My friend Liz passed along this link to an absolutely incredible multimedia story from the Chicago Tribune. Five different well put together and much better than YouTube quality flash ~5min videos [probably the best compression I've seen for a widely available video like this from a large paper], accompanying photographs for each video segment giving more depth to the video and the plain text articles making it into the dead tree edition. They even include a link to a 33-page, 2-column .pdf of the print edition, complete with charts and photos, of the whole story if you want to print it out and not loose the feel of the story as you do when you print out a story online which normally doesn't include all the graphics and charts within the printout.

It's from the end of July and it's about oil, specifically Pulitzer winner and Tribune correspondent Paul Salopek's journey to find out what goes into the tanks of people's cars from a Marathon gas station in the 'burbs of Chitown in South Elgin.

I can't recall ever seeing anything coming close to how slickly put together this series by the Tribune is. This is engaging on so many levels and the load times aren't too shabby either indicating that they've either cut down on digital bloat or they've really opened up those internet tubes Ted Stevens is squaking about lately, or both.

I've watched all the videos and gone through the photos, during that time, the US has consumed some 800K barrels of oil according to a ticker at top left. Now, on to the text.

This is the future of news/media. Absolutely incredible.

And of random trivia note, the first oil well was drilled in PA.