Whenever people ask me how the digital future of local journalism and regional newspapers might look like I refer to Rob Curley. It is really impressive what Rob and his team have achieved on their way to prove the enormous potential of local story telling on the web.
Rob started his career at the Lawrence Journal in Kansas, where he managed to create new forms of cross media community services around local sports teams. He then moved to the Washington post, where he launched the Local Explorer, a unique map mashup displaying local crime news, real estate offers, and school and Point of interest information. He caused national debates among media experts when he started Loudonextra.com, a sublocal website for a Washington suburb.
Now Rob and his creative pack have moved to the Las Vegas Sun. And this time, I have to confess, Rob and his folks have topped themselves. The way they compiled the history of sin city is a milestone in local journalism and envisioning local story telling. Why so euphoric?
The Flash designed combination of historic pictures, videos, timeline, geocontext and personalisation is extremely cool and represents the best of newspaper core values. Check the section Construction deaths a complete multimedia monument for the forgotten victims of the Vegas construction boom. I guess there is no place on the web where you could learn more about the Vegas fascination. Could a regional newspaper achieve more?
What is missing? I'm still waiting for the integration of user content (amateur pictures and video) and the voices of authentic witnesses. It must be exciting to listen to the old croupier talking about the black jack nights with the rat pack.
Local history is a perfect web proposition for local newspapers since they have always been a crucial and reliable part of it. They can leverage their archive content, they can team up with users and local experts and they can perfectly play local history stories over all their crossmedia channels - from print to web, from radio to mobile. The Stuttgarter Zeitung recently launched "Von Zeit zu Zeit" (From time to time). It is not as visual and spectacular as the Vegas Sun but already adresses the full potential of local history.
If you want to keep track with Rob Curley and his experiences as a
self proclaimed internet punk in the local newspaper scene (including tops and flops) follow his blog.
1 comment:
Couple of corrections --
Rob started his career with the Morris newspaper chain at the Topeka Capital-Journal, not in Lawrence.
The name of the Lawrence newspaper is the Journal-World, not the Journal.
I don't believe Rob had anything to do with the Local Explorer product at washingtonpost.com.
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