Ernie Smith, the founder of ShortFormBlog, a breaking news website, stole a (Facebook) page from the New York Times and its terrifically detailed timeline, spending a month or so with illustrator Ben Claassen III to create a backstory for the "face" of the blog, Julius the laid-off RSS robot. Says Smith: "It's as though Julius is at the forefront of publishing, even if he kind of fails along the way."
Not to be missed: Julius gets scooped by Drudge in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.