Other Work
Documentary Film Online
Documentary Film Online (link) is a site whose goal is to promote digitally available documentaries to documentary fans, fellow film geeks, and anyone else with access to popular video streaming tools. The site was created by Matt Abshire, a friend from Northwestern, who expertly and constantly maintains the site and publishes reviews from Atlanta. I wrote reviews for the site from 2009-2011, and after a break to pound out a second draft of my upcoming book, I started writing reviews again in early 2015 as the site was re-launched with a new design. Read a few of my recent reviews here:
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau
Tales from the Tower
Artwork by NBC5 Chicago
After my first web series at NBC5 (listed below) concluded, I was allowed put together a satirical soft news series for the station’s website. The video series would be called “Tales from the Tower” and it would focus on both on life in a newsroom and general office trends. While some videos had a more fictional and comical tone, including a few that presented a tongue-in-cheek suggestion to use water balloons to remind viewers to tune in during the hot summer months, other segments used published articles and the unpublished truths of newsrooms as their focus.
A Tales from the Tower screenshot from NBC’s Studio 5, which was Chicago’s first street side studio, and which most certainly was not considered a “bureau”
In 2008, the Tales from the Tower crew was awarded a Midwest Emmy for achievement in digital soft news. The awarded set of Tales from the Tower segments, which were superbly shot by photographer Mark Ringo and edited by Ringo and NBC’s Rich Moy, are still available on NBC5’s website today:
Inter-Office Dating – link
News Desk Tips – link
How to Impress One’s Boss – link
Not for Profit Showcase
While working at NBC5 Chicago, I was given the opportunity to experiment with different types of digital content for the station’s website. My first project was an online-only multimedia series focused on events that nonprofit organizations were hosting. The series, which utilized a combination of videos I shot and edited, photographs, and articles, evolved over time as I learned more about the process and audience tastes. After publishing reports that included upwards of five short videos, a slideshow of around 40 pictures, and articles over 1000 words in length, the installments in the series were eventually boiled down to shorter articles paired with a video and/or a shorter stack of digital photos. Few of the segments remain on the site today, but during this series I filed stories about events benefiting:
- Lupus Foundation of America’s Illinois Chapter
- Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation
- Salute, Inc.
- LifeSource
- Wounded Heroes Foundation
- Y-ME
- Anti-Cruelty Society
- The Night Ministry, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, and Center on Halsted – link
- Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago
- The push to reduce plastic grocery bag pollution – link
- and others