RECENT WORK

• Following the Firearms: Gun Violence in Minneapolis – A four-month project I worked on looking at gun violence in Minneapolis. I lead the online coverage plan, did the data mapping and integration with Document Cloud, final web edits on the scripts, pulled together the photos and video and handled the final look of the page. I was very proud of this and the hard work of the reporters, editors and photographer that helped put it all together.
• Minnesota gubernatorial debate archive – Put together and maintained archive of numerous gubernatorial debates and related blogs, stories and additional material.
• Tom Emmer’s proposed changes – Summed up Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer’s proposed consolidation of state agencies into a single graphic.
• MPR/Humphrey Institute Poll: Political attitudes – Summary page of MPR poll regarding political attitudes.
• MPR/Humphrey Institute Poll: The governor’s race – Summary page of MPR poll regarding the 2010 governor’s race in Minnesota.
• Counting down the final days of the 2010 legislative session – During the last week the ticker was counting down to the final day of the session.
• All about Target Field – A collection page created to house stories and multimedia preceding the opening day of Target Field in Minneapolis.
• MPR Fantasy Olympics – A game me and a radio producer created during the Winter Olympics. Each MPR talk show drafted Minnesota athletes and we scored them on using various daily criteria and tallied the end result as a way to track those athletes throughout the events.
• Governor Pawlenty’s Travels – A map, calendar and list page used to keep track of Minnesota’s traveling governor Tim Pawlenty during his last year in office.
• MPR’s State Fair photo scavenger hunt – A project I worked on with colleague Than Tibbetts. We conceived it from the beginning, worked on the process with marketing for promotion and a prize, executed the event with just the two of us on the day of the fair, and collected and presented all of the contestants’ photos.
• Red Bulls: Beyond Deployment – A multi-part and multi-platform project that examined what happens when a local battalion of local National Guard troops comes home. In my role as web editor and producer I helped pull materials together, package stories for the web and edit and create photo slideshows.
• Cinco de Mayo gets hoppin’ – An audio slideshow I put together for a local Cinco de Mayo celebration. I shot all photos and audio and edited for a next-day deadline.
• The Missing Somali Men – A timeline put together to follow the story of several local Somali men that returned to their native land to fight with al-Shabbab, a group deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S.
• On the set: Ana’s Playground – One of my first projects for MPR done for All Things Considered. I shot the photos and edited together the slideshow using their interview audio.

PAST WORK

Here is a small sampling of articles I’ve written for the Central Florida Future, the student newspaper at UCF, and The Orlando Sentinel. I’ve covered a range of topics from science, to breaking news and politics.

• UCF students streamline biodiesel processor — (PDF)
• UCF professor works to make computers adapt to users – (PDF)
• Former Egyptian first lady visits UCF
• Group calls for concealed weapons – (PDF)
• Presidential hopeful speaks to students – (PDF)
• Senior may have meningitis – (PDF)
• Florida considers vaccinations after student deaths – (PDF)

UCF Blog

Before I started working for the Orlando Sentinel I contributed to their UCF Blog, part of their community bloggers project. While a student at UCF I shot pictures, video and wrote posts regarding news and issues around campus at the UCF area. Here are links to some of my more prominent posts:

• Five years later, UCF students speak out about Iraq War
• Street preachers at UCF an endless source of amusement
• Anti-abortion group’s display insults Jews, American Indians, blacks, Rwandans, the Sudanese and several other groups
• The results are in, Logan Berkowitz and Brandon Delanois are the SGA president and vice-president
• SGA candidates talk on first day of elections
• Logan and Brandon Campaigners refuse to answer questions (I didn’t write the post but I shot and edited the video)

Web project:

Diversity 32839

This is a Web project I worked on with Rick Brunson’s Metro Reporting class. My task was to create a quick, efficient and easily customizable way to present our story. Limited by time and technology I appropriated a Blogger page for our use. I even went so far as to negotiate with the Blogger Help Team in order to allow us to create a static page, something terms of service usually don’t allow.

For this task I took the videos and pictures shot by our writers (and some by me), edited them for all of the stories and packaged them together for the Web. I also created all of the maps and graphics and assisted with the editing of the stories. Being constrained by a limited budget (meaning none) and time, I used a variety of free technologies to accomplish this, including: Microsoft MovieMaker, Photobucket, a demo of InDesign and Photoshop.