Why the Las Vegas Sun is so great (Part 3)
Previously: Part 1 (Introduction to the Sun) and Part 2 (What They Do)
While they’re shooting tons of video and chasing breaking news, the journalists at the Las Vegas Sun also manage to produce some darned impressive large projects. I blogged about their way-cool Flight Delay Calculator in April — it’s a data-driven interactive graphic that shows you not only how late your flight to or from Las Vegas is likely to be, but also how long you’ll wait in the security check line.
Since then they’ve created a new graphic about prescription narcotic use in the United States. Journalists used Drug Enforcement Administration data to show consumption of seven substances by state for each year from 1997 to 2006.
But that’s not the best part.
It took only ONE DAY to create the interactive graphic — because they were able to reuse code developed for the Flight Delay Calculator, according to Tyson Evans, new media design editor. I also think it’s notable that the text story is all about Nevada, but the graphic covers all 50 states. A computer-assisted reporter (that’s a term that needs to change!) did the data analysis.
They’re also deservedly proud of their history of Las Vegas package, which includes a slick 11-part video documentary (about 30 minutes total) and a very detailed, well-designed interactive casino map. The depth and breadth of this package overwhelms me — but the navigation doesn’t bludgeon my senses. Instead, it seems fun and light because of the masterly organization of the elements.
The history package’s table of contents “only scratches the surface,” Evans said.
Then there’s the weather page. Oh yeah. They have a historical weather database because one of their programmers built a Django application that scraped and read in all the NOAA data back to some distant year in the past.
“The only way we could do this was agile development. The only way to do this was to get away from corporate IT,” said Josh Williams, new media projects editor.
That line gave me flashbacks to 1995, when I worked in the then-new world of newspapers online. Bad flashbacks, I might add. The number of things you can’t get done in a newsroom because some IT guy tells you (and the publisher) that it can’t be done, or it’s too expensive, or it’s “a security risk” (the biggest lie of all), or it won’t work with your legacy systems (puh-LEEZ!) — this “can’t do” thinking has dug a grave for newspapers over 13 sorry years. A very deep grave now. (Thanks for your help, IT managers.)
The Las Vegas Sun team built their CMS on Ellington. “A lot of it was standard Ellington, but also a lot is stuff we built ourselves,” Williams said.
“One advantage to getting away from corporate IT is that we don’t care if we break it,” he said. The audience laughed. “Well, we care,” he added, “but we’re not afraid to RISK breaking it.”
Although they started out in January with about 12 people, the Sun now has about 40 people working in online editorial. Everyone on the team does a lot of different things, Evans said. “We don’t go to the programmers if we need a little JavaScript,” he added — designers can write that themselves.
Asked what they look for when hiring journalists, Evans replied: “An eye for what makes really good interactive or mulimedia storytelling.”
Williams added: “We expect everyone to know the [HTML] paragraph tag and the bold tag — the basics.” Evans nodded. They don’t expect journalists to be proficient in more complex technologies such as Flash and Django, however (no “computer jesus” job descriptions!).
Evans and Williams said they don’t know much about the business side of the shop; Henry Luce’s wall is intact in Las Vegas. The 12-person team devoted to business development makes syndication deals for content and tells the Web team what their new pageview targets are — beyond that, the business side is a black box to editorial. Chris Jennewein (senior vice president and publisher of Greenspun Media Group’s interactive division) runs that show. (Jennewein has a long resume in online news.)
Apart from the business side, everyone working on the Sun works in the same room. “Everyone’s bouncing ideas off each other,” Evans said. Both he and Williams credited proximity as one of the keys to producing a great daily news site.
I heard several speakers at ONA emphasize how vital this interaction is to producing a good online product. Aron Pilhofer (editor of The New York Times interactive newsroom technologies team) said, “These people have got to sit in one room together.” He was talking about how the Times journalists, programmers, and designers create complex information graphics for online.
When asked about the payoff for all this innovation, Evans and Williams said the number of site visitors is increasing, but the Web site isn’t close to paying for itself yet. (Remember, they launched in January 2008.) However, they did seem excited about one particular traffic indicator:
“Pageviews per person are through the roof,” Williams said.
Categories: examples, ideas, multimedia
[...] Why the Las Vegas Sun is so great (Part 3) [...]
[...] Part 3: How They Do It [...]
[...] in three parts about why we should be paying attention to the Las Vegas Sun. Start with Part 3 with links to the first two parts.And Rob Curley tells us who he’s looking to hire in Vegas for the [...]
[...] in three parts about why we should be paying attention to the Las Vegas Sun. Start with Part 3 with links to the first two parts. And Rob Curley tells us who he’s looking to hire in Vegas for [...]
[...] It is the mindset of The Las Vegas Sun that really stands out. It is mindset that is killing this industry. There is too much can’t do attitude and not enough can do. [...]