Feb. 2, 2011 blizzard coverage

So much of my work from the Northwest Herald has been lost to poor archival procedures and the impermanence of digital content. However, I was exited to recently discover a landing page I built for an award entry, heralding our breaking news coverage of a record-breaking blizzard.

As the web editor at the time, keeping the content fresh fell on my shoulders.

Our lead story position was updated multiple times an hour between 5 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Feb. 2, the day of the blizzard. The screenshots of the homepage below show a feature I built to allow for related links to display along with the lead article. Trust me when I say this was groundbreaking at the time.

Relevant data from the event

2nd HIGHEST TRAFFIC EVER

With 169,000 page views, the blizzard brought a lot of traffic on Feb. 2. The day prior, Feb. 1, generated 139,000; our fourth most. We average 80,000 a day.

36 STAFF-WRITTEN ARTICLES

These were filed over a two-day period. Our lead article position throughout the two days of the blizzard received 29,231 hits. These were supplemented by 17 Associated Press stories.

7 STAFF VIDEOS

Two videos from this day earned over 3,500 views. Overall, it was our most-watched video day ever with 13,000 page views.

35 STAFF PHOTOS

Out photographers were positioned throughout the county, visiting nearly a dozen towns, to provide images from the many areas we cover.

240 READER-SUBMITTED PHOTOS

Since it’s launch, the photos in this gallery have been viewed 130,000 times. On Feb. 2-3, the gallery earned 8,469 unique visits.

189 FACEBOOK FEEDBACK

Between comments and likes, our interactions on Facebook were up 200% from the days prior. Our post views totaled 128,000; up 395%