By Robert Beckhusen
WFAA (also known as “Channel 8″) is a local ABC affiliate television station in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Its news operation is widely considered to be one of the best in the field, and I’d consider it the best television news station in Texas. But since we’re discussing multimedia on WFAA’s website, let’s start with a screenshot:
Not bad. For a local news website, WFAA has clearly invested resources in its online presence beyond that of its competitors in the region. This could be a good local newspaper, and I like it better than the website of the Dallas Morning News, even, of which WFAA has a partnership. The design is clean, with a good balance of white space and content, it’s light enough so that it’s easy to load on my web browser, and the ads are not overly intrusive. Story placement is also balanced well with a clear lead story followed by a hierarchy of other news. Note: this is only one-third of total content on the front page.
Regarding multimedia, we can see featured video content on the far right. Not pictured are photo slideshows and other content.
Now let’s be a bit more specific. Because when we’re talking about local news, we’re often talking about the weather.
WFAA website.
As we can see, WFAA has focused heavily on its weather operation, with video anchored by live radar maps in the center of the page, below current temperature and forecast. Social media plugins are emphasized near the banner, and include Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and others.
WFAA also uses liveblogs:
The story involved here at the moment regards wildfires near Possum Kingdom Lake west of Forth Worth.
The blog is simple, including links to fire maps (there’s also a Google Maps plugin further down — not pictured), photo galleries and video reports. However, the blog itself is very text-heavy and could use more interactivity and visuals within the posts themselves.
