saraewood.com

I am an avid long-time reader of the New Yorker. I find the writing provocative and informational. Many articles are on topics I would not have thought would interest me in the least, yet I often can’t put them down. The writing is normally so compelling that I find myself reading theater or film reviews of performances I know I will never see.

For example, in this week’s issue, there is an article by Elizabeth Kolbert on how global warming will affect the oceans. It is both dire and depressing and made me want to stop everything I am doing and join the fight against the use of fossil fuels, among other things. It reminds me of a 3 part series she did last year on climate change, which was similarly dire and depressing yet amazing.

The week before, there was an article on water use and what that means for people who live in places like India, particularly the poor. I found myself underlining interesting lines and quoting from it at the dinner table.

My complaint here is that I cannot find reference to any of these articles on the New Yorker web site. If you search “Elizabeth Kolbert” on the site, you get 324 results (17 pages) - none of which seem to be even remotely related. If you search “elizabeth kolbert climate” you get 487 results. If you search “elizabeth kolbert climate science” you get 874 results. You get the idea.

Magazine content is only listed by the current issue. “From the archive” seems to refer to some randomly selected issue from their past. A very small percentage of any content actually appears full-text on the site.

So, my question is, how can the company that also owns Wired be so web ignorant? Their online attempt is not only pitiful but rude, as subscribers (and non) spend too much time giving them the benefit of the doubt - that they can’t be as lame as it appears that they in fact are. I can only assume this is some sort of knee-jerk reaction by the “old guard” media towards the new - when, in fact, to still make that distinction is just plain silly and SHOULD hurt the business. But seeing as there is no other New Yorker, and nothing remotely like it, I guess they CAN have the world’s worst web site. But they should be ashamed of themselves.