Lincoln County, W.Va. COVID-19 Tracker: View this web project live at this link.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Information during the COVID-19 pandemic moves quickly.
Staff at The Lincoln Journal have extensive experience in bringing in-depth information to readers of their newspaper, published each Wednesday. But a weekly publishing schedule makes it hard to get time-sensitive (and sometimes quickly changing) details out to readers.
Social media offers one solution to the challenge of quickly disseminating information. Still, it, too, has its limitations, and important information can often get lost in the constant flow of user updates.
To solve this dilemma, I created a COVID-19 tracker and portal for the Lincoln Journal, one of the few news sources in Lincoln County, West Virginia.
To begin, I custom-designed a webpage using HTML and CSS. Included in the design were:
- an area for regular live-streamed COVID press conferences from state officials;
- county and statewide coronavirus statistics, updated daily from county and state reports;
- an interactive map showing COVID-19 cases in W.Va. by county updated weekly;
- a section for active infections in each Lincoln County community, regularly updated with information from the local health department; and
- links to coronavirus resources, including information for the county-wide school system.
After the design was complete, I configured the template to our chosen CMS for easy updating. The COVID tracker proved to be a beneficial resource for community members and visitors, and it received heavy daily traffic.