Nice short interview with Newsvine founder and close personal friend Mike Davidson. Good stuff. Visit site »
Probably the right move for The Times, but it is a bit sad to see IHT, one of the most innovative journalism sites in the history of the Web, to be going away. RIP. Visit site »
So good. From Hillary: “B, let’s take that bitch on together.” Haha. Also, I love that The Onion calls this an “Interactive Graphic.” I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a joke or not, but I find it funny. Visit site »
Moderated by Adrian Holovaty, panelists Matt Waite (St. Petersberg Times), Maura Chace (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Matt Croydon (Lawrence Journal-World), and Ben Welsh (Los Angeles Times) discuss Django and journalism at DjangoCon. Really good stuff here. The discussion ranges from what’s great and not-so-great about Django in a newsroom to the general decline of the newspaper industry to how to get the “pointy-haired bosses” at traditional media organizations to buy into something other than the “pageviews equals dollars” worldview that is helping to destroy serious journalism in favor of photos of Lindsey Lohan. Really good talk. Visit site »
Some really great infographic work here. Don’t miss the internal pages, too. Visit site »
Really nice design work on The Las Vegas Sun’s new weather page. And of course, I’d be remiss to not point out that it’s Ellington and Django-powered. ;) Visit site »
EveryBlock added Seattle to its list of cities — as well as Boston and D.C. Sweet. Visit site »
I’m not really sure I like the Coverflow-style UI CNN.com is using for this, but I like the concept, as it solves one of my longest-standing complaints about online news. As a person who doesn’t really keep up on news day-to-day, I often jump into a story several days in (when something gets really big, instead of at the very beginning). The problem I often have is that the articles I find at that point are all about the latest developments in the story, and often assume I already know how it all started and what has happened to date. This “backstory” feature attacks that problem by providing a chronological UI to all the stories related to a particular current event. It works, but I personally would rather just see a chronological list of bullet points that catches me up without all the glitz. Still, I’m happy to see someone trying to address the problem. Visit site »
My cousin Brian, in response to the horribly bad Wall Street Journal article I linked last night. Funny. Visit site »
Congrats to Jim, Ben, Tiff, Craig, Mike, and any other of my awesome friends at MSNBC who may have been involved in this site, which aggregates election stories, video, and data from all over the place into one beautifully-designed “dashboard.” Good stuff.
I’m obviously biased because I’m tight with several of the people there, but in my opinion, MSNBC.com has definitely proven to be the most innovative national news site over the past year or so. Visit site »
Although I wouldn’t consider any of these revolutionary (we did almost all of the at the Journal-World, they’re definitely good tips for any newspapers adding comments to their sites. Visit site »
Congrats to my friends at EveryBlock, who have launched a couple new cities, as well as some new functionality. Good stuff. Visit site »
A good discussion ensures after Mike asks a simple question: for news organizations, which is better, a blog CMS or an enterprise CMS? My answer? They both suck. Visit site »
A nice interview with Django co-creator and “journalism via programming” pioneer Adrian Holovaty. If you’ve been drinking Adrian’s kool-aid for a while (as I have), you’re not likely to find much new here, but if you aren’t familiar with Adrian and what he does, this interview should give you a nice overview.
42 Topics also has interviews with several others in the Django community, including Jacob Kaplan-Moss and James Bennett, available for your perusal. Visit site »
Newspaper design legend Mario Garcia now has a blog. Nice. Visit site »
A great a simple idea: show awesome photos from great photojournalists really freaking big. It works great. The only thing I wish it has was a more readily available link to the related story (as far as I can tell, you have to click through and scroll down to the bottom to find the story link). Good stuff. Visit site »
The Wall Street Journal has a piece on LoudounExtra.com, the hyperlocal piece Rob Curley and his team put together while at The Washington Post’s interactive subsidiary. WSJ calls the site a “flop” and talks at length about how Rob and his team failed to generate even the traffic they got in Lawrence, which has three times fewer residents than Loudoun County.
I have no idea why the site never generated the traffic numbers they were hoping for, but I definitely don’t believe this should be taken as an indication that hyperlocal is no longer a good strategy. But news organizations should also understand that hyperlocal is also not a magic bullet. There are many other factors at play when it comes to figuring out if one of the sites is going to succeed or not, and chances are no one — not even Rob F’ing Curley — has the midas touch to ensure every single project they work on is going to be a mega-hit.
One thing is for sure, though: sites can not continue to be successful simply by being LJWorld.com and Lawrence.com clones. Teams need to continue to innovate and come up with new and interesting ways to get the news in front of consumers. The biggest thing Lawrence.com did was something different. Lawrence.com has been basically exactly the same site since its inception in 2001. This was Rob’s vision, and it was executed very, very well. Since then, it has forged a plethora of clones across all sorts of markets — some successful, and some not. Seven years in Internet time is an eternity, and I don’t mind saying that because I know the guys working on Lawrence.com now understand it’s a project that drastically needs to redefine itself, and its place as one of the most innovative interactive news projects ever launched (I have it on good word that redefinition is coming in the relatively near future).
Bottom line? Being “hyperlocal” isn’t enough to get you anywhere, anymore. You need to be innovative and captivating. As much as I respect the team behind LoudounExtra.com, I’m not entirely sure it upped the ante any. Visit site »
Rob (who, by the way, says I called him a dick, when I never did any such thing — but now I think he’s sort of a dick for saying I called him a dick), and his team are leaving The Washington Post for The Las Vegas Sun, as many expected. Congrats and good luck, guys! Visit site »
Big congrats to my old cronies at the Lawrence Journal-World (Best News Web Site with fewer than 1 million unique monthly visitors), as well as my friends at MSNBC.com (Best Community Web Site with over 1 million unique monthly visitors), and The New York Times (Best News Web Site with over 1 million unique monthly visitors and others). Visit site »
Web operations can only thrive when they are staffed by people who get the Web and enjoy using the Web. These are people who categorically prefer the Web over print publications. If this doesn’t describe your journalism organization, then you are doing something wrong.
Word. Visit site »