Keep going…I’ll keep an eye on things.

–David

I am the colleague Mark is referring to in this post. And I think there is a misunderstanding about what is being discussed here.

You appear to be approaching this with a great familiarity with the back end efforts. From a technical or programmatic effort EveryBlock is praiseworthy. From an information delivery stand point it is praiseworthy. And for what its worth, whether it is journalism or not isn’t entering the discussion for me at this point. And no one suggested the data shouldn’t have been culled from the bowels of government.

I am approaching things from the front end. What Mark and I have been discussing is the market value of data. And how data driven apps generated from journalistic efforts may have more usefullness and opportunity if not always or solely put into the context of journalism but of product development. Or if they even should be. So I am entering the discussion and thinking or theorizing at this point.

It is certainly a valid assessment that some data has more value to a larger audience than others. And this is where Mark and I have been discussing things. It certainly is where many people in the newspaper industry are discussing things. Not only from a revenue stand point, but from a journalistic stand point.

Keller at NYT said once, we have to balance giving our readers vegetables with the dessert. Which is to say, we need to be recorders of history and write about the unsexy things of life like urban planning policy issues, but we can also do the sexy things that people are water-cooling about — American Idol or the death of Heath Ledger. And then how do we do this take make enough money that we can continue to do it. And databasing is included in this discussion.

Now specifically about EveryBlock. Its is a good information foundation to start from. It provides raw data. It would either be up to me as a general user to find patterns in that data or relationships from one data set to another or it would have to be done by someone else using your data. There is certainly more opportunity that will be explored by you and others with this data or site.

But to be totally transparent, EveryBlock has some interestings things in it, but it doesn’t interest me on the whole. I’ll choose other sites to fill my information needs before I choose this one…for now.
And by the way, if I enter a drawing for a shopping spree I certainly am pulling for Home Dept over Linens n Things.

It’s like winning a shopping spree and complaining that the store doesn’t carry anything you like.

I should also mention our site isn’t even a week old, and we’ve got much more up our sleeves in the areas of analysis, trending and context.

Thanks for the writeup –
Adrian @ EveryBlock