Case Study: Next-Generation Newsrooms

Radio News Seeks to Expand Online, Fortify for the Future

Two coasts, two newsrooms, one problem.

KQED (San Francisco) and WHYY (Philadelphia) are two leading major-market NPR member stations, and both needed to strengthen the digital arm of their news services to remain competitive and to fulfill their public-service mission. Both organizations brought me on board to lead that charge.

For KQED, I trained up a radio-centric newsroom on digital storytelling skills, hired the inaugural digital news team, launched a new brand (KQED News), and set the newsroom on a path to many successes.

As Vice President of Digital Strategies and Services at WHYY, I lead the creation of an emerging-platform strategy, built a new department, merged the radio and digital newsrooms into a cohesive, multi-platform unit, and re-branded and relaunched the digital news service (WHYY News). I also developed a training curriculum that included tracks on making sense of analytics, search engine optimization (SEO), writing for email newsletters, and how to be an effective journalist on social media and how it can give careers a boost.

WHYY has increased digital newsroom headcount, acquired BillyPenn, expanded its podcast portfolio, and even made a few journalists into Instagram stars.