I’m excited to announce that, beginning Dec. 6, I will be joining The Washington Post as a web producer on the Universal News Desk.
I’m thrilled at the opportunity to work with Cory Haik (I’ll be reporting directly to her), the UND team and other awesome journalists throughout the newsroom. My focus will be on breaking news and working with the national desk to produce their health and environmental coverage, with engagement tied at the heart of everything.
My perspective as a journalist has evolved immensely since I graduated from the University of Miami in May 2009 (read my reflections on those four years) and last worked in a newsroom (Dallas Morning News internship in the summer of 2009). I’ve rethought my thinking and how we can better inform our work with computational thinking and programming concepts, began exploring innovation and ideas through different lenses, and — overall — continued expanding my mind (get a taste with my commonplace book). I look forward to bringing all that to the Post, along with the additional coding and technical skills I’ve taught myself in the past 18 months — and continue to learn (Python and Django next!).
Overall, I can’t wait to get back into the newsroom, collaborate with other areas I have experience or interest in (such as the programming, design, video, engagement and other teams) and do awesome work. I’ll be sure to let you all know more about the job after I start and see how the role evolves.
Why the job change?
Publish2 is moving to Los Angeles and, after a serious decision-making process, I decided for personal reasons that I wanted to stay in the D.C. area. Thus, we have amicably parted ways. The move is good news for Publish2 (stay tuned for more details on that soon), but L.A. is not for me at this time.
I want to emphasize that this was a personal decision to stay. Publish2 has been a unique and invaluable experience for me since I began in September 2009. My first full-time job out of college (see Publish2’s announcement), I learned many things about technology and business first-hand while working at a small start-up. My co-workers have been great and I’ve enjoyed working on tools that help journalists and news organizations.
Northern Virginia has been my physical home for the past year and the D.C. journalism-technology community has become my family here. From friends and acquaintances to meetups and conferences, deep down I know this is right place for me at this point in my life.
With that in mind, I’m also moving from Ashburn, Va. to Arlington, Va. (orange line on the metro, w00t!). No longer will I need to drive to the metro to get into D.C. I’ll leave it to you to imagine how many more meetups it will be possible for me to attend…