I’d like to start off with a personal story that I would like to share but didn’t get the chance to in class.

When I was in 8th grade I started coloring my hair. At first it was blonde highlights and black on the bottom, maybe funky shades of brownish reds. Well, the school came up with a policy that hair could not be an unnatural color. One weekend when choosing which color of the rainbow I wanted next in my hair, I chose a fire engine red. Technically red is a natural color… right. Well when painted on top of blonde it came out a shade of pink. I was sent to the principles office. But on my way to the office I saw a black girl with a pink colored weave… I told my mom what I saw and she was livid that I had to change my hair and this girl didn’t. Needless to say I had to change my hair and this girl didn’t. B.S right.

Well during class I realized that my silly little story was nothing compared to that girl who got stripped searched and put in jail for an expired inspection sticker. I enjoyed all the personal stories thought.

The video we watched evoked a lot of emotion. I work for KNTU 88.1 Fm the radio station at UNT. When I watch the news director decide which stories to choose I never hear her say that race or gender are factors in that decision. The news is the news. When something meets newsworthy criteria you report it. Regardless of the patterns it may or may not show after months counting quotes from women or men… Or any of that.

To be continued…

SLIDE SHOW

Gas prices. Yay or Nay?

Takes you directly to CBS channel 11 but the TXA 21 option is easily found.

*Losing traffic due to slow server response which sometimes come from connections to back-end mainframe. Upgrade?!?!

^^MAIN THING I WOULD POINT OUT TO EMPLOYER IF ANALYZING WEB STIE^^

v  How I found the website:

I.            Google search engine. “Txa”, “channel 21.”         -Easy to find.

v  Ask a question??

I.            Meet our Team – This option was at the very bottom of the page. The page gave the viewer good reasons to scroll all the way to the bottom so it was findable.

II.            Convenient option to click on each reporters name and email.

v  Content

I.            I thought the website did a really good job. The headlines were clear and made sense. The weather was at the top next to the in-site search engine. The main stories had big subheads with large pictures in the top left.

II.            The bullet list was in a good spot on the page. The stories were short and spaced out in paragraphs. Viewers like simple, short and to-the-point writing. The “Top Ten Mistakes in Web design” calls it de-fluffed language.

III.            Immediacy- While I was reviewing the website it updated at least once.

v  Interactivity

I.            There was an option at the top of each page to increase the font size. Regular and a little bigger. My mom told me she would want the font to be bigger. I thought it was just fine.

II.            Multimedia- The video library is easy to find on the right hand of the page with rotating picture and slugs. The size of the pictures in the archive was small and so were the fonts describing them. I would suggest making them larger.

• You can share the videos but you cannot comment on them. Even though when you share you could comment on them.
• The navigation and functionality of the video library was clear and easy.

III.            Links to other/related websites

• Some related story options were in the middle of the story. More were at the end of the page titled “In case you missed it.”

v  Advertisements

I.            Another thing I would point out is some of their content looks like ads. Readers have been brain washed to ignore ads. So, if content looks like ads – we won’t look at it.  For example, Babe Laufenberg’s sports blog “The BullPen” has a funny bobble-head guy and honestly I thought it was an ad for his bobble-head.

• § Twitter, Facebook, and Survive in 09 content also looked like ads.

II.            There were no pop-up ads. None of the fly-in fancy ones. Which I appreciated, thank you.

v  Consistency

I.            KTXA was consistent throughout in design. Users like consistency. The navigation and functionality were clear and easy. It never took more than 2 clicks to get what you were looking for.

v  Courtesy

I.            This website never breaks or slows down the use of the back button. They never forcefully open a new browser which disables back options. People like their back buttons.