Community newspapers: Tyger Burger vs. George Herald

by Stii

I don’t consume much news these days. I don’t buy newspapers. I don’t visit news sites online or on my mobile. I get the news from my friends on sites like Twitter, Facebook or on their blogs. If it is interesting and relevant to me, my friends will tell me.

The one exception is the community or local news paper. In George we used to buy the George Herald every Thursday without fail. Why? It is relevant news to me. Here in Brackenfell we get the Tyger Burger once a week and I try to skim past all the ads to see what’s important.

Now have a look at the two newspapers’ websites:

The George Herald
The George Herald

Not bad at all. It is quite a good looking site. It has some very interesting elements which I like and a lot they can add that would make it even better, but I’ll talk about that at a later stage. One HUGE flaw is there is no mobile offering. None whatsoever, which is a major oversight in my opinion. Turns out that they do have a mobile offering at http://m.georgeherald.com. Thanks for letting me know Angelique. At least, if you want to get the latest local news online in George, you can.

Tyger Burger (I’m not even going to link to this for obvious reasons…)

Tyger Burger

I’m speechless…

I have a couple of theories why:

1. Media24 don’t spend much time or effort on this. Community newspapers are not exactly hugely scalable businesses. That I get. The thing is, a web and mobile offering shouldn’t cost much. Even is they slap on WordPress it would be a 100% improvement. While it may not be a hugely scalable business, it could be a sustainable one creating job opportunities. Let’s call it a community service then. This is just shocking!

2. They’re simply lame. This I doubt as I know these guys and they’re not.

3. They’ve have no competition and because it is news you won’t find elsewhere you have to take what they give. In other words they simply don’t care. Sure, this is a viable reason, but the same could be said of the George Herald and they’ve done it differently. Refer to point number 2.

4. As a business unit they do not have the budget to do a good web and mobile offering. I’m sorry, but then they are doing it wrong. If the George Herald can do it, the Tyger Burger should be able to do so much more. Hell, talk to us if you feel strong enough about it.

I’d love to know:

Are you interested in local news? Do you often read it and how? If it had a great online and mobile offering, would you read it?

I must admit, being a Georgian myself, I do feel somewhat proud.