davido rex

Great idea — “news by the numbers,” providing a platform for evidence-based claims, reader-generated content, etc.

Really, really bad idea: having the front end be Flash. There are a variety of excellent, embeddable data visualization tools easily and freely available.

Not being able to use my mouse scrollwheel on the page is reason enough not to visit the site again any time soon.

Why actively prevent your users from engaging with your site in the way they engage with nearly other every site they visit?

Seems a needless rhetorical mistake: preventing your readers from acting on established expectations….

If you tilt your head just right, you can imagine what it would have been like to be working in the most innovatible news medium when that most innovatible news medium was printed paper. “Dude, check this out; we could run longer stories and still have them be on the main page, if we just direct readers to continue reading the story on another page. I don’t know, we can call it a ‘jump.’ We don’t have to have the story all be on one page. And if we had more than just a single page, we’d have more space for advertising. We could make more money.” “Dude, you’re right….”

Historic newspapers at the Library of Congress.

Finally implemented something I’ve been wanting to do for a long while: move our sites’ “subscribe” pages away from a print edition subscription form to a list of the variety of ways folks can get our news and information. RSS, mobile edition, text message alerts, Twitter, YouTube, email editions, etc.

Now, instead of a offering a single platform relationship between our audience and our content, it’s “Local news and information, as you like it.”

Which is as it should be.

Checking out the Wordpress iPhone app. Very nice. This post, including the photo, was done from my iPod Touch. Can’t wait to have an Ellington admin app.