The Albany Democrat Herald focuses on keeping us informed with local and world news. Most of the stories seem to be about summer fun, block parties, medical students, illnesses in California due to ground turkey and sports.
It seems to be organized well with sections and a mixture of story lengths along with different size pictures. It seems to kind of be set up with the bigger picture and articles starting in the front and decreasing from there.
It has various amounts of pictures per page along with a lot of text. Most things have color but, there are some that seem to be black and white as well.
The paper consists of employment, rentals, real estate, help wanted, obituaries, calendar, comics, crosswords, legal services, handyman, lawn care, animals, auto sales etc. So, as you can see the paper has an array of offerings. This particular newspaper has well over 50 advertisements.
When looking at the online version of the newspaper compared to the printed. I really must say, I like the printed version better. I can thumb through the printed version, skimming and reading what interests me. The online you got to hit tabs of the category you want to look at. As well as, when looking for a house, I really didn't like the way it was organized and having to search through towns. It's really hard to visualize and compare houses in several towns without having to scroll back and forth. The printed version it's all there on one page.
I know a lot of newspaper are basically set up the same way but, I think this one is better for my family personally. And probably as well for many of you because it has our local news than say Portland's.
The editor's seem to take photos seriously. There are so many they definitely keep your attention. And when their in color they really stand out to you.
I believe two of the biggest strengths for me would be all the local news and keeping us readers up to date with the local events. I know I wouldn't have a clue of things going on in and around town if it wasn't for the newspaper. As well as, colored pictures they strike your attention to read the captions. Which in turn gets you wanting to read the article.
The only weakness in my opinion would be spending a whole entire page on the comics. To me that's a waste of perfectly good advertising space. I personally don't like the lay out of the content online it only shows a bunch of tabs and options of recent local news, when you open it up. It should be formatted like the printed version. Then it would be very easy to scroll through what you are looking for that way.
I do like that they kept all the colored pictures to try and draw your attention. I would have to say that they primary audience would be a least 16 yr old's and older.
All of the ads, stories and photos seem to fit well with what articles they are linked with.
I believe the Albany Democrat Herald has done a pretty good job from staying clear of stereotyping and/or offensive messages. I definitely prefer the print. I just find that it's more convenient for me to just skim through and read what appeals to me. But, I also believe that a lot of people would want online version because it's accessible from anywhere and it's free.
I always try and do the Sudoku but, I have no clue how to do it so, I usually give up and just do the scrabble. I actually had to look a little more in depth with this newspaper and came across some good articles on Norway and Iraq. So, I intend to maybe slow my skimming down a little to take a look at all the articles in the Albany Democrat Herald.
http://www.democratherald.com/
http://www2.democratherald.com/admarket/
http://www.democratherald.com/sports/football/
