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PRESS AHEAD newsletter and book
PRESS AHEAD is a 2023 book about finding journalism jobs and navigating newsroom careers, for both first-time journalism job-seekers and experienced journalists.
The book began as a subscription newsletter in 2022, tapping into lessons I learned myself, advice from some of the leaders in the field and inspiration from around the digital sphere (including some cat gifs).
Migrations, launches, re-launches, re-designs
Lead or served as Editorial lead in numerous CMS migrations along with entire site, section and app launches and relaunches. Work includes CNN, CNN Business, Bourdain Parts Unknown, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Freedom Project, Afghanistan Crossroads, CNN Films, CNN Travel, CNN Style, CNN International.
Example: CNN.com re-platforming
Part of a small cross-functional team that imagined and implemented one of the largest and most complex digital brands onto new technology platforms with new designs and new editorial workflow and CMS. This also included training hundreds of journalists on digital storytelling best practices.
Priority CNN editorial coverage
Consistently brought together a vast editorial team and executives into cohesive planning, prioritization and regular communication of editorial calendar and other priorities such as events and product launches. Set up and implemented a strategy to “product-ize” our editorial initiatives and the distribution around high-profile content. This includes playbooks for programming across platforms (with virtuous circle of metrics/audience/internal communication), mobile video optimization, social campaigns and off-platform engagement.
Work includes Elections coverage (2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2018), Royal Wedding, Arab Spring global coverage, Girl Rising, CNN Heroes, Paris attacks, Japan tsunami, 2017 Eclipse of the Century.
Example: Mauritania: Slavery’s Last Stand
Served as the project organizer with journalist John D. Sutter and editor Jan Winburn. Worked with the reporter, videographer, editor, designers and technical leads to plan out workflow, best practices, troubleshooting and problem solving as well as social media, marketing and PR plan and roll-out/promotion schedule for CNN.com homepage. Integrated into overall CNN Freedom Project, which I launched and produced in its first year. The Mauritania project won numerous awards, including the Online Journalism Award.
Prototypes and experiments
Created and conspired with minds across different disciplines on new products that better served audiences.
Example: “Lite site”
Created a stripped-down mobile “CNN Lite” as a public service for audiences in low-bandwidth areas during Hurricane Irma; CNN has since used for other natural disasters. It started with an idea on Thursday afternoon. By Saturday morning, a small group consisting of me and two developers launched the site and I coordinated with homepage and social to promote it.
Example: Live commentary
This prototype’s aim was to align rich-text posts to time-coded positions with a live video — taking the concept of a “live blog” much further. The scrubber would navigate both the commentary and video so that live events and live commentary could have a longer shelf life with true “replay” capabilities.
Example: CNN's NFT project
In a consulting role to senior CNN leadership, I helped shape the vision and strategy of CNN's NFT offering, The Vault by CNN. With creativity, journalism expertise and technical knowledge, I led the project's launch to market in a tight, but highly efficient, turnaround time in July-August 2021.
Audience reach and acquisition
Worked with small to mid-sized newsrooms on specific editorial projects to outline best bets to reach existing and new audiences. Also advised as editor to innovate on the digital storytelling with limited resources to better serve existing platforms such as Youtube and Facebook. Work includes projects with the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger, Crosscut, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, Center for Sustainable Journalism
Example: Crosscut/Youth Today - Youth homelessness enterprise story
Worked with editors with limited technical and budget resources to use that to their advantage. With no skill set or budget to hire a traditional video team, we hired an illustrator to animate a video. This also served an editorial purpose as most of the story’s subjects were minors and we did not want to show faces. This video was not only successful in telling the story in a different way on the traditional sites, but was also more shareable on Youtube and Facebook as we targeted news audiences.
Off platform strategies
Created, coordinated and communicated CNN’s launch on emerging platforms (not owned & operated by CNN) including Amazon Echo, Google Home, Google News, Apple News and other syndicated and platform partners. Also launched audience and content experiments in podcasts, which included CNN’s #1 podcast in audience reach, CNN Rewind: The 90s.
Example: CNN on Apple News
Worked with Apple closely (off and on Cupertino campus) as launch partner on Apple News in 2015. I led a 4-person cross-functional team to develop for launch the editorial and business strategy, newsroom workflow and technology integration tools. To ensure success post-launch, I oversaw operations for six months and drove CNN to the No. 1 publisher spot on the platform through live video strategies, specific mobile video campaigns and alerting/notification experiments.
Executive leadership
Advised and prioritized editorial projects and calendar for CNN Digital. Represented editorial in cross-functional leadership team to set overarching OKRs and other organization-level guidance. Built bridges between CNN and other Turner/WarnerMedia properties to take advantage of editorial, business, product and technology opportunities.
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