I’ve always had problems with NOLA.com. Its layout is ugly, its javascript is buggy, and its template was clearly designed by someone who’s never even thought of reading a newspaper–online or otherwise.
Today, I found another reason to loathe the site: its editors are lazy bastards.
In NOLA.com’s “Visitor” section–one of the site’s eight prominently featured information areas–there’s a “New Orleans FAQ”, which purports to answer questions from potential visitors. When should we visit? What should we see? That kind of thing.
There’s no mention of Hurricane Katrina anywhere on the page. So in addition to lists of restaurants and shops and cultural attractions that don’t exist anymore or haven’t yet re-opened, we get this little ditty:
Q. What about hurricanes and tropical weather?
A. Tropical weather is a definite concern to residents and visitors to New Orleans. While not at the top of the list of danger zones for hurricanes, New Orleans is high on that list, and even tropical depressions can bring dangerous flooding. Even regular storms can produce extremely heavy rainfall, and street flooding is a continual issue in the New Orleans area. Massive pumps work to alleviate this flooding, and generally, knee-deep flooding from an afternoon storm is drained away quickly after the storm eases.
— NOLA.com
But then again, when your site is just one in a large, ungainly family of sites–most of which have nothing to do with one another–I guess you can’t expect much attention to detail.
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