problems.)
I thought it might be that the opinion editor was being careless. That would be ironic because he always seems to find something to change in almost all of my letters or commentaries. So much so that I have given up sending anything to the DNT.
I looked at the DNT on my iPad this morning, but I am using my MacBook Air to write this blog entry. The Olive Edition opens with an error on this computer, and nobody has fixed the problem yet. So, I looked at the web edition, and surprise! The email address is correct at the bottom of the article.
That means that the opinion editor probably never saw the result once it left his computer to the automated process to be put in all the various formats.
And probably nobody double checks all of these errors because the owners won’t provide enough resources to check and correct all of these irritating errors.
Monday, October 01, 2012
One corporation still can't live within its means
On 2011-09-26 I wrote how Forum Communications raised the price of the Duluth News Tribune by 33-1/3 percent. Now just over a year later they've raised the price by 25 percent! I had been forewarned by a vendor that the Sunday paper would be raised to $2.50, but I didn't know that the daily would be raised to $1.25.
When I went to the corner boxes this morning I was surprised to find that there were still copies of the Star Tribune. This location is chronically understocked with the Strib, often being sold out a bit after seven. I put four quarters in the Strib machine and took my copy. Then I put four quarters in the DNT machine. It wouldn't unlock. I tried again. Same thing. I looked at the price labels on the box, and I know I saw $2.50 for the Sunday edition and $1.00 for the daily edition.
When I got home, I sent email about this to the Customer Service representative. She had not responded by about one this afternoon.
I went out later and stopped at a convenience store. It had signs about the price change for both editions of the DNT. As I forked out the extra quarter, I joked with the clerk, "If government raised taxes by 25 percent, people would complain loudly. Hell! If they would complain if government raised taxes by 2.5 percent."
When I got to the fitness center, the DNT box outside the door had the new prices written in marker, not a "permanent" sign.
What a way to run a railroad, I mean a newspaper! I wonder what a 67 percent increase in just over a year will do to circulation. I really do appreciate having a physical copy of the newspaper to read at breakfast and lunch. I wonder if the employees have seen a comparable increase in their income.
See also "Can't corporations live within their means?"
When I went to the corner boxes this morning I was surprised to find that there were still copies of the Star Tribune. This location is chronically understocked with the Strib, often being sold out a bit after seven. I put four quarters in the Strib machine and took my copy. Then I put four quarters in the DNT machine. It wouldn't unlock. I tried again. Same thing. I looked at the price labels on the box, and I know I saw $2.50 for the Sunday edition and $1.00 for the daily edition.
When I got home, I sent email about this to the Customer Service representative. She had not responded by about one this afternoon.
I went out later and stopped at a convenience store. It had signs about the price change for both editions of the DNT. As I forked out the extra quarter, I joked with the clerk, "If government raised taxes by 25 percent, people would complain loudly. Hell! If they would complain if government raised taxes by 2.5 percent."
When I got to the fitness center, the DNT box outside the door had the new prices written in marker, not a "permanent" sign.
What a way to run a railroad, I mean a newspaper! I wonder what a 67 percent increase in just over a year will do to circulation. I really do appreciate having a physical copy of the newspaper to read at breakfast and lunch. I wonder if the employees have seen a comparable increase in their income.
See also "Can't corporations live within their means?"
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Think of the complaints if this corporation were the government
On Thanksgiving morning, I went to the corner to get the Duluth News Tribune and the Star Tribune. Instead of copies of the DNT, there was a sign that the DNT was available only at convenience stores. Well, this is not convenient to me because the nearest convenience stores are about a mile away.
So, we reversed our normal order of newspaper reading and read a large part of the Star Tribune first.
We were going to our cabin and planned to buy a few things at the supermarket, and so we would get the DNT there. Surprise, they had none. I asked the head cashier about this, and she said they had a call in but it hadn't been returned.
I needed gas anyway and stopped at a gas station/convenience store. I put fifty bucks of gas in the tank and pulled out $51 to pay for the gas and the newspaper. Inside I picked up a DNT thicker than the normal Sunday paper. The clerk warned me that was only the ads and the real newspaper was in a different stack. I picked up a normal size paper and left the want ads behind; we would only put them directly in the recycle stack at home. I went to the register to pay for the gas and the paper, and the clerk told me I needed to pay another dollar. The Thanksgiving Day paper was two dollars!!!
Can't Forum Communications, the publisher of the DNT, live within its means? Shouldn't the advertisers be paying for all the extra paper and printing? Is Forum Communications being efficient by having all the ads left behind for the clerks to clean up?
How loud would the complaints be if any government agency suddenly doubled a fee or a tax? How loud would the cries of government waste be if an office threw out such a huge percentage of paper?
I bet we won't see any letters to the editor about this Thanksgiving waste, but we will continue to see letters about government living within its means. A while ago I asked Chuck Frederick, the opinion page editor, if he had gotten any letters about the 33-1/3% increase of the DNT (75 cents to one dollar). He replied, "Haven't gotten any letters about our price increase. Shh!" I read his reply with a smile. What else can he say? He probably has very little input into pricing decisions.
It is amazing what companies can get by with in price increases but governments are heavily criticized for the same or even smaller increases. People are complaining vociferously about property taxes going up about $100/year, but there are no published complaints about the cost of a newspaper going up $104/year.
