I joined MSN News in the summer of 1995. A year later, I met Bill Gates for the first time when he announced to our newsroom that we would join forces with NBC News to create the MSNBC joint venture.

I put together a few slideshows of the projects and people I was lucky enough to collaborate with from 1995 to 2002: https://brianstorm.com/msn-news-msnbc

I became MSNBC.com’s first director of multimedia, leading an amazing team and our work in photography, audio, and video. For seven years, I had the rare privilege of watching—and helping shape—what digital journalism could become.

In 1996, the web was still a wide-open frontier. News organizations were learning how to report in a medium that was immediate, visual, interactive, and constantly changing. We were building the plane while flying it: inventing ways to bring together reporting, photography, design, video, data, and emerging technology in service of a story.

What I remember most is the ambition of the people I was fortunate enough to meet and collaborate with on both coasts. We did not want simply to republish what had appeared on television or in print. We wanted to make journalism that belonged on the web.

Our special projects were often where that aspiration came alive. They allowed us to take readers deeper into complex subjects, create immersive visual experiences, and experiment with forms that set us apart. Projects such as The Week in Pictures, our designed covers, and many other storytelling innovations all reflected the same belief: that a digital news organization could be immediate and thoughtful, visually rich and journalistically rigorous.

Thirty years later, the tools have changed beyond recognition. The pace is faster, and the audience is more fractured. But the essential challenge remains familiar: How do we use new technology to help people understand the world more clearly?

I will always look back on those years as among the most enjoyable of my life. Straight out of graduate school and into Microsoft, I found myself at the beginning of news on the web—working with remarkable people, building incredible products, learning constantly, and helping break new ground together. It was a fascinating seven years of my career, and an experience I will never forget.

Happy 30th anniversary to MSNBC.com—and to everyone who helped build it.

Here is the full version of the first cover we ever published on July 15, 1996: