So I discovered I’m kind of fat

This is no recent discovery. I found this out maybe in 9th or 10th grade. It’s no surprise, really — bigger people run in my family. I was about 6 feet tall when I was 13, so I was bound to only get bigger.
Sadly, I only grew two inches up and about 10 inches out. [...]

College Conference Reporting Armageddon

The rumor was everywhere.
A big change was coming to Nebraska football, one that would impact fans and the program for years to come. Everyone had a source — a brother who worked in the NCAA compliance office, a cook who had overheard things during an exclusive coach’s meeting, a friend of a friend who knew [...]

One year anniversary: Six things I’ve learned

Today marks one year at the St. Petersburg Times in some capacity or another. I didn’t officially start as a full-time real person/employee until Aug. 27, 2009, but I started as an intern May 18. Close enough, dammit. As I sit here enjoying my Fancy Beer, I didn’t think it’d hurt to list six things I’ve learned in the Real World.

My first I-mostly-did-it web app

Hey folks. It’s been a month and a half since I launched a new web application, but I thought I’d post a link.
It’s called MyLawmaker, and it follows in the footsteps of NYTimes.com Represent by Derek Willis and Co., as well as The Oregonian’s YourGov by Mark Friesen. You pop in your address and it shows [...]

This is funny.

So you should just click on this post and read it.

So I got a job

Starting tomorrow, Aug. 24, I will be an official full-time employee of The St. Petersburg Times. After my summer internship they decided to keep me around.
It goes without saying that I am thrilled, grateful, overjoyed and excited for this opportunity. Working for this newspaper has been a dream of mine for a few years. And [...]

First Django application goes live

Check it out: http://projects.tampabay.com/fcat/
I originally wrote the models in Django with the help of Jeremy Bowers. Then Matt Waite made it better, followed by Martin Frobisher setting up the pretty design.
Matt imported the legacy data, and on Thursday he imported the new FCAT data once it was sent out by the Florida Department of Education.
It’s [...]

Looks like I graduated

My time in Lincoln is soon at an end. Today, sometime around 11 a.m., I received my diploma from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In four days, I begin my drive to Florida to intern at the St. Petersburg Times. I’ll be working with the Web team, designing some Web applications, doing some traditional reporting and having [...]

HELLO WORLD

Oh.
Hi there. How you doin’?
Welcome to my updated domain, which I bought 16 months ago but didn’t do anything with until now. This is my portfolio site, so check out some stuff in those various links up there.
It’s a work in progress, so bear with me. Thanks for visiting.

Looking for story ideas

Hey all. As some of you might know, I received a fellowship to work as a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald next semester out of their Lincoln bureau.

Part of my job will be to find stories off the beaten path, or what we call in the biz “enterprise stories.” This means I won’t be covering press conference, legislative bill introductions, city council, county board, school board, or any other kind of meetings. No police and fire siren chasing. I’m looking to do as many stories with computer-assisted reporting as I can.

As one editor said: “(You) will produce articles that will be unique to the World-Herald. Scoops. Enterprise angles on issues in the news. Features. Profiles. Trends. There probably will be stories involving the Legislature or local governmental entities, but these stories will be enterprising angles to some issue.”