by: Matt Stempeck | PBS.org

Updated: Our recent Civic Media lunch at MIT featured the digital team from the Boston Globe, led by Jeff Moriarty, vice president of Digital Products. He was joined by Chris Marstall, Marck Chang, and Grace Woo. They've just launched a new standalone site for the Globe, spinning off from the Boston.com portal and its ubiquitous pop-up ads. It's not a redesign -- they got to design a newspaper site from scratch in the year 2011, and the benefits of having a blank slate are evident in their award-winning design. (Here's more background on that design from some of its designers.)

Like most things in Boston, the Globe has a rich history with many innovations throughout the years. Moriarty talked about Charles H. Taylor's prototypical content innovations in 1873, when the Globe added sports coverage, stocks, and many other sections that we now consider essential to a modern, family newspaper (and sections we may not expect today, like a separate section for women).