Another wasteful practice of Forum Communications, that may or may not continue, is providing two copies of the weekly Budgeteer News to some of its customers. For as long as we've lived in Duluth, a free copy of the Budgeteer News has been thrown on our porch on every Saturday. A few weeks ago Forum Communications started putting it in the DNT delivered to the boxes. What need do I have for two copies of the same paper, of which I throw out two-thirds without even looking at?
I don't know if the doubling up will continue or not. There was no Budgeteer on our porch Saturday, and the Saturday DNT didn't contain it. However, there were some stories posted on the Budgeteer web site on Friday. Were there not enough articles to publish this week? We'll probably never know; corporations don't have to have the transparency that we demand from government (and often don't get).
Update: 2011-11-27 16:00 - Sometime after eight o'clock this morning, the Duluth Budgeteer was thrown on our porch. I just noticed a few minutes ago. I'll see next Saturday if the DNT resumes the double publication of the Budgeteer.
Update: 2011-11-27 18:03 - Paragraph about $100/year for tax/price increase added.
So, we reversed our normal order of newspaper reading and read a large part of the Star Tribune first.
We were going to our cabin and planned to buy a few things at the supermarket, and so we would get the DNT there. Surprise, they had none. I asked the head cashier about this, and she said they had a call in but it hadn't been returned.
I needed gas anyway and stopped at a gas station/convenience store. I put fifty bucks of gas in the tank and pulled out $51 to pay for the gas and the newspaper. Inside I picked up a DNT thicker than the normal Sunday paper. The clerk warned me that was only the ads and the real newspaper was in a different stack. I picked up a normal size paper and left the want ads behind; we would only put them directly in the recycle stack at home. I went to the register to pay for the gas and the paper, and the clerk told me I needed to pay another dollar. The Thanksgiving Day paper was two dollars!!!
Can't Forum Communications, the publisher of the DNT, live within its means? Shouldn't the advertisers be paying for all the extra paper and printing? Is Forum Communications being efficient by having all the ads left behind for the clerks to clean up?
How loud would the complaints be if any government agency suddenly doubled a fee or a tax? How loud would the cries of government waste be if an office threw out such a huge percentage of paper?
I bet we won't see any letters to the editor about this Thanksgiving waste, but we will continue to see letters about government living within its means. A while ago I asked Chuck Frederick, the opinion page editor, if he had gotten any letters about the 33-1/3% increase of the DNT (75 cents to one dollar). He replied, "Haven't gotten any letters about our price increase. Shh!" I read his reply with a smile. What else can he say? He probably has very little input into pricing decisions.
It is amazing what companies can get by with in price increases but governments are heavily criticized for the same or even smaller increases. People are complaining vociferously about property taxes going up about $100/year, but there are no published complaints about the cost of a newspaper going up $104/year.
Another wasteful practice of Forum Communications, that may or may not continue, is providing two copies of the weekly Budgeteer News to some of its customers. For as long as we've lived in Duluth, a free copy of the Budgeteer News has been thrown on our porch on every Saturday. A few weeks ago Forum Communications started putting it in the DNT delivered to the boxes. What need do I have for two copies of the same paper, of which I throw out two-thirds without even looking at?
I don't know if the doubling up will continue or not. There was no Budgeteer on our porch Saturday, and the Saturday DNT didn't contain it. However, there were some stories posted on the Budgeteer web site on Friday. Were there not enough articles to publish this week? We'll probably never know; corporations don't have to have the transparency that we demand from government (and often don't get).
Update: 2011-11-27 16:00 - Sometime after eight o'clock this morning, the Duluth Budgeteer was thrown on our porch. I just noticed a few minutes ago. I'll see next Saturday if the DNT resumes the double publication of the Budgeteer.
Update: 2011-11-27 18:03 - Paragraph about $100/year for tax/price increase added.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Another corporation can't live within its means
This morning my wife went to the corner to buy the Duluth News Tribune and the Star Tribune. She put three quarters in the News Tribune machine and it wouldn't unlock. She was able to get the coins back. She put three quarters in the Star Tribune machine and was able to take out a paper.
I later bought a News Tribune at a gas station and was asked for one dollar. What? It's 75 cents. Nope, it went up this morning.
Can't Forum Communications, the publisher of the News Tribune live within its means? Can you imagine the editorials in some of its more conservative papers if any government raised taxes 33-1/3 percent?
I know many people in Duluth will not buy the News Tribune because they don't think it has much content, not even 75 cents worth. Will there be even more people who think the content is not worth one dollar?
Forum Communications may find itself in the situation many bus companies did. Costs went up and so service frequency went down. Service frequency went down, and so did ridership went down. Costs per rider went down and so service frequency went down…
By the way, the publisher of the Star Tribune is a paragon of efficiency:) Its machine at this particular corner still charges 75 cents even though the cost every where else is one dollar.
I later bought a News Tribune at a gas station and was asked for one dollar. What? It's 75 cents. Nope, it went up this morning.
Can't Forum Communications, the publisher of the News Tribune live within its means? Can you imagine the editorials in some of its more conservative papers if any government raised taxes 33-1/3 percent?
I know many people in Duluth will not buy the News Tribune because they don't think it has much content, not even 75 cents worth. Will there be even more people who think the content is not worth one dollar?
Forum Communications may find itself in the situation many bus companies did. Costs went up and so service frequency went down. Service frequency went down, and so did ridership went down. Costs per rider went down and so service frequency went down…
By the way, the publisher of the Star Tribune is a paragon of efficiency:) Its machine at this particular corner still charges 75 cents even though the cost every where else is one dollar.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)