TV Station Web Site Coverage Of Ice Storm Was Outdated, Spotty
Over the weekend, most of our local television station Web sites were very slow in updating ice storm coverage. While they do a pretty good job of updating weather during the week, Saturday’s and Sunday’s posts were largely wire service feeds from several hours before. The few staff posts I saw were similarly long in the tooth.
As examples, KATU was pretty good on Saturday, but slow yesterday and today. KGW has been slow throughout, as has been the others.
When I take into account the fact that these stations do a pretty good job of updating their sites during the week, I have to conclude three things:
On weekends, the Web sites for these stations operate with skeleton staffs;
On weekends, staff meteorologists who reported for duty were too busy with their on-air product to think of updating the Web site as anything but an afterthought.
Webmasters have a false sense of importance about automated tools that update their sites with the latest temperature readings. While this is useful, this does not take the place of written, up-to-the-minute coverage.
Attention local news directors: if a news event such as this weekend’s ice storm is important enough to bring in your anchors and editors on the weekend, it is important enough to order your Web folks in for duty, as well.
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Just the opposite. I found the automated tools a relief from the screaming they usually do about storms like this. Forecastfox (pulling from weather.com) was spot on with the temperatures and thawing and I had no need other than a few pop-ups telling me how things would shape up. Why would I get my news from someone screaming at me?