product design: news web-site for 24-hour tv news station

In 1998 I designed the Web-site for Tribune Company-owned Chicagoland Television News, or CLTV News as it was more commonly known. As of this description, that was nearly 16 years previous and no screenshots of this product or other records currently survive. In the heady days of the early tech boom, a mere five years after the World Wide Web became available to the public, there were few out-of-the box solutions available and so those of us on the front lines were making it up as we went along. Suffice it to say that I not only designed the entire product, but coded it and created every single production graphic it contained. Over the ensuing 18 months, I maintained and updated it with fresh content that included copy, images and video clips. This was my very first full-time professional engagement and it would set the tone for my career.

• Kept site current by encoding and uploading video clips; by adding static imagery grabbed from video, and by writing original copy describing up-to-the-minute Chicago-area news.
• Helped determine daily news priorities in concert with executive news producers. Checked facts with TV news reporters and Tribune bureau writers. Monitored wires for breaking news. Provided online resources to complement on-air programming: links to relevant information, organizations.
• Coordinated CLTV's online priorities with those of parent firm's Web vertical, Tribune Interactive.

As sister company to Chicago-based WGN, CLTV has been providing 24-hour news coverage of and for northeastern Illinois since 1993. Like a CNN for Chicago, and by drawing on the enormous news resource provided by its close relationship with the Chicago Tribune newspaper, CLTV provides local, national, and international news in the editorial tradition of the paper and without sensationalism.