Leah Jones might seem to be an improbable pioneer in the online world. One of our youngest staff members, Leah hails from the Beloit area and she tends to be a bit quiet in the office.

However, if you've been to our website recently you may have run into a loud, colorful and slick project called Hip Hop 101. Try it at http://www.madison.com/wsj/projects/hiphop/index.html

It began with Leah. She is a photographer who sees the positive side of Hip Hop and showed that to several staff members, who helped produce the multimedia presentation. I'd describe it here but you have to see it to believe it.

I was at lunch Tuesday with a group of decidedly middle-aged power-women in town when the topic of Hip Hop came up. I was truly thrilled to be able to refer them to this web link so they could drill deeper into one of our community's "good news" stories.

We are finding that this content is getting fewer unique viewers than a breaking news story or an investigative piece. We've had about 700 visitors since Sunday. What's interesting is that the web visitors for the most part tend to stay with Hip Hop 101 for a long time. And they are weighing in at the forum posted with the project. We are finding that this content is "sticky," a highly technical, new world term that means a reader/user stays with a project for a period of time or returns for visits.

My personal hope is that younger users and urban youth who often don't come into the ink-on-paper Wisconsin State Journal will try this version of our content. We are reaching out in ways that we hope are relevant to them. Our secret mission is to keep doing this so that if the world of newspapers shrinks to journals for the older readers, the web will be a place in which younger citizens will gather and create conversation about shared values.

The project could not have appeared without the great talents and work of Laura Sparks, Brent Bollenbach, Andy Erdman, Ron Larson, Chris Juzwik and Jonathan Utz. Please reply to this blog or to the forum attached to Hip Hop 101 so we know how we are doing.

If you liked Hip Hop 101, please let me know. And come back next week for some very cool NCAA content at madison.com/wsj. We are on a roll.