A risk of engaging with readers as if they are family members sitting across the dining table is that sometimes they do what family members do and let me have it, with no filter. Reading all the hate in my mail this week, you’d think I’d drained Lake Erie. The object of the derision is the new digital version of The Plain Dealer, which rolled out this week. The number of emails was increasing geometrically as the week went on, and only one was favorable. The disdain was universal. Anytime we alter anything in The Plain Dealer, we get angry emails from people who detest change, but the reaction this week goes well beyond that. Many of these complaints identify specific features that readers dislike. I’m not going to tell you this new version is good. It’s not, at least not yet. We’ll be refining it for months. That displeases many of you, who said we should never roll out something that’s not ready for prime time, but in this case it is necessity. I expound here all the time about how we have successfully worked to overcome challenges over the last 20 years, as the advertising model was blown up by the Internet. Our work has paid off in that the newsroom now generates the revenue to pay all of its expenses, but that does not mean our coffers overflow with cash. We’ve reached a point where we need a new platform for the digital Plain Dealer so that we can improve the experience. For example, readers have long complained that they could not click on individual comics to enlarge them. In the new platform, they can, and that could make a big difference soon if we finalize a plan to greatly increase the number of comics we offer. The new platform offers us a needed ability to customize. We all know that the age of printed newspapers is closing. Our ability to continue the digital version of The Plain Dealer after print ceases depends on our ability to offer a quality product for which people will pay us. That means upgrading it. We don’t have the resources to do the customization while continuing to publish on the former platform. It’s a cliché, but we are changing the tires while driving down the highway. So, we launched the new platform as a work in progress. Clearly, it needs a lot of work. All that said, I’ve heard you, loud and clear. Do better. Fix it fast. We’re working on it. Here are the most repeated complaints. The new version does not contain headings, like Sport, Forum and Diversions, allowing readers to click straight into those sections. Paging through the edition is difficult in the browser version, as opposed to the app versions. Please, if you use a phone or tablet, download the apps from the app store for your device. The app experience is much better. (If you have the app and you click the daily email you receive to say the paper is ready for you, the app should open.) The new version does not allow readers to see the entire newspaper page on the screen, forcing them to scroll. Readers no longer can download the entire newspaper as a .pdf and read it in a viewer. Expanding a page to make the stories bigger does not expand the view for the entire edition. Each page has to be expanded separately. The list goes on. And on. Hundreds and hundreds of criticisms. Some people have been blocked from opening the newspaper at all. We’ve tried to connect them with a team to help them walk through it. We won’t have this fixed overnight, but features will improve steadily. We’ve prepared a downloadable .pdf guide to help people navigate, available here on cleveland.com and also here. A big benefit of the new platform is that it is optimized for use on phones and tablets, where most people read the digital edition. We have to focus on that mobile experience. It works on web browsers on computers, but looking to the future, we need a good experience on mobile devices. I mentioned comics earlier, and I’ll write about that again. As I said, we expect to provide you with dozens more comics in print and dozens more in the digital edition. But be forewarned: This will mean taking a few that are in print now and moving them to the digital newspaper. It also might mean we lose two or three we have now. I’m sure I will hear from people then as we are now, but the upshot then will be a much expanded offering. Ultimately, we think people will be pleased. Please, keep the comments coming. I’m sharing them with the designers, and I appreciate all of them, because I know it means you care about this institution that you welcome into your home. I cherish that you feel you can talk to me like a family member across the kitchen counter, and I know my comparison is apt because my lovely bride shared her criticism of the new product with me – across our kitchen counter. I’m at [email protected] Thanks for reading. | 