he online publishing world, like the rest of the journalism industry, is complicated. Should form follow function, or is it important to take advantage of the latest bells and whistles to retain readers? How and when do you use links without interrupting the flow of the story? We have done a lot of work to navigate these questions and put web development theory into practice. If we’ve done our job, you’ll get as complete a package as possible. We had some room for creativity, but the content was determined for us by the articles in Flux itself.

Certainly, an online magazine should do more than offer printed material in an electronic format. The possibilities of the web mean that you can be sparked by our presentation of the content to go out and discover more about the topics for yourself.

Besides trying to present the stories in inFlux attractively, we have also endeavored to make it easy for you to explore the subjects of these stories in depth. There are links to many sites with correlative information, there are additional short pieces to fill in the picture completely, and there are interactive graphics to help you see the whole thing clearly.

The process of compiling the extra information has been long and arduous. One thing I’ve learned is that an online companion of a magazine needs to work very closely with print staff from the beginning of the project. To track down crucial bits of information and gain the appropriate permissions to use content on the web, planning needs to start early, in conjunction with the print side, and the two versions of the magazine should see their tasks as overlapping.

We did work closely with the designers of the printed magazine, but perhaps we could have done even more cooperative work. This would have reduced the amount of story design that online staff had to do. Then they could have focused even closer on the stuff the Internet is made of: multimedia content. More maps, graphics and extra information could have been provided if the online designers had more time to put their energy into the new media out there. After story design, we had about three weeks to add digital extras and get the site running.

Even so, the online staff did a fabulous job of putting together clean page designs and an easy-to-navigate architecture. It was a pleasure to work with talented, creative people who often knew more about what we were doing than I did. They all deserve applause for traveling the bumpy road with me, unsure of where we were going next or when we would get there.

I hope we did get there, and that our quest for information will provide you with a broader view of the stories and a way to while away countless hours finding out more and more about these topics. After you read the stories and explore the

inFlux 2000: (Clockwise from top) Ross Ward, Brian Diveley, Carol Rink, Michael Kleckner, Rory Carroll, Lisa Kleffner and Sabrina Reich.

graphics, sidebars and multimedia, check out our links that will link to a web site that will open up on the entire world. Information works together in a symbiotic way -- let it guide you. I spent this last weekend finding the rest of the information we needed on nomadic tribes, and along the way I learned about the neo-nazi movement in America, good juice bars in Portland, the anarchist community online, people protesting about and working for solutions to environmental concerns, and the latest in multimedia content development. Believe it or not, it was all related through a few links. Our world is a wide and complicated body of knowledge. As so many pages say, click to continue...

Peace and Joy,
Michael J. Kleckner