It’s an attractive site with minimalistic advertisement. The site does a good job at keep the focus on the news and not the advertisements, which can only be found on the right hand side of the site.

The Washington Post looks official, which in my opinion can make it appear more credible, it also has adapted to society’s demands on technology by offering photo galleries and videos to accompany it’s stories.

Such is the case with a story titled, “After 9/11, flight attendant still feels up in the sky,” in which the Washington Post not only offers a story through text, but also includes a video of a visitor at the Pentagon Memorial, a photo gallery and links on continuing coverage about the subject.

Video

Following news of Osama bin Laden’s death by the U.S. military, visitors to the Pentagon Memorial remembered those who lost their lives on 9/11.

Gallery

9/11 memorial photos: Share your photos of services, memorials and symbols that help you honor the 10th anniversary of the tragic events of 9/11.

More On This Story

                  Full Coverage: Nine lives, ten years later

                  After 9/11, flight attendant still feels at home up in the sky

                  After 9/11, security guard on high alert at golf course

                  Brought together by catastrophe

View all Items in this Story

Remembering 9/11

The newspaper is very useful. An attractive feature that it has is that you don’t have to navigate past the home page to find what you are looking for. However, since it does seem that most of its content is found on the home page, it can also appear overwhelming.

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:

WFAA website.

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:

WFAA website.

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.

For example, there is a story about how Tea Party candidate Joe Heck has recently lost support from his party. There is a large graphic showing Heck at the top of the page and a photo gallery shortly below that. Running next to the article are links to archived stories the Sun has published about Heck, something that I think most readers would find very useful. At the end of the article is the ability to comment on the website and even share the information through Twitter, Facebook or email.

One of the most interesting and innovative things about the Las Vegas Sun’s website is the feature “Home News.” This feature allows the user to build a custom newspaper to fit their needs. After entering a zip code, the Sun website creates relative links and features such as home for sale in that zip code, crime rates, high school sports, entertainment news and prices … essentially everything that users want to know, but would have to go to other sites to access.

All of these features make the Las Vegas Sun stand out and have helped their website stay relevant to users.

The website offers headlines from world, national, state and local news stories. There’s an interesting column on the homepage that contains headlines tagged with the exact time of day in which the story was last updated. This shows extreme timeliness on their part.

There is a very easy navigation bar at the top of the website offering the weather, classifieds, subscription information, entertainment, photos and videos. Users also have the option to socially interact with the stories by providing comments as feedback and the options to “like” the articles via Facebook.

The website’s stories appear to come from the actual newspaper’s staff of journalists. They’re obviously accountable, reliable and accurate stories. The stories have no bias.

My only negative comment about the site would be the cramped layout of the site. Although the site offers an abundance of stories and information, there’s a bit too many advertisements on the page.

http://www.dallasnews.com

The Austin American-Statesman, Austin’s most prominent newspaper which is owned by Cox Enterprises, has been an authoritative source of news and information for the residents of Central Texas since its creation in 1873. The legacy remains strong today not only through their print edition, but also online at statesman.com.

The website hosts a wide variety of contact for users. The staples of a traditional newspaper are all there including hard news, investigative reporting, features, obituaries, police reports and classifieds. And it’s not just shoveled from the print edition onto the website at the end of every publication. Stories are updated in a reasonable amount of time to reflect developments and breaking information. Readers also have access to wire contact from various sources like the Associated Press and other Cox Media Group publications. And because of the Statesman’s long legacy of producing quality, accurate information, it’s easy to trust that the website must also live up to those standards. So as far as basic content is concerned, users of statesman.com can expect to find the news coverage they need.

But a good online media outlet needs to go above and beyond that call. The news isn’t enough. It’s no long a matter of providing what readers need but rather what they want. And the staff at the Statesman is well aware of that. And interactivity is key. The homepage itself is full of links to slideshows, popular stories, videos and blogs. The look is clean and mostly organized, but there is some clutter. I’m grateful, however, that the website lacks distracting advertising on the homepage.

But beyond the homepage, the scope of the Statesman’s online multimedia changes. After clicking through several stories, I was disappointed to find that none of them had anything more than a photo to accompany the text and that even commenting had been disabled on most stories, including this one about electricity and water rate changes for residential properties, an issue of enormous relevance to everyone living in the area that would likely be discussed at length had comments been allowed. In addition, a story as statistically heavy as this one could benefit from a graph or chart that details the current rates in contrast to projected rates after the changes come to pass. Instead, users end up with a long, gray river of text sandwiched between the same sidebars they encountered on the homepage.

The Statesman’s entertainment supplement, austin360.com, does a little better with larger photos and snazzier text on their breakout information, but for the most part is also fairly bland.

Overall, the Statesman meets all the minimum requirements of news delivery online, but it lacks pizazz. There isn’t much offered that users can play with, and the fun stuff they do offer isn’t really related to the news. In order to improve, I’d encourage this web team to look at ways they can package their media together more effectively rather than having everything spread out onto separate pages. Oh, and get those comments up and running!

By Aleyda C Londono

The New York Times has a long-standing reputation for being one of the most reliable newspapers available.  The New York Times is a publicly traded company owned by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.  The paper is managed by Board Committees and Charters that are responsible for the paper’s prosperity, as well as maintaining strong ethical and journalistic standards. 

