Tag Archives: kate howard is awesome

Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville.com Valentine’s project

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I’m always interested to see how the online version of a project ties in with the print version. Particularly when the online version includes more than the print version, or includes things that you couldn’t put in the paper (like, video and audio).

My friends and former colleagues at The Florida Times-Union recently launched a series online and in print, called (extra)ordinary Love. The description from the main page:

Love is an emotion that propels, from the moment you know you’ve found it through the trials you endure to sustain it. Whether romantic, platonic or familial, there is extraordinary power in ordinary love.

Three stories ran in the paper, starting this past Sunday with a story about Jaguars lineman Terrance “Pot Roast” Knighton:

I never knew his nickname was “Pot Roast,” but now I want that moniker, too. Here’s the page from Monday:

Tuesday:

I’m told these pages were designed by Jennifer Bradford.

Each day featured promos to the web package, which included three additional stories, with pictures and audio:

In addition to Jennifer Bradford on page design, this project had reporting and videos by Kate Howard and Tracy Jones; photography by Bruce Lipsky, Kelly Jordan and Bob mack; and web design by Derek Hembd, whom I put on par with MacGyver in being able to figure things out.

The design for both print and the web is clean, and the packages have the unifying package sig while being distinct from each other.

I always love being able to show what my friends and former colleagues have been working on in Jacksonville. Good work, friends.

Florida Times-Union’s National Coming Out Day coverage

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Today, Oct. 11th, is National Coming Out Day in the U.S. The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, my former paper, featured three vignettes on local people and their coming out stories.

The piece, written by reporter Mary Kelli Palka, begins with this:

Throughout the United States today, people will openly support equality to mark National Coming Out Day. Others will first share that they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. But people don’t just come out one day of the year. They tell people all the time – family members, co-workers, new people they meet. Sometimes they’re met with support and love. Sometimes they’re not.

Here’s how the package started on A1:

And here’s an inset of that package:

Photographer Bruce Lipsky shot that photo of Charlas “Charlee” Dehling, the first person profiled in today’s piece. Dehling has a great quote:

“[Staying in the closet was] fueled by fear of being ridiculed, rejected, passed over, being held back in my ambitions and self-preservation,” she said.

Later, Mary Kelli writes:

Dehling said she’s telling her story not as a rally cry to get others to come out. Instead, it’s a rally cry for normalcy. She just wants to be treated like everyone else, with the same rights as people who are heterosexual.

To read the full piece, go here. To read Florida Times-Union reporter Kate Howard’s piece for Coming Out Day in 2010, go here.

Did your publication do something for Coming Out Day? Feel free to send it. I’ll gladly post it up here.

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Great 9/11 work from Jacksonville.com, The Florida-Times Union

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This week has had a lot of good coverage of the anniversary of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Charles Apple has had updates almost every day, showing some of the fine work newspapers and their websites have done in anticipation of today’s milestone. He wrote about The Boston Globe’s coverage on Wednesday.

My former paper, The Florida Times-Union, has also been busy with its coverage. They’ve done a lot of things, and I won’t mention all of it today, but it’s been good.

What I want to point out is the great web presence for the 9/11 packages. Check out the main page for the Times-Union’s coverage:

Florida Times-Union 9/11 coverage

See those cool illustrations in the background? Those are from Kyle Bentle.

At the bottom is a neat timeline:

Florida Times-Union 9/11 coverage

There’s also a piece called, “The Fallen,” looking at the servicemen, servicewomen and civilian contractors with ties to Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia have died.

Florida Times-Union 9/11 coverage

Tracy Jones and Kate Howard worked on “The Fallen” and the timeline at the bottom. Kate says,

The goal of each: to be as comprehensive as possible about the impact of 9/11 locally, in the context of how our country has changed. Both pieces were part of the larger project we called “Since 9/11,” which included 8 days of stories and a user project asking readers to share their stories. That generated more than a hundred reader-submitted memories.

As you can imagine, this project was no small task. They worked on it off and on for about two months.

Tracy writes:

For the military piece, we tasked ourselves with finding any member of any branch of the military who died since 9/11. Our criteria was they had to be currently enlisted (including reserves). Some died in combat, others in accidents and some suicides, but the last thing we wanted to do was forget anybody.

Gathering the list was a task. Kate and I went to our memorial wall, but found there were errors there. We made many phone calls to families, branches and other sources, and we were able to track down information on all of the soldiers, which turned out to be 108 of them. Finding the photos wasn’t too easy either, because none of the military branches keep the photos on file, we basically had to dig for each one we didn’t have in our system.

To organize all the information, we kept an excel doc, which was later imported into a script that generated the information boxes for each soldier.

The photos are based on a jpeg we created of all the faces. We made one in black and white and also in color so it would change when their faces were clicked on.

Again, I urge you to check out the main page for the Times-Union’s coverage. I’m proud of my friends and former colleagues. If there’s any T-U work I missed, send it my way and I’ll post it.