Tornadoes put news crews to the test

Tornadoes touched down too close for comfort late Tuesday afternoon. National Weather Service warnings repeatedly interrupted the NPR news I was listening to with tornadoes sighted ominously close to my home. By the time the tornado watches and thunderstorm watches were lifted late at night, central Wilson had sustained no serious damage, but the area around Sims and Rock Ridge was really pummeled by the dangerous storms.

WRAL has a slew of pictures (some of them duplicates, unfortunately) of storm damage (see above scene on Rock Ridge School Road in Wilson County) and funnel cloud sightings from eastern Wake County to Rocky Mount. It was a scary incident.

The storms gave Wilson's new morning paper a chance to show off, but, judging from the wilsontimes.com's Web site this morning, everyone was too busy bragging about the new design to remember to update the news. When I checked the Web site for tornado news this morning, I found only one local news story that had not been in the Tuesday print edition, and it had been posted on the Web site late Tuesday. A morning paper whose Web site is not updated? That's an innovation! Even though the time stamp says the page was updated this morning (8:03 a.m.), I don't see any evidence of it. Even the "tornado watch until midnight tonight" "breaking news" was still posted this morning. The photo gallery at wilsontimes.com would have been nice if the pictures had included captions (WRAL's pictures did). Without identifications, the pictures aren't worth much.

Design (or redesign) is just the packaging. You still need news to be a newspaper — or a newspaper Web site.