From an interview of the Post’s Editor-in-Chief by MediaBistro:

We’ve really fallen behind the times here. We are in the process of designing a Web 3.0 generation website that we hope will leapfrog where the current news industry is, ideally, and create a reader news experience that has not been imitated in the industry.

We’ve hired the biggest name in the design profession: Roger Black. His work includes the New York Times, Bloomberg and Houston Chronicle. He has created a design that we’ve very excited about. … The goal is to go live in mid-May…

I’ve long believed that the era of newspapers determining what is fit to read, as the New York Times might say, is over and the key to web design going forward is allowing the reader to take control of their news experience.

The digital era allows us to take our readers along with us on the experience with news. Our design achieves that with the creation of inline video service to “news cubes” that allows people to flip in one direction and get different kinds of contact and flip another direction and get video, databases, interactives or ask a question of a field of experts.

I’ve long believed that news sites need to break themselves entirely from the vertical construction that the newspaper industry has relied on for years. … We’re doing a horizontalization of the news: If there’s a topic, a person, a location, or event, calendar event or news event that you’re interested in, you can horizontally slice the database of our news and find things. … It will also allow you to track whatever person or topic you want on a daily basis just by coming back to the theme page. … We’ll create 15-20,000 RSS feeds on narrow-casted themes. This will meet people’s specific news interests.

We’ll also create online communities, an area where people can socially network around the news. So people interested in unique topics or subjects will have this online community where they can share news and comment to each other. … We’ll have a ‘blogger in chief’ for each community. … They will most likely not be a Times staffer. .. We hope to launch 25-30 communities this summer.