The New York Times covers almost every type of news topic one can think off, from politics and sports to fashion, health and beauty, plus many other reader specific interests.  While The New York Times is renowned for its journalistic integrity, it does make its mistakes.  The Corrections page at the bottom of the website is where one can see how those mistakes are handled. 

The New York Times website is updated throughout the day.  The website’s appearance is not flashy for the most part.  It includes a limited amount of pictures and links to videos and audio.  Its Home Page mainly consists of links to stories along with a short summary of what the story is about. 

There are pictures throughout it but they are smaller in size.  The biggest story of the day and other national news take up the top portion of the Home Page.  It also offers stories from other topics such as business and entertainment lower down the page.

A story that illustrates The New York Times style is the one about President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner’s inability to agree on what appears to be anything at all.  The story is well written and entertaining.  It is detailed, taking up two web pages.  There are no videos or audio of previous public disagreements between the two men to supplement the story.  The New York Times website reads very much like its print version, which is not a problem for those who enjoy reading the old-fashion newspapers. 

A new technological feature that the website has incorporated is having pop up windows of other articles appear when reading a story. 

I find it as a positive addition because it is not invasive since it is located at the corner of the screen and the story sounded like it would be worth reading.

The Indianapolis Star, which can be accessed online at indystar.com, joined with the Gannett Company to provide users easy access to content about important issues, up to date news, sports, entertainment, weather, and even obituaries. Multimedia is used throughout the site, with links to different sections and stories, as well as photos, icons, a weather widget and even a countdown to the Indianapolis Super Bowl this year. The website provides ways to contact the organization by using social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter. There are helpful tabs including, Top News, Most Popular or News For You, so the user can decide what to view. An organized design is used, and the information is grouped separately to view important information easier. The website actively keeps up with current events going on in the world today.

Photo by IndyStar.com

A recent article I read here, explained how former Survivor star, Rubert Boneham is running for a government position for Indiana. It provides good use of media by including text, using photos and allowing users to comment on the article. Links are also included to provide more information about related topics in Indiana, Boneham’s personal website, and important people associated with his campaign to give the users a more interactive experience. At the end of the article, there is a ‘You Might Be Interested In’ section which includes video and clickable story links to further your interest with a related topic.

The Indianapolis Star is visually appealing. The name of the website alone caught my interest. Besides media, there are feature sections, classifieds, archives and more. Large advertisements consume the right side of the page, but the site still grabs my attention and interest for wanting to read, search or view more.

The site has countless possibilities and covers a wide range of topics. Overall, this is an accurate, reliable and professional looking site to rely on for information and news.

Because Mack Brown has Something to Prove

One of the featured stories on the TexasMonthly.com website is an interview with Texas Longhorns coach Mack Brown. The story is two pages long, but contains only one small illustration (yes, illustration, not photo) of a fierce-looking Brown at the top of the first page. The story is written in question and answer format and does not use photos or video, which would have greatly added to the visual appeal of the article. There is a Facebook comment box near the story’s headline which allows readers to share their comments directly from the page and there are also links to share the story with other social media sites. Advertisements and contest notices clutter both sides of the page, and draw attention away from the story since they are the only items on the page that feature color or animation. The story itself reads basically like a biography of the coach, and I have serious doubts that anyone but a die-hard UT fan would read the story in its entirety without more visuals and multimedia content.

The San Antonio Express-News or mysanantonio.com, produced by Hearst Communications Inc., continues to slowly build its multimedia content. The website is insightful in giving the readers the news and goes in hand with its printed newspaper to develop a professional journalistic outlook on San Antonio. The site’s information is primarily local based, with little national based news. The format is clear and precise, capturing the readers interest. The breaking news is on the front page and stories are placed in the section that suits the article best (Business, News, Sports, etc.). Whether its politics in Texas, crimes committed in San Antonio or sports, this frequently updated website provides all types of news in the local community. 

The site relies on words and/or pictures to tell the story.  Although the website uses some multimedia content, from photos to reader participation, videos seem uncommon and pictures at times don’t convey the impact of the stories. A recent article involving the concept of VIA Metropolitan Transit streetcars in downtown San Antonio has been a long debate in the city. Though the article gives a detailed struggle to bring VIA streetcars to San Antonio, including a comments section for people to voice their opinions, the story ultimately feels plain. The article is three pages, with no pictures or video links and comes off long and  at times dull. There are no visuals or pictures to capture the readers’ attention to let them know that the topic is a major development in the San Antonio community.

The use of different mediums, such as visuals, in some way could’ve impacted the long struggle for VIA streetcars.  Interviews from city and county officials giving their opinions regarding the issue could put some perspective on how much conflict there is regarding the issue. Also, interviews from the locals on how they feel about streetcars downtown would make the article livelier.

San Antonio Express-News has a long way to go to have the complete “multimedia package”, but what they do have is a start. The homepage is an example of what mediums the San Antonio Express-News can overall bring to their website. If journalists can bring the mediums that are on the homepage to their own stories, then readers will be introduced to a new outlook of multimedia journalism.