I hope it is not dead. While "news" keeps happening, sports is at a virtual standstill. 

The most important issue for me is: ACCESS. Meaning writers who have access to players, coaches and administrators. They can both cover the team and have opinions; do podcast interviews and take photos. O-Live covers Oregon, osu and the Pac-12 in general better than any other source that I am aware of...whether one might like or dislike some of the content, their COVERAGE is second to none.

The RG charges $7.99 a month for unlimited digital access to general news and Duck Sports. I have subscribed in the past but not sure it is worth it.

I do not like "fan boy" websites...FishDuck is the most glaring one which comes to mind...ZERO access; amateur writers who have no experience covering sports at any level. Some of the writers are students at Oregon. Plus the jerk who created it is more focused on his "troll free" status than he is on the broken record crap some of his writers produce over and over.

I would not be opposed to paying for content but IF O-Live were to go dead, I would probably cherry-pick what I could from the RG before reaching my "monthly limit" and simply use GoDucks as my main source. Homer writing for sure but at least it is free and Rob Moseley has a journalism background coming from the RG. Plus they cover all Ducks sports teams and of course have ACCESS! :-)

GO DUCKS!

Last edited by DucksReign (4/15/2020 2:47 pm)

bedupivi wrote:

I'm a day late, but couldn't agree more with Jiffy Jeff and DucksReign. What did it for me was Olive cutting out the comment section. I not only miss reading and talking all things Duck with other fans, but it became increasingly frustrating when so many comments were disabled. They basically cut their own throat by doing away with comments. I spent 90% of my time with sports, but when I left a conservative comment on the political page it was quickly disabled. I for one won't be spending any money to read the Oregonian on line. And $8 bucks seems a bit steep for the Eugene Register-Guard paper. I might try it in August when football practice resumes.

That's probably what I'll do as well. Get the R-G in the fall if FB is back. I simply won't go much to Olive; the comments were the best part.

@PDX to JAX
once upon a time, The O and papers like it dedicated resources to local news--state legislature, city council, planning commissions, business and economic climate, and high school sports (my Mom still has clippings from three times I got my name in the paper for Metro League baseball). but that costs $$, and so now it's cheaper to fill the pages with repurposed subscription content from national services like AP and WaPo. or have someone like Canzano churn another tabloid opinion piece w no sourcing or editorial review.
and the demographics have changed. people who still read newspapers trend older; and although we have disposable income, we're not as easily persuaded by advertising as consumers of other media (I'm not gonna run out a buy a rack of Coors Light just cuz I read a cute ad).
I think an O-Live paywall is inevitable; NYTimes, WaPo, WSJ, just about every major media outlet has some mechanism to compensate for diminished ad revenue. the current asking price at The O, $10 per month, ain't gonna work for me. sounds like not too many takers so far (2,700 out of an announced subscriber base of ~150,000).

beautiful weather here in Oregon all last week. Sat went to Redtail to p/u some clubs I had regripped, then drove to Pumpkin and hit balls w a friend. went down to Langdon in Aurora one weeknight to bang a bucket. played out at Quail yesterday.
in each case, course was jam-packed w people. foursomes on every tee, driving range (when open) and parking lots full. golf courses are closed in Washington state, but they're thriving here in Oregon.

bedupivi wrote:

I'm a day late, but couldn't agree more with Jiffy Jeff and DucksReign. What did it for me was Olive cutting out the comment section. I not only miss reading and talking all things Duck with other fans, but it became increasingly frustrating when so many comments were disabled. They basically cut their own throat by doing away with comments. I spent 90% of my time with sports, but when I left a conservative comment on the political page it was quickly disabled. I for one won't be spending any money to read the Oregonian on line. And $8 bucks seems a bit steep for the Eugene Register-Guard paper. I might try it in August when football practice resumes.

I agree the sports talk could/should have continued. As you mention, the problem was in the extremely venomous political commentary, which I admit I contributed to after experiencing exactly what you did. I think I pay $20 a month for digital and home delivery of the Arizona Republic while we winter here in the Phoenix area. It is worth it, IMO. Good balanced paper. Subscribers can comment, which is what I thought The O should have done. Both azcentral and OregonLive have sports Facebook pages for comments, but the AZ paper s so far ahead of the O in that regard it is laughable. The O has about 2 stories a month (usually Blazer stories), while azcentral has several a day.
 

I had mixed feelings about OLive elminating the comment section. Since I do not live in Portland and never did, I rarely looked at content beyond sports so I have no experience with regard to commenting on other areas of the site.

However, as much as I enjoyed connecting with Oregon fans including many people here, I grew weary of osu and anti-Duck fans hijacking almost every article with their 99% of the time absurd and agenda driven comments. Comments which had absolutely no relevance to the article itself. Example: An Oregon player has a great game and Orange Army launches into another Nike / Oregon cheats broken record rant.

To that point, I never understood how comments were moderated? By the author of the article? Because it sure seem to me that pro-Oregon comments quickly disappeared on an osu article by Nick Daschel.

Ironically, I did not think at the time that OLive needed to eliminate the comment section(for sports) but rather change how they moderated it. Basically Duck and Beaver fans needed to stay in their respective lanes. If you are you an osu fan then rip Oregon all you want in osu comment sections but do not keep leaping over to Oregon articles to do the same.  Everyone knows Orange Army and his band of sock puppets commented many many more times on Oregon articles than osu articles. Maybe OLive did not have the resources to run a more strict comment section....I do not know.

I also disliked the personal attacks on writers. Completely unnecessary. So you don't like Canzano...post your opinion on what he has written but spare the venom directed at him personally. Beyond petty in my opinion. Especially hiding anonymously. In the old days of "Letters to the Editor" those attacks would have never made it to print. The lack of civility directed at writers certainly did no favors towards retaining the comments section...I am guessing. Canzano has 3 daughters ages 3 to 17...I sure hope the oldest one didn't read what people wrote about her father.

