Welcome

I have been working with two of our papers in Louisana the last few weeks on adding new functionality and new content to their sites in relation to Hurricane Katrina.

We started the Sunday before Katrina hit posting news as it came in. Both newsrooms evacuated so they relied on me to help them post stories. I also set up some interactivity on the site that has proved to be popular. I added some forums where people could post information and look for information on loved ones as well as status of properties in the area. I also added an area where users could upload their photos of the damage.

I had been through three hurricanes last year in Lakeland so I was able to take the lessons I learned there and apply them to this site. It helped that I sort of knew what to do.

The staffs there were really great. One of my good friends is the online director there and the only online staff they have for two sites so help from the outside was welcomed by him.

With every one of these events you learn more about the best way to help the community through the web site.

The site I am working with is http://www.houmatoday.com.

I have been helping interview for an opening at my job. We posted a position for a web producer/developer a few months ago. What we were looking for is someone with a journalism degree who is also a decent coder who could do HTML, CSS learn our CMS code and maybe a little JavaScript.

What we got were resumes from recent J-school grads who could do all sorts of cool stuff in Flash but got this somewhat blank look on their faces when you started talking about HTML, CSS and dynamic pages.

Read full text of Why does it seem like all online journalism recent grads all Flash and no code?...

I have been playing with the idea of starting a blog for a while. I had an anonymous one on blogger for a bit just playing with the idea of what I would post.

What I decided is that I would concentrate on Journalism, Usability and Web Development things I deal with on a regular basis and keep the miscellany to a minimum.

I don't know how often I'll update since that will depend on my schedule and if I have something to say that other people might want to read.

Enjoy!