THATSBUG2U.COM​
A storyteller's sandbox
Community, Government and media relations
14th Circuit Solicitor's Office
The communications department of the 14th Circuit Solicitor's Office — the chief prosecutorial agency for five counties in South Carolina's Lowcountry — serves several functions. In addition to providing a point of contact for media, the department helps organize community events, manages several grants, researches and composes white papers, and assists the intelligence department with statistical compilation and tracking. It also produces video, primarily for the office's social-media channels. Fans and followers of the office's Facebook page made an eight-fold increase in the first 10 months after launching the video effort.
Power BI
Spot News
Commentary, Opinion & Blogs
Print Page Design
Click to view gallery of pages
Podcasts
The Sports Thing.
Oh, how differently we’d do things today. Nonetheless, this was the newspaper’s first attempt at podcasting, and I’m proud of it for that fact. We tried to impart some production values with bumper music, got this up and running on iTunes and gave it heavy in-paper promotion. I’m not sure what we learned — some episodes got hundreds of hits, others low double digits, never with much rhyme or reason. We had fun doing it, though.
Sports Thing, Episode 4
Sports Thing, Episode 36
Knight's TimelineJS tool
Knight's Storymap tool
Tumult Hype
With thousands of undeveloped acres in the ACE Basin and 17 important bird areas as designated by the National Audubon Society, South Carolina’s Lowcountry is a haven for birds and birdwatchers alike. So when I went looking for subject matter that would provide fodder that would help me learn to use software that builds interactive, animated graphics in HTML5, birding seemed like (ahem) a natural.
This side project project, built using Tumult Hype, took about six months to complete -- in part because I didn't cut back on other duties, in part because I was learning as I went. I enlisted help from experts and readers of my Untamed Lowcountry blog to identify the Lowcountry’s 10 Best Spots for Birding. I then shot all the video and took almost all of the photographs for each of the 10 sites.
Here's another graphic I put together -- an animated slide show -- as an alternative format for the online version of an election run-up story. This one took only about a day.
Web Development & Design
I'm no coder, but I enjoy thinking about website design and functionality. I was the project manager for a brand new website for the 14th Circuit Solicitor's Office, launched during a COVID-19 pandemic, no less. The upgrade emphasized user utility and streamlined functions to make those in our office who receive Former Island Packet director of new media David Feld did most of the heavy lifting with regard to construction of two of these sites, and I don't want to take a bow for his work. However, I had a hand in conceptualizing websites for two of the sites seen here. I was part of The Beaufort Three-Century Project as a volunteer and gathered many of the materials for this site. (Unfortunately, the link for the Three-Century Project site is now dead.) When The Beaufort Gazette did its homage to the city's tricentennial, David and I riffed off our earlier work to create the Beaufort300.com microsite. Later, I joined the board of the Beaufort History Museum and worked with a contractor to overhaul the organization's site.
Tableau
Big-Event Coverage
I think I'm probably proudest of the work my folks did covering the RBC Heritage in my final two years as sports editor. We had really hit our stride as a staff to produce voluminous, enterprising content. We take seriously our role as medium of record for Hilton Head Island's PGA Tour event, and we were determined to do the tour's smallest market proud. The podcast from the 2008 tournament, at right, is probably an overreach I should not have foisted upon my guys. We produced four of them at the end of marathon days, before we really knew what we were doing with video. But it's a great example of how far guys like Justin Jarrett and Sam McDowell were willing to go to produce something unexpected. I'm indebted to them, as well as to reporter Cathlyn Klore, assistant sports editor Mike Bragg and designer/copy editor Barry Haapala. Great employees make mediocre bosses look good. In addition to the podcast, below you can see PDFs of our Sunday Heritage coverage from those two years. Looking back, it's still stunning to me to think they were produced by five-person staffs.
Public speaking
Books Sandwiched In
I was the presenter for the Friends of Beaufort County Books Sandwiched In series on Jan. 26, 2015. My topic: "George Washington and His Secret Six: The Spy Ring that Saved the American Revolution" by Brian Kilmeade and Do'n Yaeger. Click on the image above to read my remarks and review the slideshow that was part of the presentation.
Hilton Head Rotary Club
I was the featured speaker for the Hilton Head Rotary Club's annual teacher-recognition program, conducted Oct. 16, 2014, at Sea Pines Country Club. Click on the image above to read my remarks.