Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
I am a passionate advocate for local reporters and the support they need to produce original, compelling stories that move and connect people, particularly related to local government coverage. My work focuses on solving the organizational challenges specific to doing that well — by developing talent, building new infrastructure & bringing a deeply informed and empathetic approach to changing systems. Learn more: https://www.amyjobrown.com/
As a consulting editor, my work focuses on the organizational challenges specific to doing good journalism at the local level. I work with news leaders on editorial planning, resource management and impact, and I help stand up new initiatives and develop talent. Most recent clients include: LNP + WITF, Texas Tribune, American Press Institute, Steinman Institute for Civic Engagement, Eagle Media. Others: Center for Cooperative Media, Spotlight PA, Bowling Green State University, Spaceship Media, Center for Public Integrity, the Conversation, PublicSource, the Environmental Health Project, Pittsburgh Black Media Federation. Projects also include my own: The development of a local data tool, the Public Ledger, which is designed to help local newsrooms more effectively and sustainability report on their local governments. This was the focus of my 2022-2023 professional fellowship at the Knight Lab at Northwestern University.
Brought together 23 diverse local news organizations to form a new collaborative, establishing organizational structure and processes for two-year grant-funded project. Pivoted from original scope quickly in March 2020 to support about 30 editors as they delivered information through unrelenting news cycles and managed their own staffs through the challenges of a pandemic. That support included: * Facilitating collaborative brainstorming and problem-solving and creating editorial resources to help editors plan coverage strategies, share skills and amplify each others’ work. * Conducting continuous needs assessments to help connect newsrooms with internal and external editorial and business-side resources to increase their capacity to do the work. * Designing and implementing new programs to directly invest in their newsrooms, including distributing about $20K in grants to improve product capabilities and a $30K pooled fund to support collaborative reporting efforts, as well as other initiatives such as a paid internship program that placed 13 students in their newsrooms during summer 2021. * Day-to-day project management, including grant reporting responsibilities and managing contractors, temporary part-time employees and students.
Designed and taught a 15-week entry-level course on journalistic writing and editing, giving students their first exposure to journalism principles, methods and forms. Course included assigning and guiding real-world reporting and fact-checking experience. Also taught an advanced course in investigative reporting techniques.
Facilitated executive-level strategy sessions to develop editorial plans and internal business communication and change-management processes. Clients included Fortune 500 companies, universities and nonprofits. Collaborated with visual designers and developers to execute content strategies. Evaluated quality of data sources. Conducted user interviews and observational research. Designed the stories and metrics for data dashboards. Designed the information architecture for websites. Designed and ran user-testing sessions. Clients included: Carnegie Mellon University's Simon DataLab, the Arts Education Collaborative, Caterpillar, PNC Bank, Precyse Solutions, Bayer and a number of other regional and national healthcare companies.