Web editor at The Los Angeles Times’ Opinion Pages

A selection of Opinion L.A. blog clips.
A selection from the Opinion L.A. blog.

*Note: Originally published on March 24, 2014. Updated on March 21, 2015.

One of my top priorities when joining the Opinion Pages at the Los Angeles Times in October 2010 was to develop the Opinion L.A. blog’s editorial strategy and increase its readership. Blog traffic has since grown about 690%.

In addition to focusing the blog on lively commentary about the day’s biggest news stories, the blog transformed into a space for conversation and debate with readers. I integrated recurring features and launched a guest blogger series, which I edited. I also coordinated live event coverage, specifically around elections, produced web videos and wrote blog posts on social, political and cultural issues. You can find a selection of posts below.

Meaning of Citizenship
What does citizenship mean to you? A screengrab of Opinion’s “meaning of citizenship” video interview series.

Beyond the blog, I oversaw and coordinated the multimedia and web components of projects including The 21st Century Citizen, which explored the meaning of U.S. citizenship in today’s world, and Roadshare, which looked at whether L.A.’s drivers and cyclists will ever be able to share the city’s streets. Both projects were ongoing series over several months and included editorials, op-eds, blog posts, videos, graphics, original art, reader participation and social media strategies.

I also produced, or co-produced, videos including an interview series about “the meaning of citizenship”; two formal sit-down interviews with the 2013 mayoral candidates that incorporated “man-on-the-street”-style voter questions filmed in advance; a live video discussion about secular parenting; and an exit interview with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

A screengrab of the Opinion section's landing page.
A screengrab of the Opinion section’s landing page.

Additionally, I built easy-to-navigate landing pages that showcased the most recent commentary as well as curated content. And I created a hub for The Times editorial board’s endorsements, which gave readers a one-stop shop for election recommendations as well as a look at how the board worked and arrived at its decisions. When there’s an upcoming election, you can find that page at latimes.com/endorsements.

Of course, readers are most likely to visit the Opinion Pages online via an individual article or blog post, so just as much attention was paid to the article level. That included writing clickable headlines, using SEO, building attractive and sticky articles, and encouraging reader conversation.

That also meant paying a lot of attention to social media. In addition to maintaining social media accounts for the Opinion section, and nurturing a community that grew 560%, web headlines were written so that they’d resonate on the “social web” and the Opinion section’s staffers were encouraged to circulate their articles and engage with readers.

Behind the scenes: I attended editorial board meetings; I worked with writers on the blog, assisting them with best practices; I created manuals for operating The Times’ content management system, photo database, and other web tools;  I reported technical issues; and I stayed up-to-date on web development and digital trends transforming the media landscape.

I worked in the Opinion section until March 2015. To learn more about my work there, please visit my resume.

Selection of posts from the Opinion L.A. blog:

Posts I wrote:

Posts I edited: