Tim, welcome! It’s great to have you here in New York. How’s the visit been so far?

Very cool. Your role with Thunderdome/Photodome is only a fraction of what you do for DFM though. What’s your “day job” at the Denver Post?

And what an operation it is -- 26 people, from what you said earlier.

Media Center was an idea that Mateo Leyba and Meghan Lyden and I came up with in 2006 to try and maximize the photography content both locally and wire we had at the Post. We believed very strongly that good photojournalism didn't have a home on the web, particularly not at the Post, so we wanted to create a place people could come to for good photojournalism.

Media Center last year was 30+ percent of the whole site. In 2006 it was less than one tenth of one percent of the traffic. The site's traffic has grown a lot since then. They've done a lot of work to grow that. Everyone on staff helps contribute to media center putting up photos and writing captures that are well-crafted. Everyone has a hand. We've positioned people's jobs to be videographers. Even our editorial assistant whose job it was to clerk for the department is a videographer.

Speaking of the best, let’s talk a bit about the Pulitizer-winning projects you’ve been involved with while at the Post. The first was Ian Fisher: American Soldier, right?

By the way, here’s the Denver Post’s article announcing that Craig F. Walker had won the award.

We do require and push hard to come up with ideas from our department we can bring to the greater newsroom. Ian Fisher was one of those ideas, as was Welcome Home.

I should also mention that the photos taken as part of ‘Welcome Home’ were part of the package that won Walker the Newspaper Photographer of the Year award in the Pictures of the Year International contest.

I think that the story was great. Craig did an amazing job with the photographs and that's certainly why it won the award. I get asked a lot about "But it didn't run in the paper." That for me is neither here nor there. What's important is telling a story and getting it out to readers. If we truly believe our future is in moving to new delivery devices, it has to be irrelevant whether it runs in the paper. I don't mean to diminish the value of the paper, but our audience online is phenomenal. If we're truly digital first, we have to give our websites equal importance and value in the work we do. In this case, that's exactly what we did.

You can probably find data and parse it any way you want to prove that right and wrong. I think there's a crossover audience, but I know for a fact, it's not the same audience. On Media Center, fifty percent of our traffic comes from Colorado. You can only get the Denver Post in the Front Range and certain parts of Colorado. The other 50 percent comes from outside Colorado. What we do in print serves a key component, but what we do online serves an expanded role for the country. If you look at the Denver Post and all our digital audiences in the web, e-edition and tablet, we're the 4th largest digital newspaper presence in the country. To think our audience is limited to those who pay $6.50 a month for a subscription is really a bad idea. Then everything you do is tied to who you think your print audience is. That's not who our audience nor is it the one we should be after. I'm a 49 year old guy, but I'm trying to make a website that attracts 12- to 72 years old. We want to be the best media organization we can be and tell great stories and we want to hit as many people with them as we can. If you pigeonhole yourself as one thing or another, you can really hold yourself back.

No. I think the web certainly serves all sorts of storytelling. I think it's advantageous to other forms. For example, documentary video and photography have changed dramatically.

if you do a Google search for "The Death of Photojournalism" you get over a million results. I think just the opposite. I think this is the golden age of photojournalism. This is an opportunity to use the web to tell stories. Photographs are beautifully displayed on websites and tablets. People love photographs. One of the things we used to key off the Media Center data is the number one topic that resonates with Coloradans is gardening. Number two is photography. It was one of those things that helped tell me I was on the right track.

I think smaller properties, which I used to work at, their audience is going to eat this up. They have to focus on their local community and raise the expectation of their photography and give tools to their photographer that allow them to do the job. Then you can build this site where a photographer can go to a field hockey game and shoot the story of the game, not just photos. Shoot the fans, the action, the coaches. Then go back to the office and put up 25 pictures. Not 5, not 50. Tell the story of the community through photographs and you'll get an audience that is proportionally equal to the amount of traffic we're getting.

I said 25 off the top of my head, but I can back that up. The average user on Media Center views 23 images per visit. The key to it is to be able to tell a story. If you only have 5 really great photographs, your gallery should be 5. If you have 50 great photos, it should be 50. Your gallery has to be equal to the quality of the work. That's why with 50, people usually get bored. You have to hit that sweet spot -- 23 apparently -- to keep people interested. The smallest successful gallery we've ever had was 7 and we've done galleries with hundreds of photos. It's the content that is always the deciding factor.

The national Media Center is up and running on 122 DFM newspaper websites.The idea behind that was to share the success the Denver Post was having with high quality photojournalism on its website with the family of newspapers we are a part of. The real next step is for those 122 newspapers to upload their local content and reap the success locally that we've had in Denver. That project is fully engaged and they are uploading to sites every day. Within the next few weeks every DFM paper that has Media Center will have local upload.

By the way, if you want to understand why I think local editors will be excited about this, check out Matt DeRienzo's Storify about how photography has driven web growth for the Denver Post.

We're going to post a couple reader questions now. If you have one, send it in by hitting 'Make a comment' above.

I see video like I see photography in stories in the newspaper: from a brief or a mugshot to a fullblown Sunday piece and everything in between. Video can be the same thing with reporters being able to bring interviews to life through video, capturing great quotes and comments made by subjects without getting in the way of their critical job, which is great reporting. I think photographers can create compelling video, but not at the same time they're creating compelling photography. You have to make a choice. I think we're all engaged in telling these stories. The most important thing for me is not getting in the way of what our core job is. If i can maximize the great reporting skills of a reporter and turn that into equally good video by outfitting them with the appropriate equipment -- I would say an iPad and a microphone -- we can enhance their reporting. Same with a photographer, if I can give them a DSLR camera and good audio, I can enhance their storytelling. We do different things, that's what makes us great. That marriage is tied to our success.

We're going to post one final question for Tim. Thanks to everyone who submitted something!

3:52 in 1500 meters at 6,000 feet and 1:48 in 800 meters

Thanks so much for taking time this afternoon to chat with us, Tim. Can't wait to see what's in store this year for Media Center.