In defense of writers, the transition from paper to online has created a monster and one often full of hastily written content, poor proofreading and related issues. I am certain those writers are under pressure to deliver a quota of articles DAILY during the season. In the old days a writer's article on a practice, heck even the game itself, appeared THE NEXT DAY in print. Plus there were space limitations on how much room the sports pages had for articles. Now the articles are "racked up" one after another hour and hour. The demand and thirst for content along with the reality of the Digital Age has put the pressure on writers to deliver.

For whatever it is worth, still my favorite comment section was on ESPN before they elmiminated them too....going toe to toe with fans from all over the country; everyone had a fake name...it was fun! Everyone moved on to the next week of games...no Orange Army nonsense of writing the same thing week after week regardless of what happened in a game.

Overall and especially given that Portland is neither home to Oregon or osu, I had more positive boxes checked than negative boxes in terms of OLive's coverage of Oregon, osu and the Pac-12. Go Ducks!

OldMacManaic wrote:

@PDX to JAX
once upon a time, The O and papers like it dedicated resources to local news--state legislature, city council, planning commissions, business and economic climate, and high school sports (my Mom still has clippings from three times I got my name in the paper for Metro League baseball). but that costs $$, and so now it's cheaper to fill the pages with repurposed subscription content from national services like AP and WaPo. or have someone like Canzano churn another tabloid opinion piece w no sourcing or editorial review.
and the demographics have changed. people who still read newspapers trend older; and although we have disposable income, we're not as easily persuaded by advertising as consumers of other media (I'm not gonna run out a buy a rack of Coors Light just cuz I read a cute ad).
I think an O-Live paywall is inevitable; NYTimes, WaPo, WSJ, just about every major media outlet has some mechanism to compensate for diminished ad revenue. the current asking price at The O, $10 per month, ain't gonna work for me. sounds like not too many takers so far (2,700 out of an announced subscriber base of ~150,000).

beautiful weather here in Oregon all last week. Sat went to Redtail to p/u some clubs I had regripped, then drove to Pumpkin and hit balls w a friend. went down to Langdon in Aurora one weeknight to bang a bucket. played out at Quail yesterday.
in each case, course was jam-packed w people. foursomes on every tee, driving range (when open) and parking lots full. golf courses are closed in Washington state, but they're thriving here in Oregon.

Played twice last week at the home track. The owner turned the banquet room into a pantry. He had order forms printed up and is selling Kirkland TP for a buck a roll. Dude is selling a four-pack of PBR for $11.99

And he will sell all of it. Older golf community. They will snap it up.

We had three inches of rain. Ponds are full, fairways are green, greens are true! Shot an 87 and a 91...

DucksReign wrote:

I had mixed feelings about OLive elminating the comment section. Since I do not live in Portland and never did, I rarely looked at content beyond sports so I have no experience with regard to commenting on other areas of the site.

However, as much as I enjoyed connecting with Oregon fans including many people here, I grew weary of osu and anti-Duck fans hijacking almost every article with their 99% of the time absurd and agenda driven comments. Comments which had absolutely no relevance to the article itself. Example: An Oregon player has a great game and Orange Army launches into another Nike / Oregon cheats broken record rant.

To that point, I never understood how comments were moderated? By the author of the article? Because it sure seem to me that pro-Oregon comments quickly disappeared on an osu article by Nick Daschel.

Ironically, I did not think at the time that OLive needed to eliminate the comment section(for sports) but rather change how they moderated it. Basically Duck and Beaver fans needed to stay in their respective lanes. If you are you an osu fan then rip Oregon all you want in osu comment sections but do not keep leaping over to Oregon articles to do the same.  Everyone knows Orange Army and his band of sock puppets commented many many more times on Oregon articles than osu articles. Maybe OLive did not have the resources to run a more strict comment section....I do not know.

I also disliked the personal attacks on writers. Completely unnecessary. So you don't like Canzano...post your opinion on what he has written but spare the venom directed at him personally. Beyond petty in my opinion. Especially hiding anonymously. In the old days of "Letters to the Editor" those attacks would have never made it to print. The lack of civility directed at writers certainly did no favors towards retaining the comments section...I am guessing. Canzano has 3 daughters ages 3 to 17...I sure hope the oldest one didn't read what people wrote about her father.

In defense of writers, the transition from paper to online has created a monster and one often full of hastily written content, poor proofreading and related issues. I am certain those writers are under pressure to deliver a quota of articles DAILY during the season. In the old days a writer's article on a practice, heck even the game itself, appeared THE NEXT DAY in print. Plus there were space limitations on how much room the sports pages had for articles. Now the articles are "racked up" one after another hour and hour. The demand and thirst for content along with the reality of the Digital Age has put the pressure on writers to deliver.

For whatever it is worth, still my favorite comment section was on ESPN before they elmiminated them too....going toe to toe with fans from all over the country; everyone had a fake name...it was fun! Everyone moved on to the next week of games...no Orange Army nonsense of writing the same thing week after week regardless of what happened in a game.

Overall and especially given that Portland is neither home to Oregon or osu, I had more positive boxes checked than negative boxes in terms of OLive's coverage of Oregon, osu and the Pac-12. Go Ducks!

The anti-UO comments were so baseless and absurd that it poisoned the site for me. I enjoyed talking UO athletics with everyone here, but too often it became an utter sideshow. It stinks, because you brought so much good data to the conversation, and some of those comments were more insightful than the articles. Losing balanced discussion was a side effect of them unplugging comments. A shame, but they killed that paper on their own...