so whatcha, whatcha, whatcha, whatcha want?
you’ve probably seen the ‘suggest a story’ button over on the right side of the page there. well finally back home from china and the czech republic, i took a look at what had been suggested while i was gone and came across an interesting anonymous suggestion called “MB ATL Needs Shaping Up,” which i am going to post here in it’s entirety:
This isn’t really a story submission more as it is an overall suggestion. Could you guys do more to report on local news? I know Metroblogging isn’t an event listing, but you sure can’t tell that from looking at the past few stories. It’s either authors plugging events they’re involved with or interested in or fluff pieces about nothing specifically Atlanta related. How about the collapse over at Grady Memorial Hospital? Or Decatur getting free Wi-Fi? Don’t let the AJC scoop you guys!
so i am looking for your reaction to that. i think it’s a fair assesment of our coverage of local news (i.e. none of us have posted about chris benoit or the wayne williams dna test results) but it is also fair that to be a news site is not our mission.
so what are you looking for? more news? more music? more culture? more drinks of the week?
drop your thoughts in the comments on this post.
I’d love to see more posting all together — more news, more events, more drinks — more more more. I know they’re looking for authors who can post more than 3 times a week and I know you guys all have full time jobs — but I think it’s the general sparseness lately that’s made some of that stick out.
It would be nice if they had some sort of approval system where anyone could make a post, but it just not publish till one of you approved people gave it the green light. That way you could spread the work around, get good variety and keep the blog somewhat on topic and the spam at bay.
I read the Metroblogs for LA, San Francisco and New Orleans. The writers seem to be more plugged into their city. They definitely post more. They cover more art and strange neighborhood events that make for interesting reading.
I’d like to see more culture, arts, music and more coverage of what makes Atlanta a unique city.
Drinks of the week are pretty weak, imo.
hmmmmm….while not useful to me, i think drinks of the week is a fun feature….
There’s only 3 whatcha’s in So Whatcha Want?
Anyhoo, I think y’all needs more authors, it’s a pretty slim list, not been the same since the days of Daniel, Jessica, Lori, Tony and *cough*me*cough*
eh, you are right greg…i got a little excited when i was typing the title ;-)
More authors and better topics, definitely. There are a lot of kick-ass Atlanta bloggers out there covering a lot of local events that I’m sure would love to contribute a post or two to MB ATL on a regular basis. Granted, MB ATL isn’t supposed to be a news site, but it is an outlet that’s unique because of the many different authors with different voices.
I’m curious though, how many of the MB ATL authors do research for their posts (in terms of finding topics)? Is it off the cuff? Do you read the paper? Do you ask your neighbors? Do you visit Atlanta.net to know what’s coming up? Do you read other local blogs? All of those are good starting places for improvement.
Addressing Karsh’s point from the perspective of the city “Captain”, I read a bunch of local blogs, I take notes during my commute (at red lights) and I try to bookmark/del.icio.us links for later, since most of us have dayjobs and other blogs.
Sorry if that came out like an excuse. We’re obviously looking to improve our offerings or we wouldn’t have asked.
I think our number one problem/challenge is post volume. If we put more here, we’d be better off.
Totally understandable, Seth. (I’m sure you remember I wrote for MB ATL for about a year during 2005-2006.) The consensus I’m getting from the comments is that there should be more of everything.
Oh, I absolutely remember you. It was early when I commented and my structure wasn’t the best but my message should be clear: we’d like to do more; we’d like to do better. Help us!
And that includes you, Karsh. Want back in?
i totally second the return of karsh to the metblog….
Well, I sent a long description of some issues I have with MARTA (certainly a local topic of interest to some) to “Suggest a Story” and was met with echoing silence. So I figured you just wanted to talk about things you (the collective “you”) wanted to talk about.
Let me ask the folks over at 9rules and see what they say. (The reason I left in the first place was because I got into 9r.)
I agree with Seth that the single biggest thing we can do to improve the site is to post more frequently; I myself have been terribly negligent of late.
I also think that we have been slack about picking up the suggested stories.
I agree about the “more” bit. The reason I don’t visit Atlanta MB more often is because the posting is so sparse. More voices would equal more topics and coverage of the city.