I Spy A Rider

Something caught Bostonist’s eye when rummaging through the Sunday Globe this week. "Slices of the Orange" that consumed the entire above the fold section of the City Weekly section had us scratching our heads thinking “hey, that’s pretty good.” The mosaic of faces making up the Orange Line was a decent representation of what many Bostonians see each and everyday. The focus was on the faces of who’s on the Orange Line during a typical work day, but distinctly, and curiously, not faces of the T during the peak rush hour transit. The ‘slices’ are taken only after 9 a.m. until mere moments after 5 p.m. The photo essay may have been worth a thousand words for each picture, unfortunately the article to accompany it wasn’t as spectacular. The point was to show the diversity and destination of non-scientific sample cases, but certainly did not go so far as to demonstrate why T ridership actually increased last year.

We jumped on boston.com to check out how the online version of the story matched up. To our surprise (we expected a thumnail of the montage) a Flash audio slideshow adorned the top of the article (still followed by two click-to continuation pages, we still don’t understand why it’s not all on the same page). Bostonist is pleasantly surprised by the integration of media and use of Internet savvy this demonstrates. The photo essay made us a little bit jealous that we haven’t done it already – and curious if they got the T’s permission for the full day shoot, or if they were even noticed by MBTA police when they were taking pictures on the train. Report card: A for effort, C for mediocre story, and D- for including thirty pictures of T riders and not a single Red Sox hat, t-shirt, or other local pro sports team shwag. Can it really be a ride on the T without a Sox cap?

Photo: A slice of the slice. Camera grab of the Boston Globe City Weekly section on Sunday Feb. 26