I’ll admit I’ve never given Web comments serious thought. As a news consumer, I tend to gloss over them by accident, mostly, while trying to find the end of whatever story I’m reading. And as a writer, my inclination is to internalize the positive ones, ignore the mean-spirited ones and openly assess the validity of the constructive criticisms, discerning how the person’s view might improve my reporting and/or writing skills.

But I was struck by the impact of comments Thursday morning when I was directed toward a piece by a Waco Tribune-Herald reporter. For my non-Texan friends, Waco is the biggest city near (south of) West, where the horrific fertilizer plant explosion on April 17 left 15 dead, many of whom were volunteer firefighters.

The Tribune-Herald story describes the intimate details of the “blunt force trauma” incurred by each of the victims, including graphic, downright disturbing particulars of individual causes of death and other vivid information about the deceased.

The comments were ruthless, and perhaps rightfully so. West and the surrounding areas (including Waco) are relatively small and very close-knit, especially considering their recent circumstances. At last check, there were around 450 comments (a lot for a local daily) lambasting the paper — and the writer — for disclosing such gruesome information about people esteemed in their community, and beyond, as heroes. By my count, there was not a single comment in favor of the story, its contents or the journalist who produced it.

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Just when you think you’ve mastered the art of quick, effective visual storytelling, there’s a brand new tool to learn.

The latest tool for journalists to tinker with? Brickflow, a building-blocks type of application you can use in the newsroom that is both super fun and a simple way to enhance your image-based storytelling efforts. Literally, it’s kind of a toy, as its creators liken the process to Legos.

Think of this addition to your storytelling library, built by Hungarian developers, like Storify — only the end result is a square-shaped slideshow rather than a vertical story flow.

Here’s how it works:

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Today, Quartz open-sourced the code for their in-house application Chartbuilder on Github, so we can all make charts worthy of our reporting, and without driving the graphics editor insane. There’s a minor learning curve, but you don’t have to be a graphics whiz to make them.

David Yanofsky, a reporter for Quartz and the creator of the application, writes on Nieman Journalism Lab that everyone benefits: reporters become more independant in working with their own data and it makes life easier for our colleagues over at the graphics desk, who can get bogged down with requests for data visualizations.

The charts are easily customizable to match any newsroom’s standards, they provide ‘immediate visual feedback’ so you don’t have to update and preview to make sure you didn’t mess anything up, and you can work on them offline if you download the source code. Most importantly, it’s simple. Yanofsky writes:

A reporter’s understanding of an image file is exponentially higher than a reporter’s understanding of an iframe embed code snippet. Content management systems’ understanding of an image file is exponentially higher than a CMS’s understanding of an iframe embed.

You can get started right now, and if you are one of those reporters who starts zoning as soon as you hear “source code,” bring it to a developer in the newsroom. They’ll probably thank you.

With a vast array of technological gizmos at our disposal, it’s easier than ever to take an idea for a new media tool and run with it.

But what if you had a support group to work around for 100 days, the cash to experiment with your endeavor and Silicon Valley entrepreneurial expertise?

That’s what Matter Ventures wants to give people with fresh media venture ideas. Their team wants to help you scale your startup and give you $50,000 for the design (both front and back ends), hacking and whatever else needs to be done for your media company. Partially funded by the Knight Foundation, Matter says its association with various news organizations gives entrepreneurs access to an audience for product testing and works as a media accelerator.

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When I last wrote about Pressfolios, the platform was still private and my inbox was full of requests from you, dear readers, for invites to join.

I’m happy to report that the online portfolio service is now officially in public beta and they’ve launched their Pro version this week. So now you can all sign up without me. You can read about the free version here.

Pressfolios Pro means you get unlimited stories, which is a big plus since with the free version you can only display 12. You can also bulk and automatically upload from your RSS feed, create a custom domain, backup your stories via pdf and screenshots, and set your portfolio to private (though that sort of defeats the purpose, right?).

For all users, they’ve also come up with a Chrome extension to add stories from your browser. Right now, if you use the promo code “beta” until August 1 to get a “25% off forever” on the $12/month fee for Pro.