Devon Live Reviews 102

For usage on smart phones it's laggy and full of so many advertisements that continually ruin the flow of the story I just leave the web page.

Also you are a LOCAL news outlet and don't stop plugging national stories. Thanks, but I'll go to national news apps for that.

Stick to LOCAL news that's interesting, stop the never ending pop up ads that destroy usability. LISTEN TO LOCALS!!

Just Bad in every way.
Unreadable because of ads and popups. Out of date information as well.
I looked this morning and the headline is that the Brixham Water tank is now clear? This is incorrect, a boil water notice is still in place.

Possibly the worst news website the world ! Endless pop up adverts, endless stories that don't even involve Devon, & at the weekend when obviously according to their so called reporters there actually isn't any news, they want to tell us inane stories about so called idyllic places to visit, which in reality, aren't so idyllic as they would like us to believe !! Waste of space website, waste of space reporters !

Mainly full of adverts and business promotions, Devon Live is seemingly not interested in the things that really matter to the people of Devon. So it's hardly a news website and would appear to be pointless.

Perhaps, like the tourist industry, local councils and estate agents, Devon Live considers this county a fiefdom of business and visitors.

Advertising itself as a news website with reports and analysis of Devon's stories: Devon Live is nothing of the sort. Apparently Devon Live isn't capable of analysing anything.

It's certainly not a patch on other regional Live websites. And, quite strangely, Devon Live doesn't allow any readers' comments from the very people who keep Devon going, staffed and productive.

Well over a year ago, the comment panes on Devon live were gradually shut down week-by-week, until total restriction without explanation or warning. This action effectively rendered all subscribed accounts useless (beyond updates of plagiarised content). No other regional sister publications of Reach PLC have done this nationally. I tried to contact their head office, as well as reach PLC for an explanation. I was left playing email ping-pong with time wasters, passed from dept to dept, pillar to post with nobody claiming responsibility or remotely wanting to offer assistance. Only so many times I could read the tired old classic "you've contacted the wrong department". Can only assume someone got themselves into legal hot water, burned via shoddy reporting and lazy journalism - a skill set level below most average 6th form students. They should have their fingers on the pulse of local issues, with reader interaction ...but instead they decide to publish and promote "oversized oven chips horrify mother, Onlyfans content, and 'bigfoot sightings on coastal paths" (yeah seriously). Amidst this, they actually have the gall to attempt launching a crummy paid subscription scheme without ads, like the quality of their submissions is up to scratch in the first place. They continually recycle excerpts from a 10 year old piece I wrote myself, every few months without fail, like it's hot news. I should ask for royalties! It reflects what they really think of their readerbase and positions there. An utterly, utterly pathetic publication where employees are obviously paid all day to read Facebook,Twitter and ILiveHere feeds from home. Alright for some! Cushy.

Worst web site ever, all the advertising makes it almost impossible to read anything. If I could have given it nil star I would have.

It’s not worth going on it always jumping and flickering
Extremely bad site

DevonLive would like to wish everybody a very merry Christmas, with stories of children possessing rare diseases, reoccurant petty criminals wall of shame, murderers, tales of job loss, homelessness, tribulation and business closure. They would also like to add dog attacks to the mix, house fires, obituaries, corporate-mercials, and police incidents in a user censored palm tree. Jingle bells all the way, no expense spared and a miserable new year from Trinity Mirror group (Reach Plc). The darkest publication online, even rivalling the Daily Mail.

No comments/conversation sections- they were recently removed without explanation . Other similar "live" ex newspaper sites eg Bristollive maintain them.
Probably because people said critical and mostly justified things about the Devonlive web site and those working for it. The comments by locals are extremely valuable about local crime, the sports teams,etc. Without them we are left with the unchallenged opinions of a narrow demographic of out of touch writers. The content has got worse with more syndicated cut and paste showbiz stuff padding and some articles that are old eg the Exwick one 14th October and one on teaching as a career dating from 31st March.

The articles are cut and paste by totally incompetent wannabe journalists. Why advertisers waste their money on this site is beyond me. I no longer read the childish writings.

What you have to remember with most devonlive posts . MOST ARE NEGATIVE Just take a look at any of headlines And you will understand what I mean !!!!

I read Devonlive everyday and I think it is a perfectly reasonable online source of community information and news for those living in Devon. There are so many different social media outlets now that compete, I am sure it is tough for Devonlive to turn a profit. I personally regard it highly for what it is trying to achieve.

So many adverts cause a horrendous reading experience, the page is constantly jumping around or freezing, totally frustrating 😤, and no comments on local stories anymore. I will be unsubscribing.

For years now Devon Live journalism has been absolutely atrocious. All of their articles come across as being written by a 5 year old. Exaggerating the truth because they have nothing news worthy & turning off all comments so that locals cannot have their opinions & discuss

Comic books have more journalistic integrity than DL or any of the Reach PLC-owned 'Live' websites. Bad spellings galore, incorrect and made-up stories, limitations on freedom to comment by readers, and an overly political/leaning to the far left bias.

Avoid at all costs.

I don't actually have an issue with the ads on DL like other reviewers. I use ad blocker apps for most browsers. This comes at the cost of the websites videos not playing, but those clips were not worth watching anyway. My main issue with DevonLive is the quality of reporting and poorly researched articles. More recently, the over moderation and discontinuation of reader comments. A lot of the sites content is extremely lazy journalism, with feature reports lifted from tweets and Facebook. The same reports and articles are often recycled several times a year, in a perpetual loop. There is little incentive to use this for second-hand cut & paste jobs anyone can find in more detail elsewhere. Another example of shoddiness is their infrequent missing persons appeals, the subjects of which are usually found by the time DL decides to announce. They really are that sluggish on publishing within sensible time lines.

The real decline of this publication though, started around the time its comment system was amended (I assume managed by Reach PLC). Certain keywords were suddenly filtered and legitimate remarks became auto-deleted. The online discourse was the only attraction DL had left! The flagging system was also vulnerable to 'report trolls' misuse. Today, the comment panes are completely turned off on every single article. They spent months slowly winding down, blocking comments on one or two articles, increasing restriction with each passing week. The only other option to be able to have your say on local reports today is to use their Facebook pages. I don't personally use Spybook, so I'll be deleting my DL account after submitting this review. Reach PLC has killed interactivity specifically on DevonLive, not across every region. I can only presume this is either to avoid some kind of legal action, cut staff and save money. Good luck to them attracting sponsors now. I will be relying on other sources for local news and discussion instead for the reasons described. Not a recommended website.

Impossible site to use because of the adverts. But then again, the illiteracy of the 'journalists' is simply appalling. Those advertising would be better spending their money elsewhere.

really bad headlines so illl put its like you do it for the hits ? to get attention
come on devon live get real!!

Worst news website ever. Impossible to read any article through to the end. Too many ads, too many pop ups and too many misleading headlines to lead you down a rabbit hole.
Too much cut and paste.

I'm a web developer & designer & now use this website as my example of 'worst ever'. So much is going on and loading & blocking your view, you can't ever actually see or read the content. With such a large amount of ads, things are constantly loading, which causes the page to jump around as well, while you try to read it. As I actually do need to read the content here from time to time, it is the only website where I ever turn on 'reader view'. This does actually help & allows you to focus on the article.

Regarding the actual journalism though, I just read a completely useless clickbait article titled "Tesla Driver describes 'Terrible' journey 270 round trip to Devon". Curious to see what was terrible about it, I read a whole article about how everything went fine, ending with this statement:

Summing up the 'terrible' journey, James concluded: "So what was terrible about my journey? Absolutely nothing about the driving or charging experience." He then went on to say everything was completely fine.

If this is the approach they are going to take to writing and naming articles, what is the actual point of the site? This is the crappest news article I have ever read.