Real Voice: O.C. Now is so yesterday

The Real Voice walks the streets of Newport-Mesa, gathering information where he can. If you have a tip for the Real Voice, e-mail him (or her) confidentially here.

By The Real Voice

In the ’90s, the Los Angeles Times deployed an army of 200 full-time journalists and dozens of stringers to try and capture the attention of the Orange County reader. It worked. The Times circulation in Orange County climbed past 200,000 on weekdays and Saturdays and 300,000 on Sundays.

Times change. Today, the newspaper has about a half-dozen journalists left in Orange County, and a drop in circulation almost as stunning. 

Now The Times has revealed its latest weapon in attracting Orange County readers: O.C. Now, or as the URL has it, www.theocnow.com. In its present state, it feels like a pop gun. Or maybe worse: a shotgun that has shot The Times in its own foot.

At one time, The Times would do nothing to harm its brand as a world-class news operation. Those days are done.

O.C. Now mostly consists of material produced by The Times’ community newspapers in Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach. It’s as though the rest of the county didn’t exist. It should be called "Four of OC’s 34 Cities Now."

The website is full of what I would generously call quirks. Under “Sports,” it offers some nice prep features (from the four aforementioned cities), but nothing about the Anaheim Ducks or Los Angeles Angels. And under the “Featured” headline, there’s a slew of non-sports stories. The "Featured" material never changes on any page, whether it's sports, news, events or any other topic.

Under “Events,” there's no basic calendar, and posted on the page are stories such as a woman turning 103 or news that has already happened. That's not what the readers are looking for.

The most telling feature of the new site is the anemic blogroll. This is where the editors provide links to blogs and websites readers of O.C. Now would be inclined to visit. Let’s take them one by one.

• A Bubbling Cauldron: A great pick. A well-written and timely blog about Costa Mesa.
• Civil Thinking: Another blog supposedly about Costa Mesa but it's virtually inactive. In an era where good bloggers post multiple items a day, here’s Civil Thinking’s tally: 1 post in 2010, 4 posts in 2009, 5 posts in 2008. That's 10 posts in two years.
• Corona del Mar Today: Another excellent pick, especially since the Daily Pilot gets many story tips from the site (though never gives credit, a violation of journalistic protocol).
• La Femme Wonkita: A blog by former Costa Mesa Mayor Sandy Genis. Good stuff, but the last post was Nov. 17.
• L.A. Now: Los Angeles? Why would that be among the top dozen blogs about OC? Oh, it's an LA Times blog.  
• OC Voice: A green blog mostly about Huntington Beach.
• Orange County Local News Network: A partner with the LA Times, coming Feb. 1.
• Orange County Progressive: A liberal blog.
• Orange Juice Blog: A liberal political blog.
• Red County: A conservative political blog.
• The 818 Now: Why would editors give OC readers a link to stories generated in the 818 area code? Again, because The Times’ owns the 818 Now website.

But there's an even larger problem with the blogroll: some of OC’s best news websites and bloggers are missing, including the OC Register's many excellent blogs, the OC Weekly's Naval Gazing and, of course, the Newport-Mesa Daily Voice and other smaller local news websites.

This is why O.C. Now feels like so yesterday. In today's world, it's standard to provide readers with all relevant links, whether or not they are competitors, because you want the readers to keep your site as their home base. The barring of competitors shows how dated O.C. Now's brain trust is when it comes to the Internet. They just don't get it and probably never will. There's no reason, at the present, for OC readers to flock to O.C. Now.

For anyone who loves news, it's a journalistic tragedy that the Los Angeles Times has retreated from Orange County and left behind this shell of a website that advertises itself as "Real-time news, sports and opinion about Orange County." Talk about false advertising.