Another example of how AZCentral.com sucks

“Hey kids! Let’s go to Lake Pleasant! We’ve never been there before. Tommy—why don’t you look up the best route on the internets!”

“Great, Dad! I’ll look it up on AZCentral dot com! Why, with just a few clicks, we can get a map that shows us exactly where it is!”

“Terrific, son! What are you finding out?”

“It was simple, pops! Here we go!”

“Um, that looks a little weird, son. Why is it in Morristown? And where in the hell is Morristown?”

“Oh, Dad, you just don’t understand the web! AZCentral dot com has great maps you can manipulate to find out exactly where we’re going! Let me pull the map out a bit. It has to be right—it’s AZCentral dot com, ’Arizona’s home page’! Gimme a sec, Dad. Click … click … and—voila!”

“Um, Son, isn’t that Lake Pleasant way over there to the right, 60 miles away from the red arrow?”

[The child’s lower lip begins to tremble] “You mean, AZCentral dot com wasn’t right?”

[Hastily] Wait, Tommy, I can get us there. Just click on the phrase ‘Lake Pleasant Regional Park,’ though, so we can find out if we can fish."

“Daaaaaad!”:

[Child bursts into tears] “There’s nothing there!”

[Sorrowfully] "I’m afraid not, son. [Sigh] I thought it might be a few more years before we had this discussion, but we might as well have it now.

“Let me tell you what happened. You’d think that, with many decades of publishing in the state, the Arizona Republic would have an unparalleled storehouse of information about things to do in the area, including recreational activities. That would all be very useful to visitors to the paper’s web site, AZCentral dot com.

“But that would take a genuine care about serving readers. Papers like the Republic got out of the habit of thinking like that decades ago. In the internet age, it’s a lot easier to just put banners on the site about all the things to do in town, without actually providing the information folks might need to do any of it.

“The result? A supposedly local web site that can’t keep track of a goddamn lake fifteen- or twenty-square miles in size. You can see that no one at the paper ever looks at the results. It doesn’t even tell us if there’s a marina, if we can fish or swim, or what. There’s virtually no information at all, and the one bit of information it does have, the address, is incorrect.

“You see, son, this is why the daily press in America is in trouble. For decades they made millions with their local monopolies. Now, they have to be on the web, but their thoroughgoing timidity, internal lassitude and penny-pinching ways means they are singularly ill-equipped to compete in these new paradigms. Not to mention—”

“Uh, Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

“I’m bored. You always get a little wound up when we talk about stuff like that.”

[deep breath] “You’re right, son. Next time we’ll just use a good old-fashioned paper map.”

[smiles] “Aww, Dad!”

[Exeunt, pursued by a bear]

[Curtain]