Brian's Blog

EXPERIENCE

WCPO-TV, Cincinnati, Ohio, Entertainment Reporter

October 2015 – PRESENT

Report on local entertainment events, restaurant and bar openings, neighborhood redevelopment trends related to the entertainment industry and also occasional general human interest stories for WCPO’s website and television news broadcasts.

A breakdown of my work by numbers:

Generated more than four million page views with an average time-on-page of nearly three minutes on byline stories published on WCPO.com since October 2015, according to Google Analytics.

Second most-read author on WCPO.com for 2019, generating more than a million total page views on approximately 100 stories published since Jan. 1, 2019. Produced more than 70 broadcast packages in 2019.

Examples of recent broadcast and digital stories include a story focused on old, abandoned churches in Cincinnati receiving new lives as entertainment destinations. Locations featured on-air included interviews with a managing partner of Taft’s Ale House in Over-the-Rhine and the owners of Urban Artifact in North Side.

I’m personally very proud of the profile story I worked on with on-air reporter and videographer Jay Warren that told the story of a heart transplant recipient, David Barber before he attempted to run the Flying Pig Half Marathon in May of this year. I interviewed the family of the 21-year-old’s heart David received with Jay, wrote the script and was coached by Jay to improve my voice-over tracks for the package.

Created a searchable Google Map at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic that allowed restaurant and bar owners to provide take-out menus and adjusted service hours that customers could then search for in proximity to where they live. The custom map received more than 60,000 queries in April 2020 alone.

WCPO-TV, Cincinnati, Ohio — Web Editor

December 2012 – October 2015

Wrote daily stories in collaboration with on-air multimedia journalists to make television scripts web-ready, while also producing the occasional solo enterprise stories for WCPO.com.

In order to turn television news scripts into written online stories, I would communicate with on-air reporters in the field throughout the day, often asking for more detailed information than what they could include in their scripts. When warranted, I would also make calls for stories and relay that additional information to my on-air counterpart for their broadcast packages.

Additional responsibilities included:

Composing and sending breaking news alerts for the WCPO smartphone app via Urban Airship and native Brightspot content management system.

Composing teaser text and publishing story links to WCPO’s official Facebook page and Twitter accounts.

Selecting and setting up live-streaming digital video feeds that played both on WCPO.com and the station’s Facebook feed through Teradeck video equipment.

Ranking content on WCPO.com’s homepage based on realtime metrics as measured through Chartbeat web traffic service. Also tasked with using personal, experiential news judgment to rank lower trafficked but equally important stories in order to avoid a glut of similar news topics (crime/sensational stories usually play well online).

Enquirer Media, Cincinnati, Ohio — Assistant Online Coordinator

Oct. 2004 – Dec. 2012

Held multiple positions within Enquirer Media, beginning as a reporter for the weekly Community Recorder newspapers in 2004 and ending my career with the company as an assistant online coordinator in December 2012.

As a Community Recorder editor, managed three direct reports and produced three separate newspaper editions serving the communities of Boone and Kenton counties in Northern Kentucky.

As an editor, also worked with the Cincinnati Enquirer’s in-house marketing and advertising departments to define circulation boundaries, market and then publish the first issue of the South Kenton Recorder, a new weekly newspaper serving Independence and Taylor Mill on July 7, 2011. The newspaper was renamed the Kenton County Recorder in 2018.

SKILLS

• Daily use of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter platforms.
• Fourteen years of interview experience for print, broadcast and online outlets.
• Working knowledge of Woobox quiz tool/social media campaign maker, Microsoft Powerpoint, Keynote, Adobe Spark, Pixelmator Pro, Knightlab Timeline and Story Maps creation tools and most G-Suite tools.

• Attended multiple training sessions in the use of SEO.

• A rudimentary understanding of HTML and embedding codes.
• Adept at using Crowdtangle.
• Well versed in using Brightspot, Uplink Video, Facebook Business Creator Studio, Lakana and Contently content management systems.
• Intermediate photography skills.
• Attended week-long corporate workshops concerning implicit social and personal bias.
• Daily use of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter platforms.

EDUCATION

Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky  — BA, Journalism

AUGUST 1994 – MAY 1999

Worked for the college newspaper and participated in three summer newspaper internships while in college.

Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma — N/A

Jan. 2000 – May 2003

Enrolled in the school’s film studies graduate program, during which time I also taught two semesters of introduction to rhetoric to first-year undergraduate students. I left the program before finishing my Master’s thesis.