Newspaper stories used to have a “dateline” which gave the place-of-origin and the date the story was written, usually followed by the writer’s name. The AP style guide had detailed rules, abbreviations, and even disambiguation - which Portland, which Springfield?

Nowadays, TV and newspaper web sites frequently make no mention of the date of a story, and the location is rarely given. Worse, the geographic area served by the medium is often maddeningly vague, with general hints like serving “the five valley area”, or “the gateway to the Snake Navel river,” or “the tri-county rural-plex”.

Those are nice for the local readers and the advertisers/chamber of commerce, but for the random remote internet reader they convey almost no useful location information. Please, old-media web-site admins, put your medium’s location somewhere close to the top of your home page. A state or province, a town, or even an area-code. Also, get off my lawn.