Staff Writer Derek Jensen penned an interesting item for this morning’s The Salt Lake Tribune. In an article titled “SL County launches ‘Up Grade’”, Jensen reports on Up Grade” — Salt Lake County, Utah’s, new online resource for business owners and entrepreneurs, inspired by Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon. From today’s online edition of the Tribune
On Thursday, Corroon unveiled a new business-development program described as a “one-stop shopping” resource for small businesses. Called “Up Grade,” Corroon’s brainchild consists of a new Web site that pools federal, state, county and private resources for prospective - or existing - businesses to navigate. “The resources? A lot of them exist,” explained Dale Carpenter, Corroon’s director of business and economic development. “We’re in no way reinventing the wheel. But we want it to be a one-stop center.” The Web site designates business categories under “start up,” “grow up,” “move up,” and “fire up.”
Great. I cannot wait to visit the site.
Oh, wait, hold on… I can’t, because Jensen and the editorial department over at the Tribune newsroom failed to include the web site address anywhere in the article! At the bottom of the page, the Tribune’s own web site address appears, but nowhere in the article itself is Up Grade’s URL ever provided. You would think—wouldn’t you—that a newspaper would be savvy enough to include the web site address of a site they devote nearly 400-words to, but in case you haven’t noticed, publishers do this sort of thing all the time. If I had a dollar for every newspaper, magazine, or newsletter article that contained language like—So-and-so’s web site is a great resource for X, Y, and Z–without specifically referencing the web site address itself, I’d have enough money to pay the annual street value of the hosting fees for my blog two times over.
And it’s not just newspapers and magazines that fail to provide critical and relevant information. Salt Lake County’s own web site does a really poor job of calling attention to the Up Grade web site. One would think that the County would list the site under “Resources” or right in the center of the page under Today in Salt Lake County, but they do not. Instead, they placed a banner ad at the bottom of the left-hand column, a spot that usability experts tell us is the second or third last spot our eyes gravitate towards on any given web page.
In any event, despite the Tribune’s failure to provide the URL, and the County’s weak promotion of the site, Up Grade appears to be a great resource for business owners and entrepreneurs throughout the state of Utah, which is where my company, Doba, is headquartered.
