'Insane' traffic for the NYTimes.com election dashboard, says head of newsroom interactive technologies

NYTimes.com took an ambitious approach to this week's presidential election coverage with a new API in place, a system bringing in external content to the site and detailed, interactive mapping.

But if Aron Pilhofer, editor of newsroom interactive technologies at the New York Times, had to pick one thing that worked really well during the election period, he says it would be the election dashboard, a new concept for the site.

"The idea was to create a smallish, sort of standalone page that you could pull up on your PC or on your iPhone and see the entire state of play without having to flip around network-to-network or website-to-website," he explains.

The dashboard showed the latest results, with a state-by-state breakdown and a matrix that allowed readers to also monitor six other major external news networks: CBS, NBC, ABC, the Associated Press, FOX and CNN.

"It worked amazingly well, and the traffic numbers were insane - well beyond our wildest imagination," says Pilhofer.

It was testament to the team's talent, he says, that the site 'kept up under extraordinary strain'.

"In graphics, which produced those incredible maps; in our multimedia group, which was responsible for the amazing video and Word Train graphic; and last but not least, my own team, which was responsible for bringing it all together, and getting it online - it was quite a night," he says.

"Our graphics desk has perfected the art of getting an incredible amount of data and detail into a small enough package to fit on the web.

"If you look at our maps, especially for the House, and compare them to any other news organisation, I think you'll see what I mean. No one else comes close."

According to Pilhofer the development of the election coverage changed throughout the primary season and in relation to other major events feature on the site, like the Olympics.

"[During the Olympics] We were routinely beating ESPN and other sites much better known for sports coverage and I think the reason is that we weren't trying to compete on their terms," says Pilhofer.

"Rather, we were playing to our own strengths as a news organization, which is rich, detailed, authoritative graphics and stories/analysis. Same with our election coverage.

"We'll never be able to keep up with television or even larger websites like CNN in terms of speed, but we can be the first place people look when they want to know why something happened the way it did.

"Our entire package was designed with that in mind: you may go somewhere else for the breaking news, but you'll come to us for the analysis. I think it's really our sweet spot."

Pilhofer is looking forward to moving into non-election territory, although they do have the New York City Mayoral election to tackle in 2009.
 
"We've been so focused on elections for so long that I am really looking forward to branching out into some other departments – sports [where the American Football playoffs application has already been developed] and business obviously, and seeing what we can do."

One project already nearing completion is the Guantanamo Dockets: 'a first-of-its-kind comprehensive archive' of all the 779 people who have been detained at Guantanamo, along with all the public documents available for each case.

Plans to make use of more of the paper's data following the launch of its campaign finance API are also underway, says Pilhofer, with a complete database of congressional roll call votes scheduled for release at the end of the month.

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