Web Innovation at the New York Times. Really.
New York Magazine ‘s Emily Nussbaum recounts the efforts to keep the Gray Lady au corrant with social media.
“On the day Barack Obama was elected, a strange new feature appeared on the website of the New York Times. Called the Word Train, it asked a simple question: What one word describes your current state of mind? Readers could enter an adjective or select from a menu of options. They could specify whether they supported McCain or Obama. Below, the results appeared in six rows of adjectives, scrolling left to right, coded red or blue, descending in size of font. The larger the word, the more people felt that way.
All day long, the answers flowed by, a river of emotion—anonymous, uncheckable, hypnotic. You could click from Obama to McCain and watch the letters shift gradually from blue to red, the mood changing from giddy, energized, proud, and overwhelmed to horrified, ambivalent, disgusted, and numb.
It was a kind of poll. It was a kind of art piece. It was a kind of journalism, but what kind?”
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2 Comments, Comment or Ping
Brook Ellingwood
What’s really intriguing to me is the NYT’s API, allowing outside developers to re-use NYT content in a similar way to how the Twitter API allows developers to create alternate interfaces. Very few companies of any sort have made it over the conceptual threshold of understanding that their users might well come up with better interfaces to their data than they themselves do. For a media company like the Times to take the risk is a watershed moment.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_first_new_york_times_api_i.php
Jan 28th, 2009
ivsyd
Here is another attempt of innovation by a smaller newspaper:
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/mixed-media/2009/01/29/the-newspaper-website-pay-dilemma-solved
Jan 29th, 2009
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