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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Erik Mona" data-source="post: 5492319" data-attributes="member: 2174">I voted "I read the news page!", but in fact that's a bit of a stretch, and has a lot more to do with nostalgia than the current state of the news page. In fact, I bookmarked the messageboards a long time ago, and only check the news page once a week or so, maybe less often. I usually skip over it without even thinking about it, because the messageboards are the primary draw for me.But it wasn't always that way. Holy moley, it wasn't always that way.Back in the day, when Eric was running the site, it really did seem like the news page was hopping and popping on a daily basis. Yes, a lot of that had to do with the fact that 3e had just been announced and everyone was eager to squeeze every news morsel out of the page, but I think there were a couple of other important factors.1) Ryan Dan-- er, I mean, "Anonymous," used to feed the site juicy morsels all the time, giving the page an "insider" vibe that really felt like actual news was breaking. I don't think there's anyone at Wizards playing that role these days, so the official D&D news has taken a much more passive approach. News about other companies (including the one I work for) appears rarely, and seldom has any kind of analysis to it. It's basically links to other stuff on other people's websites without a ton of commentary. There doesn't seem to be much _agency_ to it. It just sort of happens.2) Eric Noah was a dogged reporter who put pieces together, analyzed stuff, found obscure links, pointed readers to interesting threads, and what not. He put a ton of work into the news page, and it showed. The current version clearly takes work (and has some neat new features like comics, blogs, etc.), but most of the news items are news releases and links to features on other websites. I'm probably being overly rosy in my memory of the site 10 years ago, but I think back then it was more about going out and finding the news rather than waiting for someone to send it in so it can be posted.Nowadays almost all of the "news" on EN World is stuff found on other people's websites, and I'm not sure it has always been this way.I do like the current news page and I think it'd be a shame if it went away, but I also think it used to be a lot better, and a lot more "newsy".--Erik</blockquote>

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