I believe in the power of journalism to celebrate humanity, strengthen communities, promote justice and help people lead fuller lives. I’ve spent most of my career in local newsrooms, helping high-quality journalism find audiences on digital platforms. Until April 2023, I worked in the product organization at Gannett, the largest local news publisher in the U.S., helping to improve the ways thousands of journalists create value for audiences every day.

You can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

What I do

• I help make digital news products for people who want to be informed, enlightened and connected to their communities.
• I apply analytical rigor, product discipline and design thinking principles to the practice of journalism.
• I promote storytelling techniques that harness the power of the medium to connect with audiences.
• I foster a culture of continuous change in news organizations.

Some things I enjoy

• Crunching numbers and spotting patterns, making research-based cases for action and knowing when the answer can’t be found in data.
• Giving journalists tools and insights to do better work and helping them listen to their audiences.
• Contributing to the development of robust business models that enable quality journalism to thrive at any scale.

Writing

Here are a few things I’ve written over the years that may be of interest.

• Generative AI brings wrongness at scale (2022), my Nieman Lab prediction for journalism in 2023
• The year you actually start to like your CMS (2018), my Nieman Lab prediction for journalism in 2019
• How the Philly papers are experimenting with design thinking in the newsroom (2018), a post for the Lenfest Institute on one way we brought the audience into the journalistic process in Philly
• The year local publishers get smart(er) about change (2017), my Nieman Lab prediction for journalism in 2018
• 8 things I learned in moving from news to product (2014): Lessons from my experience at The Seattle Times
• Required reading from 20 years ago (2012) on the 1992 memo that launched The Washington Post’s digital ambitions
• Libraries: An appreciation (2011) on what journalists and library scientists have in common
• Filling in the blanks on DocumentCloud (2009), in which the creators of the platform share their hopes for the yet-to-be-launched tool
• Technical skills in journalism jobs (2008): Adobe Flash, of course, appears prominently in this informal survey from a decade ago.
• Come work with me (2007), the job posting that led to the creation of Data Desk at the L.A. Times (with the brilliant Ben Welsh and Sean Connelley ultimately answering the call)
• Buffett: Print is dying (2006), an obvious truth that will take some newspaper execs another decade to acknowledge
• Non-traditional sources cloud Google News results (2005): More than a decade before “fake news”, my M.A. research looked for bias in algorithmically curated news.

Photo: Bénédicte Clouet