With Chicagocrime.org, Adrian Holovaty demonstrates something it’s so easy to forget: We’re not at the end of the road with innovative journalism on the web. Probably only at the beginning. From a Holovaty interview:

I don’t see newspaper Web operations as particularly innovative. (I’ve considered leaving the industry a couple of times, for that reason, but a passion for journalism and freedom of information keeps me coming back.) My advice to newspapers is to hire Web programmers — particularly those with a journalism background. A Web site without programmers is like a newspaper without pressmen. I may be off on this analogy, because I don’t know much about pressmen, but it seems newspapers don’t skimp on pressmen because they realize how vital pressmen are to running the operation. It doesn’t make sense to skimp on programmers. To innovate, it’s important to know what’s possible, and it takes technically minded folks to know what’s possible.