two tv sites, two newspaper sites
The two tv news websites I checked out were the DFW FOX affiliate and the Beaumont CBS affiliate. The FOX 4 for obvious reasons, and I still like to keep tabs on the town where I grew up. I chose the Beaumont Enterprise and the DRC for the newspaper sites.
The top section of KFDM (Beaumont) highlights several packages from the last few broadcasts. But then it turns into a giant clutter of headline links. It feels like the stories are just dumped onto the site. There are subsections for sports news, regional news, etc. And I’ll admit, I usually check on how my high school’s sports teams are fairing. Nostalgia I guess. Overall the site does a good job of making sure to cover everything in southeast Texas, but anyone without ties to the region wouldn’t spend much time there.
The FOX 4 page is a bit more cleaned up. The top section scrolls from top stories, to local, etc. My favorite would have to be the “Wierd” section. It’s pretty clever to have a section just for bizarre news, and whoever set up the page knew it would be an instant eye-catcher. Below that, each of the sections is given a bit more space if you want to explore further. Way better organized than KFDM, but probably because the site is catering to a much larger audience base.
Back to Beaumont. The Enterprise page is not nearly as cluttered as KFDM’s. Theres a scroll bar of several videos, mostly regional stories. I enjoy the events calendar section, remembering that there was always some community event to look forward to (i.e. crawfish festival, rice festival, etc.). Again, this site wouldn’t be very useful if you weren’t from the area.
The DRC site is pretty simple, but Denton is much smaller than Beaumont. It’s pretty well organized, but there are only a couple of video links. A great news source for “townies”, but not much else.
