I have been thinking about "telling the story" around data, and am curious as to what you're thinking.
On our last call w/ Rick, we set out a couple of rough rules for DC data: a) Enough data to make searching interesting. b) A dataset that will make an interesting story. c) Data that is on the Live Data Feeds list. Candidates: Crime incidents Purchase Orders 311 Service Requests

So, when you suggest a "story" around those datasets, what do you mean? A story w/ a series of actions or events, w/ characters, a plot, a climax, a point or a moral? Or do you mean something simpler, like pointing out interesting dimensions of the data? Or some discovery?

Blake and I have been kicking this around, and have begun developing the idea of a sort of graphic story, kind of like a graphical novel, w/ text and line-drawings. Something on the line of "Arthur is an executive in Chicago. His daughter Chloe has just finished her first year at Georgetown and wants to move into an apartment w/ three of her friends. Arthur and Maeve, his wife, are concerned - to the point of panicking, with the risks that might befall Chloe. So Arthur starts searching the crime and 311 reports in various Georgetown neighborhoods in order to choose a safe apartment."

You get the idea. Is that what you're working on? Using the data as a platform or context for a story?