An update and an invitation for more feedback about Crosscut.
I want to give you a quick update on Crosscut after three days of reader encouragement and feedback. I'll touch on these issues briefly, but feel free to inquire at editor@crosscut.com if you'd like to know more about an item here or something else.
- Some of you have noticed that Crosscut is like a regular newspaper in some ways and not in others. This story, for example, has raised some eyebrows – the writer having long been involved in the subject he's reporting on. As I said in a comment at the end of that story, Crosscut is going to be experimenting in lots of ways. It's not going to be journalism as usual. If you want to challenge something we've done, great – you can do it at the bottom of every story. As we learn what works and what is a bad idea, we'll evolve. Crosscut is a work in progress. We'd love to hear your nits, picks, and general feedback on any page. Or leave a comment at the bottom of this one.
- Ah, yes, comments. Some of you have had trouble getting registered to leave them. We're pretty certain that our e-mailed confirmations, a spam deterrent, are in some cases winding up in, you guessed it, spam mailboxes. Some of you couldn't find them there, either. We're going to try using a different e-mail server. I hope that will take care of the problem. Meantime, e-mail me if you can't get registered and I'll have it done manually. You can also add the crosscut.com domain to your safe-sites list, if your e-mail program or Internet provider has that feature, to avoid this altogether.
- We're working on font legibility. We got that message loud and clear. You should have seen an increase in size today, but if that's not sufficient, please let me know at editor@crosscut.com.
- Our daily newsletter has been inconsistent, and mostly that's due to incompetence among the full-time staff. I'm determined to find out who's responsible, but Crosscut is such a big organization that it could take a while. The witch hunt, that is. We hope to have the newsletter back on track today.
- We're getting great suggestions for sites to link to and monitor for news. Keep them coming. You can also suggest live news stories you think we've overlooked. If you have a site, story, document, or blog to recommend, e-mail us at suggest@crosscut.com. Whatever you suggest, it should be about the great nearby and not the great far-away. News organizations should feel free to call our attention to scoops. There's an enormous volume of news in the region, and we can use help spotting good stuff.
