by Brent Cunningham

In the early days, APBnews.com hired its editor in a Starbucks and squeezed into a newsroom so cramped that the fire marshal eventually nudged the start-up out. Those "early days" were just sixteen months ago. Now, APB -- the crime news Web site that marries new media with old-school reporting -- fills two sprawling floors (one still being renovated) in a building in lower Manhattan, cherry-picks reporters and editors from premiere news organizations, and is hyped as a journalistic pioneer.

And it is. On any given day, for example, APB reporters have nearly 4,000 freedom of information requests prodding bureaucrats from coast to coast. Three staffers, an in-house legal counsel, and a specialized computer program -- complete with ticklers to keep track of deadlines -- handle this document factory. It has produced thousands of pages of government files on everyone from Richard Nixon to Murray Kempton, an internal Pentagon memo suggesting the Navy pilot believed to be the gulf war's first U.S. casualty may have survived the crash of his plane over Iraq, and a steady stream of less sensational items like indictments and asset-forfeiture files.

With a growing staff of 125 (it will eventually approach 200), APB's new digs are still crowded. Editors and reporters are lined up in rows -- no cubicles or offices -- just computers side by side, linked by tangles of telephones, paper, and coffee cups. The place has the energy and rhythm of a daily newspaper and the feel of a work in progress.

What APB does is still rare in online journalism: hire real reporters and editors, arm them with the interactive and multimedia muscle of the Internet, and turn them loose. The result is a daily diet of original reporting on crime, safety, and criminal justice stories ranging from virtual bookies cashing in on the Super Bowl to an in-depth look at the nation's aging prison population. They write about anti-crime proposals in the president's state of the union speech, an inmate whose millennial fears caused him to sew his eyes and lips shut with dental floss, and a theft charge at a sheriff's bond fund in Florida. There are short, daily polls, and a regularly updated list of chat-room topics like gun control or racism in the New York City police department. A section of ongoing stories has a mini-archive of APB coverage of things like the hunt for Eric Rudolph, the suspected Olympic park bomber; and the U.S. effort to prosecute Osama bin Laden for the bombings at East African embassies.

Storytelling on the Internet is still evolving, and APB (the name was inspired by the police phrase All Points Bulletin) has an interesting blend of traditional and new media. In coverage of the JonBenet Ramsey murder story, for example, readers get the kind of breaking and analytical coverage found in newspapers and on television. But they also can see the autopsy report, the search warrants, and the ransom note. They can rummage through the "House of Clues," where an interactive diagram of the Ramsey's Colorado home leads through the evidence. "We're trying to do experimental journalism that is journalism," says Hoag Levins, who left his job as executive editor of Editor & Publisher to run this online newsroom.

APB's pretrial coverage of the Amadou Diallo trial covered much of the same ground as the rest of the media. But APB readers can also take a 360-degree photographic tour of the Bronx vestibule where New York City police gunned down Diallo. They can peruse evidence in unsolved murder cases and discuss them via online chat, view snippets of police video -- car chases, drug busts, etc. -- packaged with narration like something from the television show Cops, and enter their zip code and get a crime-risk assessment of their neighborhood.

"They really are sort of the new wave," says Nora Paul, who teaches new media at the Poynter Institute, about APB. "These are solid journalists doing solid journalism."

The idea of a vertical news site that banks on intensity of reader interest isn't new. ESPN does it with sports. The Street.com and others do it with market news. But APB brings it to a less specialized audience.

Marshall Davidson, a former investment banker from Texas, conceived the company as a cable channel. He was joined by partners Mark Sauter, a former investigative reporter, and Matthew Cohen, another investment banker, and together they re-envisioned it for the Internet. APB hasn't struggled for backers. Sauter says a first round of venture capital money ($3.5 million in August 1998) was followed by a second round of $20 million last summer from assorted media investors and funds. A third round is on its way. And although Sauter says there is no timetable, APB may go public this year.

Profit continues to elude most online ventures. In an effort to remedy this, Davidson, Sauter, and Cohen have moved well beyond banner ads. "One of the things an analyst told us was essential when we started was to have multiple revenue streams," says Sauter, officially the company's chief operating officer. Toward that end, APB has entered into a mushrooming network of deals. APB stories are syndicated to newspapers and their Web sites through Universal Press Syndicate, to college textbooks through Prentice Hall, to television through CONUS Communications, and to the Web through Snap.com, Yahoo! News, and MSNBC.com. A deal with AOL was inked last month. Part of the renovation currently under way at APB headquarters involves installation of a television studio for another possible deal with a network. E-commerce is coming: in addition to branded stuff like hats and T-shirts, APB plans to sell goods and services connected to industries that are natural advertisers, like insurance firms and companies that make security systems.

Despite all the financial maneuvers, everyone from Davidson and Sauter on down insists the journalism is primary. "We had a potential sponsor come in and say they wanted to do a major deal with us, and that then we could quote their people as experts in our articles," Sauter says. "It was tough to walk away from that as a start-up, but we did. It's very important that there not be a perception that our coverage can be bought."

Last spring, APB won the Society of Professional Journalists's online deadline reporting award. In February it won a Scripps Howard Foundation award for its package of crime-risk data on all four-year colleges in the country. Late last year, APB sued to overturn a decision by the federal judiciary blocking the release of financial disclosure information for federal judges. APB planned to put all 12,580 pages of the documents on its Web site. The case is pending in federal court.

There is a sense of optimism -- almost idealism -- at APB. Even old-timers like Sydney Schanberg, the Pulitzer Prize winning former New York Times reporter and Newsday columnist who was wooed by APB to run its investigative unit, sounds like a cub reporter when discussing the site's potential. "There is a bit of Toyland here," he says, "a constant sense of 'Oh my, look what we can do.'"

In fact, the newsroom is full of print and broadcast veterans, from places like The Washington Post, Reuters, Time, CNN, Fox News, ABC News, and UPI. Sauter said most editorial salaries fall between $40,000 to $70,000, and all employees get stock options. Bob Port, the former Associated Press editor who led the team that broke the story last year of the Korean War massacre at No Gun Ri, signed on in July as APB's senior computer-assisted-reporting editor. He says the allure of APB is more about creating something new than the chance to cash in stock options. "It's an open frontier for information," Port says. "We are making the rules as we go along."

Such trailblazing often requires fixing things that aren't working. Last September, for example, APB redesigned its site after some readers mistook it for a police site and others found it too ominous. Now, the tone and appearance are lighter, and the coverage mix includes more safety stories, like minivan crash-test reviews, and instructions on how to fight off different types of rapists. Apparently, it worked. Numbers from Media Metrix, a company that tallies Internet traffic, indicate APB's "unique visitors" -- the most accurate measure yet of traffic -- rose from 311,000 in September to 815,000 in December. The New York Times Web site, by comparison, got 1.8 million unique visitors that month.

Despite the occasionally lurid subject matter, Levins says, APB's reporting and writing standards are in line with those at a community newspaper. He notes the play he gave an outrageous story about a group of killers in Australia who dissolved their victims in vats of acid. "We didn't play that as the screaming story of the day," he says, "even though there was a temptation to. I don't want a front page where people assume we are a supermarket tabloid."

Some days it can seem that way. Recent headlines include: exec denies giving porn star inside-trade info; addict caught using fake penis for urine test; police: pantless jail guard had viagra in car. Such stories have a place at APB, but Levins says that as the site evolves there will be more stories like the series on America's aging prison population -- stories that examine the complex criminal justice issues confronting society. A big part of that will come from Schanberg's investigative team, which is still ramping up. "That, ultimately, is the core of what we do," Levins says.

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