New online Oregonian sucks. But could suck less.

Bottom line: one day into the Portland Oregonian's venture into being an online newspaper for subscribers on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, I hate it.

The online reading experience sucks. But maybe, just maybe, it could suck less. Here's my reasons for saying this.

(1) A digital facsimile of the Oregonian is stupid.
The Oregonian's quasi-erotically-named URL for its online version is www.mydigitalo.com. Clicking on that leads to a digital.olivesoftware.com site. So the Oregonian has signed up for an off the shelf Olive Software digital newspaper. It should have been left on the shelf.

There's a wonderfully simple and effective way to give subscribers a facsimile of the Oregonian newspaper: have a paper copy of the newspaper delivered to them! But for money-making reasons, the O has decided to have us subscribers pay for seven papers a week, while delivering only four paper copies.

Problem is, a facsimile of the paper version looks like crap on the three electronic devices I tried to read it on today: my Retina Macbook Pro laptop, my iPhone 5, and my wife's iPad.

I read lots of news on my laptop and iPhone. I am a New York Times digital subscriber. I use Feedly as a news reader for blogs I follow. I fire up Google News several times a day. None of these highly enjoyable and usable news sources do the "facsimile" thing. 

All the digital O does is remind me that I'd much rather read the Oregonian by holding newsprint and turning pages with my hand, than by attempting to navigate a poorly implemented facsimile of the paper version.

Which gets me to...

(2) The MydigitalO experience is painfully frustrating.
Whenever I head to the Oregonian's Oregon Live web site, I feel like the site could be much better designed. It's difficult to find stories and navigate to what you're looking for. But this wasn't a huge deal when I had a paper version of the Oregonian in hand, and I merely wanted to look at online comments on a story, or whatever.

Today being Tuesday, no Oregonian was delivered to our rural south Salem home. We're six miles from the nearest place where I could buy a paper copy. Oregon Live being as sucky as it is, I hoped that the MydigitalO site would be a much easier way to persue the issue that I'm paying for, but not getting in our newspaper box.

Nope. If anything, it is worse. 

On my MacBook laptop, I was unable to scroll at all smoothly using the trackpad. So I couldn't read a full page of the facsimile paper without jumping to other pages. Double clicking on a story does bring up a fairly neat format that I could scroll through. But in no way did I feel like I wanted to struggle through all 22 pages of today's Oregonian.

I gave up after a minute or two. Turning to my iPhone, not surprisingly the reading experience was even worse. The typeface is so small, I couldn't read many of the headlines. So I had no idea what to double-click on to get a more readable story.

Things were better on my wife's iPad, but not by a whole lot. It's irritating to have to continuously scroll around to bring more of the facsimile page into view. And because it is a facsimile, not a "real" digital newspaper, it isn't possible to change the size of the type with a finger swipe like I'm using to doing on my Apple devices.

The comics page wasn't nearly as enjoyable to look at online. On the iPad, I had to double-click on the comics section. Then turn the iPad sideways to a horizontal view. Scroll back and forth to see the two columns of comic strips. Scroll up and down to see the whole page.

Which gets me to...

(3) The Oregonian needs to rethink its whole online design. 
I'm not a software or computer expert. Reading the almost universally negative comments on a story in today's Oregonian about the debut of the O's new online persona, it was clear that many readers are. I hope the Oregonian will hear what they are saying, which echoes my experience today.

Other newspapers have done a much better job transitioning to online. As noted before, I'm totally happy with spending $15 a month to be able to read the New York Times as much as I want on my laptop and iPhone. With no paper copies coming to me at all.

By comparison, the Oregonian offers a much suckier online reading experience for almost twice the monthly cost. Given the computer/software talent in the Portland metro area, I don't understand how the Oregonian ended up with such a crappy online newspaper -- both on Oregon Live and MydigitalO.

Commenters pointed out that it is eminently possible to have a universal online platform that accomodates all sorts of devices and operating systems. Yet here we are, with MydigitalO being flummoxed by my MacBook Pro laptop, the computer of choice for cool professionals, coffee shop bloggers, and anyone else who appreciates the best in portable computing.

