Here’s a look at some of the work I’m proudest of, grouped by the kind of problem it solved. Each one starts with what I found, what I changed and what happened next.
Editorial leadership
One newsroom, three brands
What I found: When I took over editorial at equalpride in 2023, the company’s brands operated as separate teams. They often covered the same stories, and 70% of what they published was aggregated from other news outlets rather than based on original reporting.
What I did: I restructured the teams into a single newsroom while keeping a distinct content strategy and voice for each brand. We started a daily editorial meeting to review data on story performance and coordinate plans across brands, which helped me set clear coverage lanes and free up time for original reporting. I brought the top editors together to create shared editorial standards, and I partnered with the Poynter Institute and Investigative Reporters and Editors to train our team on interviewing, evaluating data and navigating ethical challenges.
What changed: Within a year, we had flipped our ratio from 30% original and 70% aggregated to 70% original and 30% aggregated. Better journalism deepened our relationship with readers, and it made our next big step possible: The Advocate‘s first-ever membership program.
The Out100 Vault
The milestone: In 2024, the Out100, Out Magazine’s signature annual celebration of LGBTQ+ trailblazers, turned 30.
What I did: To celebrate, I worked with my team to create an interactive Out100 Vault, with fresh stories revisiting past Out100 covers and placing them in historical context. I managed the entire project: assigning and editing stories, commissioning and editing graphics, coordinating with website developers and planning the digital rollout.
Audience growth and revenue
The Advocate‘s first membership program
The opportunity: The Advocate is the nation’s oldest LGBTQ+ publication, and I saw an opportunity to tap its loyal, longtime readership to help sustain its journalism.
What I did: In 2024, I launched the brand’s first paid membership program, engaging readers with exclusive benefits and community-driven messaging that invited them to fund high-quality accountability reporting on LGBTQ+ issues. I vetted vendors, developed marketing plans, set KPIs, and created email campaigns to solicit donations.
What changed: The company gained a new recurring revenue stream to help sustain its journalism.
A newsletter overhaul
What I did: At equalpride, I overhauled the email newsletter program with redesigned templates, stronger content, and engaging welcome journeys for new subscribers.
What changed: Newsletter signups grew by 120%, and referral traffic from newsletters grew by 622%.
Breaking news and crisis communication
Hurricane Ida text alerts
What I found: In August 2021, Hurricane Ida was barreling toward New Orleans, and as managing editor of digital for The Times-Picayune, it was my job to make sure everyone who lived there could get the information they needed to stay safe. As the storm moved closer, I knew that would only get harder.
What I did: I worked with our technology team to quickly spin up a new text alert service. A few hours later, a massive electrical tower collapsed into the Mississippi River, and hundreds of thousands of people lost power for more than a week during the hottest days of late summer. So we texted critical updates directly to them, like where to find gas for their generators and ice for their food, and when power might be restored. My job was to collect the most urgent information, rewrite it into short, simple messages, and send it quickly.
What changed: More than 20,000 people signed up for the alerts. Our around-the-clock coverage helped earn the newsroom a 2022 Green Eyeshade Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
See our first 72 hours of coverage (PDF) or read more about the text alerts.
Investigative reporting
Prisoners of the Storm
James Mitchell wasn’t supposed to be in jail. He was one of roughly 8,000 Orleans Parish prisoners scattered across Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. He had been arrested but never charged, and his case stalled for months while the criminal justice system was in chaos. As a young reporter at The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette, La., I worked with fellow reporter Jason Brown to tell the untold story of these prisoners, and our reporting soon led to Mitchell’s release. Our work was also featured in an ACLU report on the treatment of prisoners after the storm.
The full project is no longer online, but two parts are archived: Lives fall through system’s cracks and Former prisoner rebuilds life.
Poisoned Water
In 2004, fellow reporter Jan Risher and I spent weeks going door to door in the tiny community of Cow Island, La., taking water samples and gaining the trust of residents who feared that arsenic in their well water was making them sick. Our test results showed they were right to be concerned. We produced a 10-page special section that connected the dots and identified possible causes. Because of our reporting, the state built a public water line to the area, and years later, an attorney won a settlement from the companies responsible for the contamination. Read the full special section (PDF).
Both projects won the Best of Gannett award for investigative reporting, in 2004 and 2005.
More projects
- Evergreen search strategy (equalpride): Used analytics data to identify high-value topics and built a system to create and regularly update evergreen stories, growing search traffic by 25%.
- Food newsletter reset (NOLA.com): Dug into the data, tested formats and frequency, and enlisted editors close to the coverage, growing the list by 33% and doubling paid-subscriber open rates.
- Best of the Fest (NOLA.com): Rallied a cross-departmental team to launch a pop-up Jazz Fest newsletter in less than a week. It earned a 47% open rate and a click-through rate above 13%.
- Nightly Top 5 (NOLA.com): Spotted a surge in evening mobile traffic and launched a nightly push alert catching app users up on the day’s biggest stories.
- The Shreveport-Bossier Advocate: Led digital planning for this new online-only publication, from launch content strategy and website design to recruiting and hiring the founding staff.
- Website and app redesigns (CNHI): Oversaw the redesign of websites and mobile apps for more than 100 community newspapers, adding 5 million unique users and 18 million pageviews in 2019.
- CNHI News Desk: Built a newsroom from scratch to create stories for local newspapers in 22 states, including coverage of the heroin crisis, a Kentucky clerk’s refusal to issue marriage licenses and the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march.
- Parade Tracker (WDSU-TV): Launched an award-winning project to GPS-track Mardi Gras parades, followed by an iOS app in 2011.
- Live-tweeting an election (WCNC-TV): Led the newsroom in what was the first known use of Twitter to live-tweet local election results.
