Digital News Innovation from. . .the Washington Post!

Enthusiasts of innovative ways to present news in web-native formats should check out the Innovations in News blog from…The Washington Post.

Regular readers of this blog [both of you!] may be surprised to hear this. I’m a regular reader myself, and nobody is more surprised than I.

Having issued a blistering broadside against the Post‘s [my former employer's] inept lunge at web-native storytelling last week, I had no idea that the Post was quietly accumulating some good digital news projects and aggregating them in a blog. It’s been published since mid-April.

Here’s the most news-oriented project of the items of the bunch, a wonderful D.C. Budget Game. It’s an interactive response to the old “You don’t like the budget cuts? You give it a try” dare.

The Washington Post's interactive "D.C. Budget Game"

In truth, aside from this, there’s little groundbreaking work here yet–most of the five features on the blog are soft efforts, of the cool-stuff-apropos-of-nothing variety, not journalistic responses to the news. The Post still badly trails the New York Times in innovative use of digital media to commit acts of journalism.

Still, it’s a sign of digital  life. And worth keeping an eye on.

n.b. Nobody at the Post turned me on to this. It’s not a “make-good” blog entry to try to curry favor with my former employer. It’s safe to say that that favor is beyond curry.