Is the Standard Examiner failing?

Over the past few days I have had two experiences with the Standard Examiner that have made me incredibly worried.  These events happened right in Northern Utah and should have been shining moments for the Standard Examiner, but instead it became the "Standard Re-Examiner" because of it's failure to report the news before everyone else.

On Tuesday at 12:50 pm, teachers at Dee Elementary reported seeing a young man shooting a gun on top of his roof.  By 2:30 pm, KSL and the Salt Lake Tribune both had articles posted on their websites. News agencies were tweeting live updates and giving us links to their stories. While reading the breaking news as it unfolded, I noticed absent from the excitement was our very own Standard Examiner, who's offices are only a five minutes away.  Their website had nothing about the story and nothing on twitter.  Finally at 3:40 pm they had a story posted, a whole hour after everyone else.  After some prodding, Mark Shenefelt. Standard Examiner's Online General Manager and board member, tweeted about the incident at 4:09 pm.  By 6:15 pm KSL had a full story plus photos posted online.

A couple of us online junkies began to ask questions to the Standard as to how such an event could take place in Ogden, only blocks from your main office, and then be completely scooped by all the other news agencies.  They replied that they are in a transition period and are hoping to get things back up and running soon.

Through some research, apparently their twitter person went on maternity leave and is now working in a different area, leaving their Police Beat reporter to do some early am tweeting.  But that doesn't explain the inability to get a story filed and up on the website quickly.  This was serious breaking news and we all had to learn about from the Salt Lake papers.

The Standard assured me things were moving and were going to change.  Then last night a lady is arrested for the murder of her two children in Layton.  I found out about this breaking news from Ben Winslow, FOX 13 and the Tribune posting tweets around 10 pm.  I then checked out the KSL and the Tribune website to learn more about the story.  Unfortunately the Standard Examiner didn't have an article posted until after midnight buried under a couple of links.  Way after my bedtime. The Standard's tweets went out around 6:45 am and 7 am, well after the story had been tweeted and reported by the rest of Utah.  Once again, out worked by the competition.

Say what you may about the Standard Examiner, but they our paper!  I want them to survive and we need to have a paper in Northern Utah to balance out the news from Salt Lake.  But they will need to be more on the ball; they will need to work harder than ever to keep us.  If all of the other news agencies are willing to report LIVE news about what happens in our own backyard, the Standard will need to do the same.

Here are couple humble suggestions from an outside reader:

1. Please make the website readable.  Yes, it is a huge update from your last website, but it still loads slow (I am on a T1 line) and the color choice and font size are hard to read.  Breaking News doesn't even make it to the front page and often the stories can be two or three days old (or longer) in the picture viewer.
2. Tweet!  Say what you may about twitter and the overkill convergence ideas of Deseret News and KSL.  But Tweet!  I loved it when Carlos Mayorga worked at the paper, he would do his best to keep us up to date on stories.  Ben Winslow with Fox News does this now, he does an amazing job.
3. Report around the clock, not just 9 to 5.  I have already given you examples of this.

The Standard Examiner is doing some great things. But if we can't even report what is going on in our own town before the other news agencies, then I am worried the Standard is on it's way out.  I hope this is not the case and I am over-exaggerating the seriousness of this.  But please, Standard Examiner do better.