Sunday in the Times: Choking
The front page of tomorrow’s New York Times will feature the first installment in a series called “Choking on Growth,” an in-depth examination of “the human toll, global impact and political challenge of China’s epic pollution crisis.” It’s a major piece of reporting, and as usual you can find it at NYTimes.com alongside similarly excellent, complementary video, multimedia and interactive infographics.
There’s a little more value add this time, though, in the form of a special section on the site devoted to “Choking on Growth.” It’s essentially a micro-site that showcases the entire series — traditional journalism as well as Web-only content — as a coherent package, and it will be updated and added to over the coming days and weeks as the series continues. It’s also the result of a tremendous and not-as-frequent-as-I’d-like instance of our designers collaborating with editors from both the print and Web side, and with our multimedia, video and information graphics teams.
Designing the News
In the grand scheme of design innovation, I’ll admit that what you see under the rubric “Choking on Growth” is not groundbreaking. But for our design group it represents a definitive step forward in designing the news online.
It’s rare that we have the time and opportunity to develop something unique for the site that responds to specific journalistic endeavors (we’ve done it in limited ways before, specifically last September 11th and on Election Day 2006). For even a relatively small online presentation like this, there’s usually so much effort involved in gathering requirements, planning and then actually implementing that it rarely makes sense to undertake such a project for stories that will run even for a few weeks. We’re more typically focused on developing the platform of NYTimes.com, overhauling the user experience and adding new features, while the multimedia journalists focus on providing Web-specific content to complement the written journalism.
Right: Our special section for “Choking on Growth” showcases, from top to bottom, our lead article, an audio slide show, a video report, and an information graphic. Note the whip-smart series icon designed by the talented Christoph NiemannBut this time, thanks to extra foresight on the part of our editors, we were able to set aside the time to cook up what you see at NYTimes.com/China, and I’m extremely proud of what was accomplished. I should clarify: we were able to set aside time beforehand and start discussing what could be done. But even with a major series like this, the lion’s share of meaningful work happens in the last few days leading up to publication when the final journalistic decisions are made — that’s the way the news industry works. And to be sure, everyone put in their share of extra hours to get this done.
Right: “Choking on Growth” as it was promoted on our home page this afternoon.It’s not perfect — it should surprise no one experienced with the limitations of content management systems that ours isn’t ideally suited to this level of improvisational design, and so there were nontrivial technical challenges to clear — but it’s a good start, I think, to a more robust presentation of our content on the Web. And here’s where you come in: I’m hoping you and everyone you know traffics the hell out of it and generates some big number, so I can justify to my higher ups why we should be doing a lot more of this kind of thing in the future.
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Part of my premise here is that Apple, with its focus on aesthetics and user experience, clearly cares about its intangible impacts on culture. I am fortunate enough to get to talk about these sorts of things as part of my day job, and the the people i work with who do all the smart thinking about it spend time designing for both the best experience and the widest adoption. i tried to capture that a bit in my 
I'm not sure John Martellaro is completely accurate in his encapsulation of my viewpoint, but I found it remarkable that he managed to make this, too, a Microsoft-versus-Apple story. Hint: It's not. It's about user experience, and I'd point again to the example of Research in Motion and the Blackberry. It's a phone that, from a feature perspective, does even more than the iPhone, albeit less elegantly for any task that doesn't involve entering text. However, 
USA Today is 
is a collection of the best-loved recipes from the original 1950 edition of the Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book. Think of it as comfort food in a box. 
Good news today for members of the Clean Plate Club. 
Hello 
Nano for Solar: Adding a film of silicon nanoparticles onto a traditional silicon solar cell can extend the cell’s life, while boosting power, and cutting down on heat, claim researchers at the 
One use for the Rudolph Giuliani mayoral archives: Figuring out how much time he actually spent at Ground Zero. Giuliani has referred to his Ground Zero presence a number of times, saying things like:
- “I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers. I was there working with them. I was there guiding things. I was there bringing people there. But I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I’m one of them.”
- "I was there often enough so that every health consequence that people have suffered, I could also be suffering. People on my staff were there with me. Some of them weren't there as often as I was, and some of them have gotten sick already."
Now the NY Times has gone back to figure out how much time he spent at the pit. Using his mayoral archives, the Times 
Sarah Vowell’s distinctive voice is instantly recognizable to listeners of radio show This American Life and fans of the animated Pixar film The Incredibles (she played Violet). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times (where she filled in for Maureen Dowd), McSweeney’s, Spin, Salon and elsewhere. And she’s authored four books; the most recent one, 
, humorously chronicled her pilgrimage to locales connected to three slain American presidents (Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley). Vowell will be appearing this Sunday as part of a 
Highlights from the article:
- 400,000 New Yorkers live in NYCHA homes
- Average annual family income in public housing: $20,000
- Average rent: $320
- The waiting list: 130,000 people.
- NYCHA employees: 13,000
- Current NYCHA budget: $2.7 billion, of which $700 million goes for capital expenses
- The City eliminated its $25M contribution after 9/11, but appropriated $120M in 2006.
- The conviction of one family member in public housing can put a whole family on probation
- Tensions with police have escalated since the 1995 merger of housing police with the NYPD
- New York was the first American city to build public housing in 1934 (First Houses on the Lower East Side).
More:
William Thompson says NYCHA 
