This is by far the oldest project in any portfolio or gallery on my site, but it was such a big part of my work that I couldn't leave it out, and it's fun to see this stuff all these years later (for me, anyway). For several years in the mid-2000s, The Progressive Farmer made a lot of news by ranking rural counties on a "best places" list similar to Money's famous countdown. In fact, I worked closely with some incredible folks at Money to get the project off the ground, and to promote it (we were all part of Time, Inc. back then). By year two and three, the thing kinda had a life of its own, but I ran the program until I left in 2009.
I think it resulted in some excellent work from the whole PF team, and it was fun to exhume the magazine pieces (here, as downloadable PDFs) along with some of the ancillary content (like a partnership with The Weather Channel that took a closer look at our 2008 picks).
