Mallory Colliflower: Online producer

Posted: January 13th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Jobs, journalism, Multimedia, Personal| 3 Comments »

After a long and patient wait spent folding clothes at Banana Republic, ladies and gentlemen, I have landed a job. Actually, I’ve been at said job for about a month now and every week gets more and more exciting and challenging. You know all the stories and photos and videos that are posted on your favorite newspaper’s Web site? Well there isn’t some robot there posting all that content.  Computers aren’t doing it either. Producers who monitor, edit and select content make sure things on those Web sites are fresh and newsworthy. Luckily, in the state of this economy and the state of the industry of journalism as a whole I can be proud, thankful and relieved to call myself an online producer at the Miami Herald. Gotta give mad props to my classmate and good buddy Adrian Ruhi who also works there who recruited me for the spot.

I’ve learned a ton so far working with the McClatchy content management system and tweaking my news judgement, which is what I’m trying my best to work hardest on. My boss, Shelley Acoca, has been coaching me to put myself in people’s shoes. “What are people thinking and talking about today?” That has been helpful so far. I even polled some peeps on Twitter to see if they thought news judgement was learned or innate. Got some confidence-boosting answers that mine could improve over time if I work at it.  I think I just need to find my niche. Having control over something so public and wide-read is a little jarring at first, but networking with other online producers on Twitter and getting to know everyone in the newsroom is making me more comfortable.

So that’s the 4-1-1. It’s likely that if you’re reading this you found it via Twitter, but if you didn’t, you’re much more likely to keep track of my happenings there (@malcolli).

We’re also working to tweet more from our Miami Herald twitter account (@miamiherald) so follow us to stay on top of your South Florida local news.

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  • http://www.animate4food.com/blog Danny

    I can’t bring myself to hop on the twitter train, but I’ve got good old blogger RSS feeds.
    Great news on the job, glad to see more South Florida people avoiding the snare of pregnancy and complacency. *shudders*
    One thing: don’t put yourself in people’s shoes! They stink! Their shoes are old and filled with gossip. Report/post news that is meaningful and relevant! Maintain your journalistic integrity and objective reasoning! Please… For me. I need to believe in people again.

  • http://igerardftw.com Gerard Massey

    Sounds awesome Mallory! Good luck with everything!

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