Another search of “multimedia journalist” brought up Brooke Hasch, an MU J-school attendee.

The colors, dark gray and white, with a sans serif font, and I like it — it’s easy to read and simple.

The front page has an interesting if difficult to navigate feature, a horizontally scrolling bar of photographs of Hasch anchoring and a video.  I think it’s an interesting way to display content without having to take up a lot of space on the page, but the plugin itself seems a little sensitive to mouse movement and I got a little frustrated trying to make the video stop.  Although, I personally would not have included the second video on the front page since there is already one in the plugin at the top.  It does make the page feel a little cluttered and perhaps distracts too much from the introductory text she includes.

I like that her “Journalism” navigation link has a pull-down menu; it makes it easy to access whatever type of work I might be looking for.  I also like that you can just click on the nav link and it takes you to a general page with four pictures representing each section.  I may not be an expert on broadcast journalism, but as a consumer I like that I can see her pieces based on length or role — Anchor, In-Depth, General — as well as her online journalism work.

I also like the choice to use just one paragraph of text as a sort of overall method to explain her anchoring and general reporting pieces.  With so much content available, I actually prefer to be able to just browse through and sample a couple without having to scan through a whole bunch of text and explanation before each video.

On the In Depth page, I wish the text and videos had a cleaner alignment; it looks a little cluttered.  Perhaps if the videos were to the right of the text or centered underneath the text it would look better.  Maybe a couple horizontal lines would give a more streamlined effect.  At any rate, I agree with the decision to offer text for each video because they are, as advertised, in-depth pieces.

Her resume, unlike the rest of the site, is in a serif font, which is somewhat distracting and hard to read on my computer screen.  I do like that she provides both the HTML text of the resume and then, as a second option, a downloadable version of the resume.

My final comments are that I wish there was a little more to the header of the site; I did not quite notice how plain it was from the front page, which has that interesting plugin, but by the time I went through the the whole website I found myself wishing for a little something extra in the header to keep my interest.

The Web site for professional photojournalist David Burnett presents first with a giant (and wonderful) black and white picture.  My first thought when I saw the page was that this photo is awfully large, even with the relatively fast Internet connection I was using it took a couple seconds longer than usual to load.  While I think the photograph is a great first look at Burnett’s skill, I think if I was an HR person looking for a quick glance at his site I might be turned off by the time it would take to load this photograph.

Secondly, I found the text navigation at the top of the page looks very small.  It’s not that the text is difficult to read (the contrast is appropriate), but the lack of a bar or any visual cues to set off the navigation makes it look almost too simplistic in design.  I would like to see more sectioning of the front page so my eye has places to go instead of being distracted by the large amount of negative space surrounding the top of the photograph.

When you click on any of the navigation links, a similar design issue presents itself.  This may just be personal nitpicking, but the more I explore the site the more I realize the text is extremely simplistic, as with the resume page, and the lack of boxes, bars, graphics, or changing text sizes makes the overall experience less than aesthetically pleasing.

On the other hand, I could see where this kind of design is helpful when it comes to displaying his galleries.  I know that on my Web site I’ve often struggled trying to fit photographs into more complicated design schemes, but he is given the freedom to display his photographs at a size that allows the user to examine small details of each photograph, and since he is a photographer I can see how that would be more important than a pretty Web site design.  His work is allowed to speak for itself, and as an accomplished photographer I think it works for him.  For a journalism undergraduate like myself, I think the design would need more flair to catch and keep more of the readers’ attention since my work isn’t award winning or widely recognized.

My last cosmetic comment is that his pages don’t have any titles; the url of the Web site is the only thing that displays in my Web site tabs when I pull it up.

For my critique, I quite simply typed “multimedia journalist” into Bing search and came up with the Web site of Angela Grant.  Her Web site includes a prolific portfolio of written work, photos, videos, slideshows, and others.  The opening page of the Web site, as shown above, offers a quick look at some of Grant’s work (by clicking on the photos).  I think this is a great way of introducing yourself to people looking at your site, especially if they aren’t looking for anything in particular or are just looking for a quick overview of your skills.

The pulldown menus on the site are helpful and descriptive, but I wonder if there’s too much to work through.  I looked around the “Portfolio” pulldown menu and found that the pieces, even multimedia pieces, come up as text search results.  Personally, I would prefer to have something like a screenshot of the video or slideshow in each story.  I think it would help keep my eyes interested in each story, and the added benefit of letting me know what kind of visuals I’ll be getting in each story.

But overall I think the navigation and design of the site are clean and simple, which I like for a site that features lots of multimedia content.  My favorite part of the front page is the navigation underneath the part of the page pictured above.  There are five categories, each with one story previewed underneath, and a thumbnail preview of visuals on the story.  I think it looks spectacular and gives visitors the sense that there is a lot of content on this site, something that isn’t necessarily assumed by just looking at the top of the front page.

Lastly, as far as cosmetic comments go, I wish her name was bigger on the first page (as this is a personal brand promotion site) and also that the block of clickable pieces (see screenshot) fitted the page better; there seems to be an unnecessary amount of negative space around this feature.

I have always wanted had this odd desire to write a critique of the Web site for the Tulsa World, which is pretty much the newspaper for my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma.  I think it’s a great paper, but I have always wondered why its Web site is so… fatiguing.  My first objection is the sheer number of tabs at the top of the page.  I know that there are several sections of the paper, but the long line of text in the banner of the page makes my eyes hurt.

Secondly, I want to know why the text is so small.  My eyes are just 21-years-young and I have trouble seeing all the words on the page without either leaning close to my computer screen or reading the words really, really slowly.  I have a 13-inch screen set at 1280×800 resolution, and I have about an inch and a half of white space on either side of the actual content area.  I wonder if even just a 1/2 inch increase on either side would really be too much for their readers, but then again I don’t know the actual statistics of the Web site so I cannot say for sure what I think should be done about the tiny, tiny text.

But I will say that at any rate, the box marked “Reader Comments” on the first page is absolutely bewildering to me.  I understand trying to add an element of interactivity to the front page, but this box has text that is bigger and bolder than the general text on the rest of the page.  Why is that?  I’m reading the comments and I don’t see anything that is enhancing my experience at the site so much as making me wonder if they have a full time staff person on hand to pick out reader comments to put in this box.

Lastly, I was confused as to why there is a big box at the top of the page and then a space between it and the content below.  Truthfully, I wouldn’t have even known there was additional content lower on the page if I hadn’t been trying to figure out where to find the search box (which of course I see now is obviously placed in the banner of the page).  I think that this is definitely a layout mistake.  If I had just been flipping through Web sites, I would have looked at this first box, seen one story, and been utterly unimpressed.

I love the Tulsa World the paper, but the Web site is hopefully still undergoing improvements!