Objective
Launched custom relationship management product (CRM) allowing citizens to contribute to newsrooms by sharing first-hand experiences, expertise, and other insights with journalists. Citizen contributions are collected in a secure, searchable database which allows journalists to pose questions to sources based on demographics, geography, expertise or interests.
PIN® can be a useful source-finder on deadline. But it is most powerful when used early in the reporting process to test hunches, unearth angles, provide important context, even reveal the right questions to ask in the first place.
American Public Media
Challenge
- Persuade journalists to adopt a digital tool that mimicked work they were accustomed to doing manually.
- Encourage contributions from diverse communities by assuring them that newsrooms were interested in their insights.
- Build and scale product for growth and nationwide use with limited public media funds and resources.
- Lead core cross-functional engineering and product team located in Minnesota while based in Miami and NYC.
My Role
Product Development: Worked with core engineering and product team using Agile approach for product development. Worked on taxonomy for database, and developed registration forms for sources to use. Tested features, reported bugs, and made requests for new features.
Product Launch: coordinated and produced promotional marketing materials in English and Spanish, placed ads, and participated in news segments to encourage readers and listeners to sign up. Trained newsrooms such as El Diario La Prensa on how to leverage PIN to earn product adoption.
Product Ownership: Worked with journalists, editors, and producers to discover trending topics among the Network’s members. Offered recommendations to engineers on how to optimize search experience for newsrooms. Managed email marketing, created surveys and analyzed results to uncover stories and sources to highlight. Participated in on-going recruitment. Encouraged new sign-ups by partnering with marketing and community engagement teams.
Aired on The Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC Radio, Feb 2011
Key Results
- Recruited and nurtured journalist-source relationship with 4,000+ listeners in NY, NJ, CT aged 30s to 50s. Acquired over 1,000 PIN members within 6 months in South Florida.
- Created “Intercambio” branding campaign, which allowed American Public Media to enter Spanish-language media industry.
- Produced original stories based on massive database with over 130k sources (link)
- Launched SchoolBook for WNYC, a product focused on education news based on reaching underserved Bronx audience segment.
- Discovered need for a Bronx beat reporter at WNYC and a proactive audience segment who inspired a later product launched at WNYC focused on education news, SchoolBook.