GateHouse Media
Innovation intern (2019)
I worked with GateHouse Media’s (now Gannett) digital innovation team, de//space, to build a custom story presentation for The Columbus Dispatch, helped build in-house tools to visualize data and helped with the first stages of a project that would later receive funding from Google’s News Initiative.
Fracking (The Columbus Dispatch)
The project:
As an intern with the de//space team at GateHouse Media (now Gannett), I was tasked with working with the Columbus Dispatch team to build a custom site for an investigative story on fracking’s environmental impact in Ohio.
See it here →
My role:
I designed and developed the front end of a custom WordPress theme that runs the site through the template managed by the de//space team in Austin.
I also researched and illustrated the fracking process to create a custom infographic within the story. Finally, I researched data and then worked with a representative from ESRI to create the map search tool that runs based on the user's location or a searched address.
The process:
While planning the design specifications through conversation with the team at the Dispatch, we decided an extended intro would work well editorially and visually. I was able to implement this through basic animations in the final story’s layout.
The idea to use data on fracking sites in Ohio to create a map was also tossed around in these conversations. I was able to locate some preexisting datasets through ESRI and contacted a representative that the GateHouse media had worked with on earlier projects. A collaborative effort with ESRI allowed for the implementation of the locator map on the final site.
