Portfolio
Here are some of my journalistic pieces throughout the years. My greatest hits, if you will, only not nearly as swell as the Eagles.
Web
The Boston Globe/boston.com
Would you ever parole a murderer? — A news application built with Tom Giratikanon and Matt Carroll, letting people review parole hearing cases of convicted murderers and deciding whether or not they would parole that person.
The New York Times Regional Media Group
Remembering the Storm – A news application built in 25 hours to track the names of those who died during the Alabama storms of 2011. I wrote three blog posts about developing the project, too.
Gatorsports.com Recruits — A news application to track high school athletes as they decided on colleges for football, focusing mostly on the University of Florida.
St. Petersburg Times/tampabay.com
MyLawmaker — A tool to find your state lawmakers in the House and Senate. You type in your address and it shows who represents you and what their districts look like. Built in Django on a 9-day deadline, six of which being work days. I did the programming, my compadres made it look pretty and helped enter in the data.
HomeTeam — The St. Petersburg Times preps sports site. I added baseball and softball — on a short deadline — to our main application. Did most of the views, models and templates with assistance from my colleagues.
Attendance at Rays’ 2009 home games — Ran an analysis of the attendance for Tampa Bay Rays to show how attendance was during the week versus weekends. My colleague Darla Cameron did the graphic. t
Florida FCAT results — Wrote the basic models for this project, which was done in the Django framework. (This link no longer works. Not sure why they killed the project, but they did. So think of this link as my brain wanting to remember this existed.)
tampabay.com Golf Tour — Wrote the basic views for the individual golf page, which was done in the Django framework.
Muckraking/Computer-Assisted Reporting:
St. Petersburg Times
“Despite money gap, Kathleen Ford slightly leads Bill Foster in St. Petersburg mayor’s race,” Oct. 23, 2009
“Nearly a quarter of Florida residents under 65 have no health insurance,” Oct. 2, 2009
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
“Felons hunting with guns slip past state law,” August 10, 2008
“LR parkers advised to bring coins,” June 23, 2008
Daily Nebraskan
“Race for Regent spot shows heavy campaign spending” October 17, 2008
“Democrats get most donations from NU faculty,” April 24, 2008 — Here’s a blog post I did about this story
“Governor’s office puts restrictions on DN,” April 4, 2008 — It’s not every day the governor’s office threatens to arrest you if you show up to a press conference
Feature/Enterprise:
St. Petersburg Times
“Crossing the digital divide to Grandma’s house,” Nov. 21, 2009
“Unemployment driving up demand to get criminal records expunged or sealed,” Dec. 1, 2009
“Thousands of jobless in Tampa Bay seek relief from child support payments,” Oct. 23, 2009
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
“Record 873 inmates pass GED test,” May 26, 2008
Erie Times-News
“ATV safety rides on operator responsibility,” June 24, 2007
Omaha World-Herald
“‘Old’ Beer, New Tricks: Blue-collar brew’s makeover has some drinkers foaming,” March 30, 2009 (Note: Because of the Omaha.com’s redesign, this story is no longer hosted on their Web site. I will have it hosted on andymboyle.com in the near future.)
Radio
“Deficient Bridges,” Spring 2009
Important Blog Posts
Here are a few of the blog posts I’ve written that explain aspects of web development that may be helpful to understanding my mindset.
Step One of my Teaching You Django series — The first blog post (of many) in how to build a basic Django app. This project is still uncompleted, but it has enough steps so far to launch a project. Just don’t expect the thing to scale very well just yet.
Learning to make the internets — a journalist’s guide – This was called “the best written guide to learning about how the Internet works that I’ve ever read” by someone who is much too kind.
Hey journalists — here’s why you should learn to make the internets – In this piece, I give you the economic reasons behind becoming a programmer-journalist instead of a traditional journalist.
Thoughts on Remembering the Storm’s design and implementation — The first of three posts detailing how I built this project in almost a day, the technological decisions behind it and how we were able to implement it.
