Carl Sessions Stepp, in his at times befuddling American Journalism Review piece on Alex Jones’ “Losing the News”, wonders why more people aren’t buying newspapers.

We do know that the daily newspaper constitutes one of the all-time great bargains — a carefully assembled collection of relevant and reliable local, national and international news, features, analysis and advertising, offered every single day for less than the price of a cup of coffee… Even now, it’s astounding that anyone snubs this all-but-free bounty.

Perhaps Stepp doesn’t use the Internet and doesn’t know that great journalism like our tour of the new San Joaquin County Administration Building is available online. And make no mistake, the project is a classic example of great journalism. It engages readers with a story and helps them understand a detailed issue in a straight-forward manner.

In this case, the story is the opening of San Joaquin County’s new $109 million administration building. A team at Recordnet.com led by my colleague Kirk Barron set out to use multimedia and online resources to show local residents how their tax dollars had been spent on the building. Kirk coordinated the project and worked on the Flash design and development, which was extensive; county reporter Zach Johnson wrote text describing nearly every room in the building; staff photographer Cliff Oto took more than 500 shots of the facility; and I used some of those shots to create Recordnet.com’s first interactive panoramas so that users could experience the building’s impressive lobby and board of supervisors’ chambers in a 360-degree environment. I also shot video and recorded audio for the project.

We were able to compile all the necessary information and complete the project in a little less than three weeks. The result is great journalism that brings a community into a story.

Check it out.

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