As part of a class assignment, the next five posts are dedicated soley to evaluating two online news sites: SunSentinel.com and MiamiHerald.com. Enjoy.
SunSentinel.com lets viewers know right off the bat the freshness of the site. Right, now, for example, there’s a big red “Last Updated: 9:21 p.m.” just above the main story.
Problem is, viewers won’t know what was updated. Was it a photo gallery, a story, a story gallery, a video? And if so, which photo gallery, story or video?
The only real way to know which stories were updated and when is by looking for the little, red time-stamp underneath headlines, which seven out of ten times are the same on the homepage and story.
One frustrating thing is that the “main story” mentioned three graphs up is not a story at all but a multimedia candidate comparison based on the unique’s address. While this will be extremely helpful at the poll, it could be a bit annoying to a viewer who thought he or she was getting an actual story that didn’t require action on their part.
Sigh. I guess what they say is true: You can’t please everybody.
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The Herald's desire to use "last updated" or something to indicate what's NEW was based on SS former style of posting the word NEW! in red. The editors used to make remarks about how old the new stories were, but they thought it was very effective for the readers.
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