I’ve a new post up this week at WonkComms, talking about how our team at The Century Foundation put together our first digitally-native report. Here’s a taste:

Disclaimer: there’s nothing inherently wrong with PDFs. They work on pretty much any device, and for printing, they’re tough to beat.

But PDFs on the web are a hack. They’re born of the web’s early days when putting something online meant hardcoding in HTML. Instead of adapting content to what was then a pretty limited visual experience, we #wonkcomms types opted to produce electronic versions of print documents to post online.

Unfortunately, as the web improved, our processes didn’t. We continued to make the PDF report our central product. Most wonkcommers make noises about moving beyond the PDF, opting for blog posts, infographics, and BuzzFeed listicles. But many others continue to treat the PDF report as the “real” product.

Admittedly, our team at The Century Foundation hasn’t figured out exactly how to move beyond the PDF. But we are trying some new things. In fact, our first entry into digitally-native reportslaunched on March 10.

This post walks you through our process in producing the piece. (Note: it will make more sense if you see the end product first. Go ahead and take a look. We’ll wait.)

Read the full thing at WonkComms.