Lip shaped pita bread
September 28, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Ok, so this isn’t my typical post, but something amazing happened tonight when I was eating mini pita for dinner.
A pita shaped like lips! It’s the craziest thing. Unfortunately it wasn’t a Jesus shaped pita, otherwise I’d be posting this to eBay instead of my blog. The picture follows.
Hurricane Ike Media Review: KHOU.com
September 15, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
Among the Houston based local media scene, KHOU is a solid contender and very popular station. Like the other local network affiliates they had “wall to wall” coverage on-air and online. Their broadcast transmission was also being streamed live online.
I do want to preface each of these reviews with the web technology or content management system (CMS) these media outlets are using.
The CMS decision a media outlet chooses (often a business decision more than a content decision unfortunatey) has a great effect on what they’re able to do without trying extra hard and breaking out of the confines of the particular system they’re using.
KHOU.com is a Belo station, using a custom built CMS common to Belo owned television stations.
KHOU unfortunately had one of the least informative web sites of the Houston market. Their site was predominently weather based, very important information during a hurricane no doubt! However, after the storm passed through their area it seems no changes were made.
What I’m seeing across most of the media web sites in Houston is that shortly after 11 am Saturday morning they switched gears from weather related focuses to breaking news mode, presenting information on recovery and rebuilding.
As of Sunday afternoon KHOU was still predominantly showing weather information on their web site, with news updates further down the page.
The Good:
- Weather maps and information very clear and easy to read, constantly updated
- A Blog with updates being sent very quickly. They were writing short, concise updates quite often. This is what emergency based news should be. The screenshot below shows the blog at one point Sunday afternoon.
The Bad
- Very little user interaction, comments were open on the blog but the barrier to entry was too high. The blog was not linked prominently on the homepage and it took me several minutes to find.
- KHOU was taking advantage of a PHPbb discussion board. These boards were getting fairly consistent traffic and served their purpose of creating conversations. One problem I encountered was that the boards required registration, however the links to the registration form was buried at the bottom of the page. Also, the system would let me get so far as to hit Submit for a comment before giving me an error saying I had to be registered.
- User generated content was minimal and hard to find throughout the site. There were solicitations to send in photos and videos on the KHOU homepage, however it was not
- The station’s official Twitter stream was a purely one-way road, the opposite of the spirit of Twitter and online conversation. KHOU was simply automatically piping in the latest headline from their site. They did not have any profile information entered, and had no avatar (profile image)
Overall, it’s unfortunate that that user experience around Hurricane Ike on this particular web site was so poor.
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This post is part of the Hurrricane Ike Media Review series by Jonathan Coffman. I welcome your comments below.
Hurricane Ike Media Review: Judging Criteria
September 15, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m going to be writing reviews of the local and national media’s response to Hurricane Ike this past weekend.
What I’ll focus on:
- Update frequency
- Web site usability
- User generated content solicitation and usage
- Multi-media coverage
- Distribution of content outside the “walled garden”
- Innovation, or lack thereof in coverage
Where I’m coming from:
- I have family who lives in a Houston suburb
- I am familiar with the Houston television market having visited several of the TV studios and spoken with employees there in the past
- I live in the Washington DC area, so do not have access to live television or radio coverage from Houston unless streaming media is available
- I work in social media for a major media company
- My background is in journalism, information distribution, and online community building
If you have any questions please feel free to leave them in the comments section of any post. Notice someone doing something that I’ve missed? Let me know and I’ll be sure to update posts or continue the series as necessary.
Each of the media outlets I’ll profile and review this week are major operations with large audiences. I don’t want to be too critical of efforts or insinuate that there is any one “right” way of doing things online because there isn’t. What I’m measuring them against are what I consider to be the current “best practices” in online media distribution.
Also understand that each of these companies have very different technical and infrastructure components which I’ll address where possible.
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This post is part of the Hurrricane Ike Media Review series by Jonathan Coffman. I welcome your comments below.
The Week Ahead: Reviews of the Media Response to Hurricane Ike
September 14, 2008 by Jonathan · 2 Comments
All next week I’ll be walking you through the online and on-air media response of both the national and Houston based media. As opposed to most national disasters I actually have a personal connection to this one with my family living in Missouri City, Texas, a Houston suburb. I currently live and work in the Washington DC area.
My perspective and reviews of advanced media efforts in the wake of Hurricane Ike will come from that of someone who does have a personal interest in the coverage but who also works for a major media company trying to make information distribution a more personal experience for the consumer.
There have been some winners, and some losers in the first 24 hours of “wall-to-wall” hurricane coverage and I’ll walk you through both sides. If you don’t already subscribe to my RSS feed, be sure to do so now.
We’ll see how things go this week, but right now my plan is for one to two posts daily. Each focusing on a different media outlet and the things they’re doing right as well as what they should consider improving.
If you have any questions or comments, my comments form is always open and email is a great way to get a hold of me.
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This post is part of the Hurrricane Ike Media Review series by Jonathan Coffman. I welcome your comments below.
Houston Chronicle Excels in Hurricane Ike Coverage
September 13, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
As someone who not only is interested in news and journalism, but who also works in social media for a living I constantly see television stations and newspapers who either don’t take advantage of advances in technology or completely ignore the true value in the power of people.
This morning as I think about my family who lives in Missouri City, Texas (a Houston suburb) I scoured the web to find the best and most complete coverage and information about Hurricane Ike.
First I turned to MyFoxHouston.com, the Fox TV affiliate for Houston. They have a a special live-chat, live-broadcast, maps, video, and audio going full force on a micro-site called MyFoxHoustonLive.com. This I feel was overkill, it’s too much to process at once. Yes they are using technology to extend their coverage beyond “wall to wall” - which I commend them for - but the page was cluttered, it was hard to focus on anything, and in general there was just too much going on.
I then tried the other TV networks, both national and local. Of course the national networks have information but still lack the “instant” updates that I wanted.
My next link was the Houston Chronicle (to be honest, they were actually the first place I looked yesterday afternoon for updated maps and evacuation information). Chron.com may not have the fancy cameras and satellites that the TV stations have, but what they do feature are blogs. Live blogs. This is my favorite format for live and constantly updated information. Blogs let the user read as much or as little as they want, and in chronological order.
Not only are there two blogs updating every few minutes (one focuses on the science, the other on news and information) but the Chronicle was also smart enough to start a Twitter feed of constantly updated informaiton, and also began pulling public “tweets” into their site.
To me, this shows absolute respect for their users both locally and nationally. and THAT’s the key to success in the news business - giving the customer what they want, when they want it, while maintaining your ethical standards.
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This post is part of the Hurrricane Ike Media Review series by Jonathan Coffman. I welcome your comments below.
Time For A Comeback (I’m renewed, refreshed, and ready to blog)
September 1, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
It’s been way too long since I last posted to my blog here. For that, I apollogize. It seems (and I plan to analyze this a little more later this week) that the more I Twitter and micro-blog, the more my full blog suffers. I’ve effectually decided to put my site and blog on hold, because of the immense value I get out of Twitter.
We live in such a crazy world don’t we!? My lack of blogging on my blog-proper isn’t for lack of topics and interest, live has just been crazy after moving to a new state, taking on a new job (which I love) and all of the associated things needing my attention.
In the time since I last blogged, a lot has changed in technology and social media. I’m here to help guide you through that. Come back soon, to read what I have to say and be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, or Feedburner Emails there in the sidebar of the blog.
PS: I recorded a little welcome back video today with my Flip camera.
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