Category: Journalism

Recap of Miami Hurricane beta site feedback

It’s been a little more than a week since we launched beta.themiamihurricane.com and we’ve received a lot of positive feedback.

But we want more! Good or bad.

Below are some comments from Twitter after we launched the beta site.


Also, Bryan Murley and Andrew Dunn blogged about the site:

Miami Hurricane’s new beta site launches; feedback sought (Murley)

Big ups to the Hurricane (Dunn)

In addition, we’ve received feedback via e-mail and the form we created. Many thanks to everyone who responded.

Webmaster Brian Schlansky has already made a few changes based on comments, as well as made tweaks our Hurricane online team has discussed.

Here are some noteworthy changes:

  • Switching on-site video player from SlideShowPro to Vimeo, including the video widget. We can now track on-site views and have better looking videos (credit to Brian Schlansky). All videos will also be on YouTube.
  • Switched cover view from SlideShowPro to Issuu (credit for the idea goes to Andrew Dunn, via this post).
  • Created a uniform color for hovering over links (credit to Visuals Editor Shayna Blumenthal).

What else should we add, remove or change? Be brutal.

Please send any suggestions to feedback@themiamihurricane.com or use the online form. Also, feel free to comment below.

Related:
Read my post about launching the beta site and Editor in Chief Matt Bunch’s welcome letter.

Announcing beta.themiamihurricane.com

It’s finally here! beta.themiamihurricane.com

We want to hear your thoughts and suggestions, so please be sure to visit our feedback page.

Check out the introductory video by Editor in Chief Matthew Bunch on the homepage. Also, read his welcome letter.

The main goal was to create a more user-friendly site that is clean and easy to navigate. In addition, we wanted to best serve our online audience by including new features.

Some features to note:

  • Increased prominence for multimedia on every page with a SlideShowPro player on the right widget bar.
  • A video player on the homepage and the ability to embed a video or slideshow as the lead item, in place of the standard photo.
  • Increased prominence for blogs in the right widget bar, which displays the latest posts.
  • The ability to easily change front page layouts to one of several templates.
  • Web forms to submit a letter to our advice columnist, a letter to the editor and general feedback.
  • A SlideShowPro player to display front and section covers in the right widget bar.
  • Easy-to-find e-mail and RSS subscription links displayed graphically and textually in the top right corner.
  • Text message alerts.
  • A tag cloud.

We have 100 percent control over everything since we are hosting the site on our server. This not only allows us enormous freedom for content but also for the business office to sell ads online.

This site not only represents a huge shift from College Publisher to WordPress, but also a shift in the direction of The Hurricane to an even greater emphasize online. For instance, the Web site will no longer be updated and categorized by issue — it will be updated as news develops.

It all began with a goal I made as the editor in chief-elect in late spring 2007 to completely overhaul The Miami Hurricane site.

While this new site has been my initiative since the beginning and I have overseen the entire project, this beta site would not exist without the hard work and dedication of Webmaster Brian Schlansky. Brian has done everything technical on the side, from setting up the server to installing WordPress to importing the archives to designing and coding the site.

Special thanks for working on this beta site also goes to Editor in Chief Matthew Bunch, Visuals Editor Shayna Blumenthal and Business Manager Nick Maslow. I’ve drafted up a full list of people to thank — there are many — that I will post when the final site launches.

Weigh in: What do you think? Please share your thoughts on the ease of use, design, colors, features and anything else you see.

Or, if you’d like to contact someone directly, visit the staff listing page.

Crazy cook Lenny makes for a fast-paced, fun video

This was my seventh video for The Miami Herald and was definitely one of the most fun to do. It went with fellow metro intern Ely Portillo’s story about a small local seafood and wings joint, Tarks of Dania.

Tarks’ cook Lenny, just being himself, provided a lot of great material. Check it out:


See this video on MiamiHerald.com

I’m shooting a video for business columnist Cindy Goodman on Thursday morning and I’m planning to do another to go with the in-depth piece I’m working on, so I should have at least two more videos before the internship ends. Most of my time lately has been devoted to that in-depth piece, which is still in progress.

New Miami Hurricane site begins public beta Aug. 1

After months of discussing the new Miami Hurricane site on this blog and Twitter, from our consideration of Drupal to our ultimate selection of WordPress, the public beta version will launch this Friday, Aug. 1.

It’s a pretty sweet site and it’s even better than we expected. I’m tempted to drop the link now, but I will show restraint.

Hurricane webmaster Brian Schlansky has been toiling on the technical side since installing on our old file server Ubuntu in mid-April and WordPress in late April. He’s been manipulating PHP, editing CSS, adding/tweaking plug-ins and doing what ever need to be to prepare us for the beta launch.

We started with this theme and have come quite a long way.

One of biggest hurdles, which Brian cleared with surprising ease, was transferring the Hurricane’s College Publisher archives to the MySQL database for WordPress.

He and I have been in touch almost daily, corresponding for countless hours via instant message and Skype. Incoming editor in chief and longtime blogmaster Matt Bunch has contributed throughout the process, as has returning business manager Nick Maslow.

All four of us spoke on Skype Monday night to make sure we’re ready for Friday’s beta launch.

I will write another post when we launch the beta, giving a general overview. Everything in the site is pretty straightforward, which was part of one of our big goals: ease of use.

Stay tuned…

Two more Herald videos: Parkinson’s patients boxing and an unemployed couple

My video adventures continue at The Miami Herald. I really like the most recent one, “Seniors fight Parkinson’s with boxing.”


See this video on MiamiHerald.com

A week earlier, the following video ran with Cindy Goodman‘s business column about how unemployment affects families.


See this video on MiamiHerald.com

I shot some stills along with the video (it’s always good to carry an SLR around). My photo of the Victor and Damaris Guzman not only ran in print on 2B but was also the main display online the morning the story ran (see left).

Looking forward, I shot video and stills for a feature about a local restaurant on Friday. As always, I will post that video here.

Another intern, Ely Portillo, is writing the feature and asked me to join him for the multimedia. We previously worked together on the Parkinson’s story and I think we make a pretty nifty reporting duo.

Ely’s Parkinson story was great. We got a lot of good feedback on both, even being complimented in the morning news meeting after the story and video ran. We weren’t in on the meeting, but about heard it from someone who was.

I’m still writing breaking news, daily news and feature stories for print and online for my internship, but I’m devoting more and more time to multimedia work and a long-term story project.

A final note on video: I’ve been invited to join a new Miami Herald video task force, an offer I enthusiastically embraced. Giddy may not be the right word, but I’m pretty excited.