JOURNALISM EXPERIENCE

Professional

• Associate editor
  August 2010 through present.
  Angie’s List Magazine. Indianapolis, Indiana.
  Produce articles and localized content related to homeowner and consumer affairs for editions of the magazine aimed at Angie’s List members in several major U.S. cities.
• Education reporter
  January 2007 through August 2010.
  Journal & Courier. Lafayette, Indiana. (Circ. 40,000)
  Cover K-12 schools and education issues in Lafayette, West Lafayette, Tippecanoe County and the surrounding region.
  • Regularly write A1 enterprise packages as well as provide timely stories for print and breaking news online.
  • Publish breaking news to the Web during occasional shifts on weekends or as the morning online reporter. Also, live blogged for jconline.com and on Twitter several presidential campaign visits, including Hillary, Bill and Chelsea Clinton. Helped launch our first use of CoverItLive to provide a live chat during a basketball game.
  • Plan and write a weekly Schools Page with news, features and Q&As about local schools. Sometimes shoot the display photos for the page.
  • Maintain the School Notebook beat blog on the newspaper’s Web site, http://jconline.com/schoolblog
  • Serve as a newsroom representative on the new product development team. Helped launch and improve several products including our moms site, a quarterly print dining guide, a monthly games section that sold out in its first printing, and a high school micro-site that has since closed. Also worked with the editors to help identify and fix problems when our Web site moved to the new Gannett template.
• Reporting intern
  May through August 2006.
  The Courier. Findlay, Ohio. (Circ. 25,000)
  Covered general assignment and short feature stories about the city and neighboring areas while working the night cops beat.

Student media

• Editor
  August 2004 through December 2006.
  Daily Kent Stater. Kent, Ohio. (Circ. 10,000)
  Supervised an editorial staff of more than 100 members and oversaw daily production as editor-in-chief of Kent State’s independent student newspaper.
  • Under my leadership, both the print and online editions were redesigned and content was refocused to better align with the results of a reader focus group.
  • We laid the groundwork for a then soon-to-be converged newsroom by establishing a news partner relationship with the campus TV and radio stations.
  • Previously held positions include managing editor (2x), campus editor, public affairs reporter, technology reporter, student finance reporter and proofreader.
• Webmaster, Staff Writer
  January 2004 through May 2005.
  The Burr magazine. Kent, Ohio. (Circ. 10,000)
  Created from scratch a Web presence, the CyBurr, to complement the look and content of the semesterly general interest student magazine in Spring 2004 and 2005.
  http://burr.kent.edu/archives/2006/fall/Spring2005/ •
  http://burr.kent.edu/archives/2004/spring/
  • Added relevant sidebars, links, quizzes, audio and photos to round out print stories.
  • Updated with a mid-semester, online-only magazine for the first time in Spring 2004.
  • Wrote a short story on a Gulf War veteran reflecting on the current Iraq war when I was a staff writer in Fall 2004.
• Webmaster
  August through December 2004.
  Fusion magazine Kent, Ohio. (Circ. 2,000)
  Designed the Web site from scratch for the LGBT-issues student magazine.
  • Received the final stories and photos less than a week before the print magazine was to come out. The content had to be input by me over a long weekend while I was also on a service-learning trip in Memphis, Tenn., where I injured my arm and could only type with one hand.
  http://fusion.kent.edu/archives/fall2004/

EDUCATION

Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. Bachelor of Science in Journalism and Mass Communication, December 2006. (Graduated in 3.5 years.) Newspaper journalism concentration. Sociology minor. Grade point: 3.76.

COMPUTER/WEB SKILLS

Mac and PC • HTML and CSS • Adobe InDesign, Photoshop • Macromedia Dreamweaver, Fireworks • NewsEdit Pro • Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel • iMovie • Audacity • WordPress and Blogger • YouTube and Brightcove • Twitter • CoverItLive • Eager to learn everything else

TRAINING AND CONFERENCES

• “Whose Rules?” Poynter Kent State Media Ethics Workshop. September 2008. Attended this annual conference that this year focused on online journalism ethics, blogging and the future of digital media. In addition to attending, I also live-blogged the sessions for conference organizers on Twitter.
• CAR training from IRE. August 2008. Gannett sponsored about two dozen of its reporters from papers in the Midwest to test new computer assisted reporting and database training, which was taught by Investigative Reporters Editors trainers. I was one of two reporters from my paper to attend this two-day training in Detroit, which focused heavily on Excel. I learned how to find, request and better analyze databases in my reporting.
• HSPA Reporters’ Roadshow. June 2008. Attended annual training event put on by the Hoosier State Press Association. Topics covered included using the Internet in reporting, writing cleaner and freedom of information laws.

HONORS

• First Place, Breaking News Reporting, SPJ Region 4, Daily Kent Stater staff for our extra edition on Lester Lefton being named university president. The two special sections were put out during final exams with a skeleton staff. We were the first media outlet to have and confirm the name of the president, which we broke online and followed with updates throughout the day/week. I was managing editor at the time.
• Third Place, Best All-Around Daily Student Newspaper, SPJ Region 4, Daily Kent Stater for calendar year 2006. I was managing editor in spring and editor in fall.
• John S. Knight Memorial Scholarship, Recipient, Spring 2006.
• Ohio Newspaper Association Women’s Scholarship, Recipient, Spring 2006.
• First Place, Best All-Around Online Student Magazine, SPJ Region 4, Fall 2004 Fusion Online. I was the webmaster.
• Second Place, Online Magazine, national AEJMC Magazine Contest, Spring 2004 CyBurr. I was the webmaster.