Oregonian staff, note what Apple's iOS 7 update did: moved away dramatically from "facsimile" online design. Before, for example, the Notepad app looked like a lined pad of paper. Now, it is much cleaner and functional looking.

In the same way, I don't want a facsimile of the paper Oregonian that I'm no longer getting three days a week. What I want is the freaking content of the newpaper, not an exact replica of what the Oregonian refuses to give its subscribers any more.

The online New York Times doesn't look like the paper version of the New York Times. I'm glad it doesn't. I want an easy way to find and read the content of the NYT, which the paper's web site and iPhone app does brilliantly.

Seems like the Oregonian should be able to figure out how to make its online version of the newspaper as easily readable as the New York Times is. Without annoying ads, please. The NYT has ads, but they're easily dismissed.

Comments

[Thomas Farney]

This morning it (mydigitalo) would not load at all on my iPad 2, even with rebooting. All other wireless functions seemed to work as expected.

[Pete]

Can you even get it to work on an Ipad ? It worked for the first couple of weeks, but now it will not launch

[Brian Hines]

Pete, MyDigitalO loads on my wife's iPad. I still don't like how it looks or feels to navigate, but at least the pages are there. Easier to read than on my iPhone. Not a pleasant experience, though. I much prefer the New York TImes and Feedly approach of having a scrollable list of stories that can be expanded easily, after which you easily go back to the list, other sections, etc.

[Michael Smith]

"Clipping" specific articles. For the first week, I was able to double-click the crossword puzzle and print it out so I could work it. No more. I was also able to highlight an article and email it to my friends. No more.
Suggestions?

[Dave]

Mydigitalo has not loaded on my iPad 2 or iPhone 5 for past two days. Worked fine until yesterday. No help from Oregonian of course.

[Nathan]

I have the same trouble on my iPad Tuesday morning. It would not load. Any ideas

[Susan Reese]

I live in Newport on the coast; our distributor is kind enough to keep paper copies coming 7 days a week. There was a poignant tribute to Herbie, the fellow who used to serve us coneys at Nicks Coney Island in the 80s and 90s, on the front page this morning. I can't find it anywhere in Oregonlive. Does it show up in the digitalO?
I'm glad to be one of the lucky ones to get a real paper.
Susan in NEwport

[Joe F]

I am on Android devices and had to abandon Chrome Browser for Puffin because it includes a Flash Player. I use:

http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/tablet/Oregonian/

N.B. "ODE" is replaced by "tablet"
But I hear Flash isn't available on Apples??

I think the Oregonian is making it hard to read by using Flash so as to prevent it from being downloaded and shared for free.

At some point they will also force us to login with our subscriber id. SIGH!

[Joe F]

P.S. I had to return the latest Nexus 7 (2013) because I can't use a bluetooth mouse to read the Oregonian online. Seems the Flash processing I mentioned previously is causing the bluetooth to stutter and stall. Double Sigh!

[William Keefer]

I can't get the Digital Oregonian. Have been trying since Thanksagiving. At least fifty times had a technicaian for a whole day still nothing. Called the paper at least 5 times didn't help.Bill comes due the 14th guess what I am going to do? Any one elase having same problem?

[Itcouldn'thappenhere!]

Funny thing is back in the *Bush* days the New York Times got rid of their paywall period and you didn't have to pay 15$ a month to read the slimes I mean Times that's biased anyways.

They actually quoted that due to increased readership the experiment to use ad revenue was a success and now they are lying thru their teeth but people worship their favorite brands no matter what the cost.

Just like the 1930s Germany where many Jews thought "It couldn't happen here!"

[Itcouldn'thappenhere!]

William guess what? DON'T PAY FOR THE CONTROLLED NEWS!!!! Simple as that.

We don't and are much better off.

All the TV stations online can still be viewed for free though their search engines are often sucky and don't give very good results.

I hope people wake up and stop supporting the evil newspaper industry. They are nothing but liars from day one.

Now that they don't have Bush to blame in order to increase readership they are showing their true colors as they used to be free online and I had fun reading the comics and seeing news in various regions far away from home.

It was something actually!