Recently gone to absolute shite. Loads of pop ups, wants you to complete surveys, anything to stop you getting the actual article.
On mobile half the time the page loads without the article and you have to refresh 2 or 3 times to get any text. I reckon it's a ploy to get more hits for their pay per click advertising.
Sort it out....
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Not just them though. Rarely visit any news website over than the BBC due to amount of bilge now thrown at it, though I noticed recently the BBC is now carrying promoted content and google ads (not sure if this is just viewing from abroad)
Did they put some news on it ?
The long story: A couple of years back, the Shopper's owners, Newsquest - a hugely profitable company - implemented massive cuts at the paper and sold its HQ at Petts Wood. The staff walked out on strike twice, and very few staff from that era remain. In fact, there are very few staff full stop. (A lot of the old Shopper staff are now on the online version of the Evening Standard.)
The paper's now run as one newsroom along with the South London Guardian/Surrey Comet series, so effectively you have one paper covering an area from Weybridge to Gravesend, with bits chopped and changed as per area. But it's so thinly-staffed, they cock it up - so Surrey Comet readers got a letters page with stuff about Dartford in.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/the-entire-newsroom-is-at-breaking-point-newsquest-journalists-speak-out-on-eve-of-14-day-london-newspapers-strike/
So there's no public interest reporting - they don't bother with councils any more, involves leaving the office - apart from reactive stuff and a lot of reliance on mugs writing for free ("contribute your own news" = do someone out of a job). As far as I can tell, Greenwich and Lewisham boroughs are covered by one poor sod monitoring Twitter. Last time I saw a print copy, it was full of desperate filler about Crayford, Biggin Hill and Enfield (!).
A lot of local hacks (can't confirm if this is the case on the Shopper) now have to meet targets for page views, so the "20 times men have been caught taking a shit at a bus stop in South London and North Kent" genre dominates.
The Shopper is basically an ex-paper and I wouldn't bother with it. The whole thing is f***ed, the Mercury and SLP - which have been catastrophically run over the past 10/15 years - are now owned by a leaflet delivery firm from Romford owned by a guy with multiple identities on the Companies House database. It'd be kinder to kill these titles off, frankly.
The old Kentish Times titles are in slightly better shape but are now run from Ashford, closer to Calais than Sidcup.
And sad as well. I love local news when done well