Attendee Interview #3: Steven King of the Washington Post Web Ninjas

(From Left to Right) Steven King - Editor of Innovations, Dan Berko - Developer, Jesse Foltz - Interface Developer.

Who are you and what do you do?

Known as the Web Ninjas, our rapid development team strives to create and implement new technologies and innovations in a reusable and sustainable form. We have the freedom to try new things and are tasked with leading to the news room to new ways of telling stories. The collaborative effort among the team and with the newsroom is what makes our projects sucessful.

The Web Ninjas are all journalist and technologist combined. Our back end developer is Dan Berko, innovations developer, builds the databases, scripts and admin tools to run our projects. Jesse Foltz is our Interface developer and is responsible for the front end applications and the visual elements. As innovations editor, I work to integrate our projects with the rest of the organization and find editorial uses for emerging technology.

Why are you coming to BCNI Philly?

We are always looking for new ways to present news and information and we enjoy sharing ideas with different people working on similar problems. We hope to find and contribute ideas during BCNI Philly!

If you decide to present, what would it be about?
We would be happy to present TimeSpace and how it was developed or we can give a inside look at our current project that will launch just before the Camp.

Where can we find you online?

Check out specials.washingtonpost.com/timespace/world/
My personal blog is cujosbyte.com

And finally, finish this sentence: What the news industry really needs is ___

The news industry must change with the evolving media around it. We must present quality journalism in visual and interactive forms from various sources through every medium possible. A news website must be as engaging and as interactive as a video game or major social network that users can’t break away from. We must drop the egos and forget about awards and prestige.  We must give more attention to what the user wants while continuing to give them what is necessary. We must inject our content into the media landscape the rest of the world lives in.