[brudgers]

I first read Snowfall on my phone from the HN link. As a multimedia experience, it went completely off the bad end plopping me down into Youtube player ever time I changed pages. After reading it, I had no idea why it made HN's front page unless there just happened to be a preponderance of gung-ho skiers active that night. It was only the next day that I viewed it in all its glory.

What kept me engaged that first night was the quality of the writing and to a much lesser extent the quality of the still photography. The multimedia added nothing to my understanding of the story. It was just facts that a good editor would make any reporter junior enough to include them cut from their work.

It's not the technology that keeps other newspapers from producing the same level of quality that the Times did with Snowfall. It is the lack of top notch writers and editors. Scrollkit won't turn Phantom Menace into A New Hope, or Harry Potter into The Hobbit. Changing the medium changes the message. This, however, says nothing about message quality.