Before coming to washingtonpost.com last Fall, Rob Curley was the unofficial seer of online journalism. He helped “converge” one of the first newsrooms at the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, where he and his team of “geeks” (Curley’s favorite term) first began to tinker around the edges of database and community journalism. At the Naples (Fla.) Daily News, Curley continued his innovative ways, creating an online-only video news operation modeled after your local television broadcast.

Curley and his team of developers have been fairly quiet since their arrival in Washington last October. This week, washingtonpost.com unveiled a big video project titled onBeing and it’s got Curley’s fingerprints all over it. The “cool” stuff that Curley is known for includes being able to go the ITunes page for the feature, and being able to download the package to a host of other platforms — including your PSP player or your video phone. The video, conceived and shot by washingtonpost.com videographer Jennifer Crandall, is high quality — no surprise there given the pool of multimedia talent at The Post.

There is a sort of reverse narrative at work with the video essay. Users get very little information when you click into the project; you’re given a short intro box and then four faces. You click on one and then listen to an interview, although it’s not really an interview — more like a person talking to you about, well, whatever. So, I randomly click on the Asian woman, her name pops up and then I listen to about 2 minutes of her talking about cheese. The title of the piece comes at the end: “On being a cheesemaker.”

Then another cool thing pops up — a comments area overlays on top of the video, with comments from Crandall and users. The text from Crandall includes this: “Not too long ago, she survived a brain tumor which explains her mandate to do whatever the hell she wants to in life.” Interesting. All of a sudden I understood why this person’s story should be worth my while. But it took time.

So, what is this? Inverting the inverted pyramid? Blowing up the inverted pyramid altogether? It’s an interesting approach. High up on the cool factor. But, how many people bailed after 30 seconds of the cheese rant? As my old boss used to tell me: “Get them engaged early and keep them engaged.”

The journalistic storytelling experiment is admirable and very much in the traditions of Web journalism. But what makes me wonder about the success of this project is it’s premise, which is spelled out in the introduction: “onBeing is a project based on the simple notion that we should get to know one another a little better.”

The press release announcing the project states: “People can’t get enough visual content. In keeping true to this
emerging trend, washingtonpost.com today unveiled a compelling new multimedia feature, “onBeing,” that presents the musings, attitudes, passions and quirks of people in a unique, documentary style. Leveraging the strengths of the Web, “onBeing” features extremely
insightful and intimate storytelling filmed in a simple, uncomplicated manner.”

Jim Brady, washingtonpost.com’s executive editor, is jazzed about the project because it’s an attempt to get away from the tried and true. “We focus so much on the famous and the infamous in the paper and on the site, and this feature is intended to give our readers a chance to meet folks with interesting professions, stories or personalities and then share their own thoughts,” says Brady.

There is an attempt to build community here, one with fairly altruistic goals. But, even the 60s had a peg. Granted, it was sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll but it united people against the man. Getting to “know one another a little better”? Seems too lofty…

As one of my old bosses used to say, it’s content that drives the bus. Getting to know parents of high school football players in the Washington region? Now, that’s building community. That’s what’s missing here. You need a hook to tie people together. What has made social networking on the Web so successful are those underlying connections.

This is a feature that could probably work well in Kansas or even Florida. But, at The Post? These are readers that need a reason to be connected. They need content they can connect with and a reason to connect. Give it to ‘em! Curley and Crandall could be onto something here, but how about turnning things around even more? How about giving the crowd control over the theme and allowing users to submit content? Crowdsourcing at The Post? Now, there’s a revolution!