Web Design: InsideTheRockies.com

InsideTheRockies.com started as a backup plan. Toward the end of February 2009 it was becoming increasingly clear the Rocky Mountain News was going to close. The staff had suspected as much since the newspaper's parent company put the Rocky up for sale the previous December, essentially dangling a rather unattractive property in the worst possible market to do so. Yet, still there were rumors of buyers, one of whom I later met and learned more about what really happened during those months when the fate of 200+ journalists and a 150-year-old newspaper hung in the balance. But as we neared the end of February — and the Colorado Rockies started spring training — there was a sense of doom. It was only a matter of time.

On the last Monday of February, which turned out to be the last Monday of the Rocky Mountain News as well, Tracy Ringolsby, the newspaper's Rockies beat writer, called me. We had worked together off and on for the better part of five years but had met only once and spoken on the phone only a handful of times. Baseball season was just starting. Tracy is one of the best reporters in the business, but credentials matter little when newspapers are cutting back; in fact, often they can hurt a person. Tracy isn't the sort of baseball writer who comes cheap. He's in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was worried about being able to find a new gig and knew that with baseball season starting, if he suddenly disappeared, Hall of Fame credentials or no, he could very easily slip away. People might just remember that there once was a guy in a cowboy hat writing for the newspaper that closed. To be honest, that would never have happened to Tracy — he's too good at what he does and too recognizable — but at the time, entering one of the worst economic periods in the country's history and a devasating situation for newspapers that had many thinking about doing away with a print product entirely, it was a valid concern.

So Tracy wanted a website that would keep him working at a crucial time. He had been exploring the cost with some web developers and was ready to go forward despite an absurd cost to do so when one of the editors on the Rocky sports desk suggested he talk to me first.

I was still relatively new at web design. After a five years as a print designer at the Rocky, I spent a little more than two years at the Chicago Sun-Times in the same role, before being laid off and offered a new position at my old paper. I had been working as the Rocky's online sports editor for less than a year and knew a little more than basic HTML and CSS, but only a little more. I knew just enough to be dangerous. Since the announcement of the paper being put up for sale, I had launched three websites — the early form of this one; a prototype site called InsideDenverSports.com (now shut down) that I was using to learn Wordpress and was dangling as a possibile post-Rocky venture; and IWantMyRocky.com, a website created by Rocky staffers in a last ditch effort to save the newspaper. I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay in journalism, but I knew I wanted to keep working with websites — the past year had been the first stretch I really enjoyed in newspapers in almost 10 years and mixed my writing, design and technical skills in a way that I found really engaging.

Tracy not only needed a website, he needed someone to help him keep it active and updated. I was a former member of Baseball Writers Association of America, and while never an active beat writer, I new the Colorado Rockies as well as almost anyone. I could help post news about games when Tracy needed a breather. So on that Monday we agreed to register a domain name and be prepared for the worst.

The worst happened a few days later on Thursday when we got the news that the next day's paper, the Friday edition, would be the last of the Rocky Mountain News.

All thoughts of new websites were put on hold that day. I, like everyone else, was walking around in an angry, nostalgic funk, pissed that anyone would dare throw away a treasure like the Rocky Mountain News, and yet ironically relieved that at least we finally knew the ending to our story. That day ended in a bar with my now-former co-workers and several toasts to the end of what felt like many things.

Over the weekend, as the hangover wore off and the reality that we all had to find a job again began to set it in, things began to move quickly. One plan — for many of the Rocky staff writers, particularly the arts staff, to begin publishing on IWantMyRocky.com, was underway as my wife began training colleagues to use Wordpress so together we could keep the website updated with rotating shifts from our homes. There was a lot of interest swirling around us about an online-only news site and we were determined to keep things moving until we knew what, if anything, would happen. Meanwhile, I began work on InsideTheRockies.com on Saturday morning and launched the site Sunday night. In the meantime, Tracy had reached out to Jack Etkin, the Rocky's other baseball writer to join up with us.

We weren't sure what would happen next. We knew people were willing to read Colorado Rockies news from more than one source. I had the traffic reports from the Rocky as proof. What we didn't know was how our more personal existence would connect with fans and potential readers. The first few months of the website were erratic — when we posted, what we posted and who was reading — but traffic and interest were high. Meanwhile, Tracy began to work for FSN, the cable channel that broadcasts Rockies games, for free to gain exposure and I was trying to launch a series of news sites that all ultimately failed to gain much momentum. But by the end of the summer of 2009, after the Rockies replaced their manager and went on the best prolonged run in franchise history, the site had developed a following and regularly identifiable group of readers.

Tracy, Jack and I, meanwhile, had begun doing something unthinkable while at the Rocky — joining the comment threads, answering questions, posing questions and engaging our readers in a ongoing discussion. Nearly every newspaper's website operated on the theory that comment threads would self-police with little evidence that it actually happened. But I believed that once the authors — or, put another way, the authorities behind the news — showed that they were willing to defend, further articulate and expound upon what they wrote, that readers who posted in the comment threads would raise the level of discourse, or at least be less likely to engage in the sort of hit-and-run commenting that make comment threads at newspaper website so difficult to read. Call out and eliminate the trolls and the average reader would be more likely to join a conversation that they previously only watched go on without them.

It worked better than we could have ever imagined. I believed that being involved in the comments section would keep out some of the negativity; I could not imagine how intelligent and thoughtful the comment threads would become once that first goal had been achieved. Rather than attacking the Rockies and the team's management for every decision as happened at the Rocky and Denver Post websites, if our readers criticized they defended their criticism. Or they would be supportive and try to understand or explain the logic of certain moves. What we tapped into was a group of fans who followed the team closely enough to be critical but were ultimately supportive even of the worst decisions, the sort of fans that newspaper management at both the Rocky and the Post either didn't believe existed or disregarded while trying to reach the casual fans who demanded the Rockies spend money on free agents yet often couldn't name players the team should target.

Since then the site and the site design have undergone a slow evolution. It will get a new look for the 2011 season, our third operating the site. The 2010 design, introduced before the season and modified slightly during the season, was an effort to begin prioritizing certain information. But as the function of the site began to change during the season, moving steadily away from news and more toward a discussion of the news, the site took on a bit of clutter. In the middle of the 2010 season, we began offering a farm report to readers who donated to the site, a PDF of 6-12 pages we e-mailed once a month with news from the Rockies' minor-league system. The response was encouraging — many of our readers donated more than we asked and clearly wanted to keep the site alive. One of my early theories about online news was that people won't pay for something they get somewhere else, but if the experience is notably different, if it has value relative to what others offer, people will pay to support it. We don't charge a membership on the site, but the financial support of our readers is welcome and necessary. We give them something a little extra in return to show our appreciation.

The 2011 design, which was unveiled before spring training, further emphasizes the interactivity for the readers, introduces some new features, incorporates new design elements I've developed over the year with other sites and cleans up the site code, which was a bit of a mess and had advanced little since it was launched in a rush in 2009.