Exciting times

It's meant to be silly season, but this is one of the most challenging news weeks I can remember at the Advertiser - and not for lack of stories.

I can't go into too much detail at the moment, but we have a story (and no, it's not the murder) which has made everyone in the senior editorial team determined to do their very best to make it fly.

I should start by saying the story is all down to reporter Aline Nassif - and it's all credit to her drive and inspiration that we're all pulling together in the most effective way I think we have ever done.

I've said before it's no secret there are quite significant differences in our attitude to web-first in the newsroom. And there's no doubt the fact there was no question of this ever being broken first online (it's not that kind of story) has meant we've been able to concentrate on how to do it the most justice we can once it does get there.

The skills both I and chief photographer David Berman have been busy building up over the past weeks and months are now going to be tested pretty much to their full. I really hope we rise to the challenge.

Even if we only manage to pull off what we've planned so far, it will easily be the most impressive multimedia project we've done. But in the afternoon breather we have after Thursday lunchtime's print deadline, I'm determined to make it even better (by which I mean more interactive).

It's almost undoubtedly going to be one of the Advertiser's biggest stories of the year in print. Until now, we've not had the skills, the technology or the time to cover those big stories in the same way online. This is our chance to change that - and prove our website can eventually overtake the paper in terms of presenting Croydon's stories in all their complexity.

Oh, and if anyone has any examples of ways papers have presented multimedia packages we could aspire to (especially ones with lots of interactivity), I'd really appreciate it if you could post them below.