Some of you may not know that the big local newspaper here is called The Sun News and back in the early 90's, I used to work for them. I started out as a graphic designer in the advertsing department working the lowly night shift. I think I stood out from the rest of the designers because a lot of them were from the old school of manual layout (copy and pasting for real!) and had forced themselves to accept the undeniable efficiency and power of electronic layout using Macintosh computers and Quark Xpress. I had been there year or so when I heard rumblings of the executive staff planning the paper's first website.

Most of the executive staff were older and not necessarily tech savvy. For some unknown reason, I was compelled to approach one of the executives to offer my technical consultation. Keep in mind, I was still an "artist" and had very little clue about HTML or how the Web worked behind the scenes. That weekend, I scanned the entire Saturday paper into my little Performa Mac at home and learned enough HTML to cobble together a prototype website. That got me on the committee that planned the website and the online department that would manage it. From there, I was the easy and logical choice for being the Online Manager (I never liked my official title of Webmaster) over the entire department. I was barely a 20 year old and in charge of a whole new media division for an old media company. It wasn't all glamorous. I was basically a 1 employee department for a long time. I had to wait until midnight every night for the paper to be finally edited and hand build the online edition everyday. The only automation was the crude way we pulled the article text from the mainframe system called ATex they used to work on. From the desire to not work until 1am 7 days a week, my software development interests blossomed.

Back then, we had grandiose visions of a media rich website. Going beyond the text. Offering all the things print could not offer. But there were 2 major roadblocks: 1) the editorial staff's general fear of "online killing print" and 2) the limits of the technology at the time. The Sun News was owned by The Man, a corporate monster known as Knight-Ridder that owned upwards of 30 or so major newspapers across the country. Over time, there was a push to share technology to the smaller papers from the bigger one. The result was the entirely locally managed Myrtle Beach Access website became the wholly generic "portal". It was like going from homemade chicken soup to plain instant oatmeal.

Which brings me to what triggered this bit of nostalgia. TLC's Extreme Makeover show came to town recently to re-do someone's house. I was pleasantly surprised at the article in today's online edition. The article is loaded with photos, audio and, to my surprise, video. It's like the oatmeal got a little brown sugar sprinkled on it!