Published work - September 1998-March 2000

DailyNorthwestern.com

I started at the Daily Northwestern's Online desk soon after starting my freshman year and worked my way up. By the end of the year, I took the paper's restaurant guide online for the first time and made the site's first foray into databases. The guide was searchable for restaurant name and several other factors, and was my initial attempt at server programming and design work. I got to do much more as editor the next year.

Here's a few illustrative examples of my work. The links and server-side includes don't work (as the site has gone onto several more redesigns), but you can get an idea of the look and feel.

Sept. 17, 1999: My first issue as editor
This issue was the paper's first for the quarter and was the debut of my all-over site redesign. (See an example of the previous design.)

A brighter and more complex layout drew readers further into the front page and sections. A weekly e-mail newsletter and campus entertainment portal joined the site's offerings, as did daily PDFs of the paper's front and back covers. Live weather and regular polls were also available on the site's front page for the first time.

On article pages, send-to-a-friend and print-this-story options debuted. Behind the scenes, dual click-tracking systems were introduced.

Jan. 6, 2000: My site facelift

A new lower-half of the front page debuted at the beginning of Winter Quarter. Recognizing the entertainment portal's failure to compete with a new university portal, I stripped our offering to evergreen content and went with other options. Special features and sections joined the front, as well as multimedia offerings from other campus media outlets.

The biggest change was the debut of "2000 Voices," live question-and-answer chat sessions similar to those used by WashingtonPost.com and USATODAY.com. Northwestern's head football coach was among the campus notables to participate and take questions from our audience. The back-end used the same script used for the restaurant database.

After working with the business side of the paper, online advertising also appeared on the site for the first time.

March 6, 2000: Dance Marathon special issue
My final issue as editor showed some of the different approaches the site had developed. While special issues hadn't been put online previously, their publication had become an expectation by this point.

From the paper's perspective, online-only and breaking news coverage online had become viable options. Our breaking coverage of white supremacist leader Matt Hale's January visit to campus drew the site's largest audience ever. The Sports desk also took advantage of the ability to continue covering school team's during holidays.

Artistically, the site had created its first photo galleries for the university's controversial Martin Luther King Day observance and the annual Dance Marathon charity event.