E-Media Tidbits

Editor & Publisher.com Online news innovator Rob Curley is heading to D.C.

For the sake of full disclosure, I am a big fan of the work Rob Curley has done at the Lawrence (KS) Journal-World, the Topeka (KS) Capital-Journal and most recently at the Naples Daily News as director of new media and convergence.

Now, Rob is headed to Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (WPNI) on Oct. 2 as vice president of product development. I couldn't be more pleased to have Mr. Curley in the neighborhood.

I'm going to tell a couple stories on Rob. I hope he'll forgive me.

Two years ago, during a visit to Washington D.C. to spread his multimedia gospel at some conference or other, Rob took some time to visit with my journalism students at George Mason University. Because of our location and a unique collaboration with C-SPAN, I've been able to bring a lot of journalists to GMU (even before Mason was a Final Four basketball school!).

No one has had more impact on our students than Rob. The buzz he created still reverberates in our multimedia labs. And now he'll be coming back -- often, I hope.

When Rob left Lawrence a little over a year ago, where he had the freedom to do some ground-breaking work in our industry, I asked him about the move to Naples. Rob is an unapologetic Kansas Jayhawks fan, and he answered my question by referring to the former Jayhawks basketball coach who has done some moving around himself -- Larry Brown. Now, I think Brown should have stayed in Kansas -- or even Detroit where he coached the Detroit Pistons to a championship. So I asked Rob again: Why this move?

"I guess if I had to boil it down to syrup (if you've heard Rob speak, you know he talks like that), we want to do the things we've always done, which is basically build cool things that readers dig," he wrote in an e-mail. "I think everywhere we've been, we've tried to focus on building obvious things, and we're not going to stray from that now. I've already got a list of projects I know I'd like to try -- and let's face it, the opportunity to work with the amazingly talented and smart people at WPNI, the Post, Newsweek and Slate makes it seem like I just won the journalism lottery.

"But if there is one thing that I hope that maybe we can add to that equation is a dash of nimbleness. I love having ideas at lunch and then going live with them at 5 p.m. We want to build creative things, important things, useful things and get them done in weeks, not months."

Rob says this move to WPNI, where he'll be rejoined by Adrian Holovaty, wasn't inevitable. I disagree, and in his heart, I think Curley knew he was ultimately destined to a larger stage where his work can have even greater impact on the industry.

"I unapologetically love working at places that are the size of the Lawrence Journal-World and Naples Daily News, especially when those places have enlightened leaders. Whenever folks from huge newspapers have seen what we've done in Lawrence, Naples or Topeka, someone in the group always tells me that this sort of approach won't work in a big market. Well, we're about to find out."

Right now, Rob is excited about a new project that has just been launched at the Naples Daily News by new media sports editor Ellyn Angelotti, sports visual journalist Alex Adeyanju and new media intern Ryan McAfee, the PrepZone Playbook vodcast.

Says Rob: "It features lots of game highlights and interviews, analysis from our newspaper's sports writers, marching band performances, and a weekly look at other non-sports things happening at Naples high schools. It runs Saturday, Sunday and Monday evenings on a local cable channel via Comcast, and also can be downloaded in tons of different formats from our site."

Rob has left these little cross-platform footsteps everywhere he's gone. I don't think the bigger stage will make a difference in that.