Online paper format

There’s much one could write about: e.g., it appears more or less half the voters find an apparent autistic psychopath with obvious signs of dementia, numerous indictments and huge civil judgments still suitable to be president. Today, however, I want to grouse about the paper.

Six days a week, I read the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette over breakfast on a laptop. It had worked very well since we stopped getting daily paper deliveries. Suddenly a few days ago, the format of the online paper changed, and it became very difficult to read.

In the earlier version, I could see the content of a page and scroll through to read stories. No real problems. In the new format, there are black margins around the paper, the view of the full pages is too small to read, and when you open a page, you have to click and drag to move content. Moreover, since you cannot see the whole page, it is very easy to miss entire stories.

My wife reads the paper on an iPad and has seen no change. Apparently, it is those of us going through the website who are having trouble. The person I talked with at the paper offered no hope, but said I was not the only complainer.

It is hard to imagine that our paper—and a very good paper it is— would make changes that would so annoy its readers. I will maintain my subscription as long as I and the paper last, but it would not surprise me if some readers dropped theirs over this mess.

ROGER A. WEBB Little Rock

Jay Horton of WEHCO Media responds: We care very deeply about the experience our readers have with our products, and we will work diligently to make improvements to the experience you’ve shared with us. Our change with the Web edition of our newspaper was predicated by the technology provider we were using increasing the cost by more than 400 percent in a single year. An increase that was unthinkable to pass along to our readers. We will keep you informed as we progress and hope to continue to get your valuable feedback to help us along the way. As you noted, our experience in our iOS and Android applications is far superior, and we would be happy to help you and all readers with getting started with one of those on any and all of your devices (arkansasonline.com/downloadapps).

Thank you for your loyalty to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.