I’ll be graduating from Drexel University with my Bachelors of Science degree later this week, and I’ll be the first to admit I still have a LOT to learn. Actually, I would argue that the college educational experience is a lot less valuable than the aspect of meeting new people and living in a diverse social atmosphere.
The reaction to a post I wrote earlier this week really got me down. When I was writing it, I had no intention of being on the offensive or being a jerk, but it sure came off that way. I’d like to think of myself as a decent writer, but in social and public spheres, it looks like I have a lot to learn.
In the past week, Rob Curley has faced a lot of criticism about the project he has been working on the past few years, and even some that seems to attack and question his whole career.
I can’t judge whether Mr. Curley is right or wrong about his “local-local” or “hyperlocal” strategies (and I hope he is right!), but anyone has to admire the guy for how he takes criticism in stride. He takes personal responsibility for any mistakes his team has made (as any good leader should), and doesn’t try to say that he won’t mess up in the future. Sure, he tends to brag about some of the things his team has accomplished, but who wouldn’t get excited over creating such cool and totally awesome stuff?
I hope I can retain such a positive outlook after I enter the “real world” at the end of this week, and that I can display the same senses of responsibility and humility. When I am immediately oppressed by feelings of failure in the event of a setback, I hope to be able to leverage that emotion into the power-source that drives my next success.
I can’t wait to see what cool stuff Rob Curley and his team come up with next.
Hi,
Can you name the first thing Rob Curley did that was cool? – and I’m thinking innovative when I say cool?
Mark,
Thanks for taking the time to read my post!
I definitely don’t have complete knowledge of the history of online media, but I am pretty impressed by a couple of the creations that Curley and his team have been able to design.
I’m not sure if I can evaluate the potency of the information presented by The Washington Post’s teen shopping feature, but the interactive Flash map was a cool way to organize and exhibit the trove of media that his reporting team was able to collect.
The “On Being” series is not the first of its kind, but it brings a tried and true storytelling format online, and presents it with a newspaper’s legacy of credibility—making, for me, the stories even more vibrant. I think it is an interesting feature for a newspaper–one that is a little unexpected, but obviously, popular.
I believe it was while at Lawrence that Curley’s team had the seemingly crazy idea of inputting college stats into a videogame and using the data to create projections through simulating games. If my memory serves me, this completely “fun” feature turned out to be fairly accurate in determining the outcome of future games.
I’m not trying to attack your post or comment, and I think it is really important that every supposed visionary face criticism. Rob Curley has been pretty universally heralded, and I think you are doing the industry a service by taking the time to look beyond the surface and ask if his endeavors really do pull any weight.
I think a lot of his teams’ works speak more to the “fun” side of the web, and believe that he could be doing a lot more to assist more serious journalism–but I don’t think that the more weighty stuff is as personally important to him.
It’s hard to assess if something is truly innovative, and you are probably much more qualified and equipped to make a judgment than I am.
Mark,
I don’t know everything that exists on the Internet, but here are some things I can remember our teams building that were at least innovative for their communities, if not the ‘Net as a whole: Game, onBeing, X-Factor on KUsports.com, affordable housing on naplesnews.com, and the user-generated content piece that was built but not launched on LoudounExtra.com. As Jeffrey said, some of the things we do tend to lean toward the “fun” side of the web (X-Factor in particular), but others are serious journalism (affordable housing) and many sit somewhere in between (onBeing, Game, user-generated content).