Departing punk in Washington?

It’s been interesting watching the unfolding drama at the Washington Postwith senior online staff departing.

One of them, Rob Curley, interests me as I met him once. When I say met, it was in one of those conference meetups and he doesn’t know me from Eve.

He was speaking at the Ifra Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna a few years ago and his presentation had a lasting effect on me.

His vision took database journalism to new heights (or should that be depths?) as he allowed users to drill down and down (and down again) into content. Whether it be the view from each particular seat in a stadium (a venture he described as intern-alism) or the menus, music played, invitation cards of the rich American hosts of some small town American journal he once worked on.

I remember being enthused by it all at the time and have been occasionally following the “internet punk” with the lovable avatar’s career ever since.

Looking back at the executive summary for that presentation, there’s still some good points. See it here.

And I still want to do this somewhere;

“Restaurant reviews not only listed by food type and location but the answers to 30 questions, including ‘if I have no money and clean your windows can I have a hamburger?’ [five said yes]. Restaurant guide transferable to iPod with one click, or accessible by mobile phone.”

I’ll keep checking his personal sitefor the real story about the moves but I’m guessing that employment gagging clauses could be the enemy of transparency in this instance.

America’s not so different.