World's oldest Sunday paper goes gonzo for the Web

Last weekend, I stayed on the remarkably comfortable sofa of Ben Hammersely and his fantastic wife Anna Söderblom, in Florence, Italy. Florence has lots to recommend it, but possibly the most fascinating thing I saw that weekend was the project Ben was working on for the Observer, the oldest Sunday newspaper in the world. Ben has helped the Observer web-ify itself, with a vengeance.

The weekend paper is now supplemented by a daily blog, with podcasts and moblogs. The RSS is fulltext (crap, no it's not -- this is such an important detail, Observer -- get it right!). Trackbacks and comments are on and unmoderated. Keywords are tracked and displayed in a "folksonomic zeitgeist." Headlines from competing papers and Technorati link cosmoses are pulled in and displayed on the front page. No paywall. No adwall. No wall.

That's just for starters. We spent many exciting hours sitting in cafes, talking about what comes next -- conversations I'm not at liberty to repeat. But basically: put together a wish-list of features for a clued-in media organization to embrace, then square it and square it again in a relentless pursuit of Web-gonzoism. That's what's coming down the pipe.

I read a lot of newspapers on the Web, and this is something new and wonderful. Check it out. Link (via Ben Hammersley)