Jennifer Peebles Email & Phone Number

Greater Atlanta Area

I help reporters find and tell stories with data (and sometimes documents). I also ... > Assist reporters and editors throughout the newsroom with crafting open records requests (for both data and documents) that get results; help them respond to denials and pushback they get from the agencies; help reporters and editors successfully navigate data requests by interfacing with agency tech folks; get on the phone and go toe-to-toe with agencies and their attorneys about records requests, including having to educate them on state records law> Find, request, obtain and analyze data and documents from federal, state and local government agencies for newsgathering purposes; find and report stories based on those records> Analyze data obtained by reporters and editors in the AJC newsroom to find news we should be reporting> Find, obtain and analyze GIS data for AJC newsgathering purposes> Instruct AJC newsroom staff on data literacy and freedom of information issues

Washington D.C. Metro Area

> Oversee digital operations and help manage newsroom for an all-politics news website with 3.5 million average unique monthly visitors, as well as a weekly print magazine and tablet edition> Manage 15-person team of producers, editors and videojournalists, and sometimes directly supervise reporters or a team of reporters> Work with editors, web producers and content authors to increase traffic and engagement, and to promote digital storytelling methods such as podcasts and narrated slideshows as well as interactive features> Coordinate content production and workflow for print magazine, website, iPad edition, our social media presence and a host of email newsletter products> Work closely with the IT and digital development staff to maintain and make improvements to the functionality of washingtonexaminer.com, our content management system and front-end system> Create interactive maps using Quantum GIS, Google Maps, TileMill and Mapbox.

Washington D.C. Metro Area

> Oversaw digital operations and helped manage newsroom for an all-politics news website with 3 million unique monthly visitors, as well as a weekly print magazine and tablet edition> Led innovation for a newsroom moving from legacy media (6-day-a-week daily local newspaper) to digital-first> Worked with editors, web producers and content authors to increase traffic and engagement, and to promote digital storytelling methods such as podcasts and narrated slideshows as well as interactive features> Coordinated content production and workflow for print magazine, website, iPad edition, our social media presence and a host of email newsletter products> Helped develop two new weekly newsletter products> Worked closely with the IT and digital development staff to maintain and make improvements to the functionality of washingtonexaminer.com, our content management system and front-end system, including customization of the front-end system to allow for more flexibility in presentation of visual elements within stories> Led newsroom efforts on SEO that contributed to the doubling of the percentage of traffic washingtonexaminer.com receives from search> Led newsroom-wide efforts to improve accuracy, including pre-publication fact-checking of content and implementation of internal error tracking and reporting procedures that greatly improved accuracy in all departments> Increased cross-departmental communication for better planning and smoother production> Trained editors and producers transitioning from the Washington Examiner local daily newspaper (closed June 2013) in best practices for online journalism, training on using the CMS and web metrics, how to edit a video script, and other skills they needed> Managed 30-person staff of editors, reporters, producers, and videojournalists; job involved both managing managers and employees> Oversaw first revision and updating of the Examiner's house style guide in several years.

Washington D.C. Metro Area

> Oversaw digital operations for a 6-day-a-week local tabloid newspaper covering Washington, D.C., and its suburbs> Coordinated digital content production and workflow for website, iPad edition, social media presence and a host of email newsletter products> Worked with editors, and content authors to promote digital storytelling methods and increase the flow of breaking news to the website to make washingtonexaminer.com a destination for D.C.-area readers; led push to shift story-posting times away from evening hours to get our content in front of readers at our site's peak traffic times> Developed new standards and expectations for presentation of special series online, bringing together text, graphics, data and video to best serve both the story and the reader> Created interactive data visualizations using Google Docs and Tableau Public; created static maps and data viz using tools such as Quantum GIS, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop> Managed the Examiner's social media presence to increase both traffic and engagement> Increased the integration of our videojournalist in the newsroom workflow to pair him up with reporters on stories in Local News and to do longer video pieces on special series being doing by the watchdog team> Helped build topic pages on prominent D.C. political figures to help boost our SEO on those people's names> Implemented moderation of comments and devised moderation guidelines for readers and web producers/editors> Worked closely with the IT and digital development staff to maintain and make improvements to the functionality of washingtonexaminer.com, our content management system and front-end system> Increased the use of images with stories and blog posts to make pages more engaging, improve reach on social media and boost SEO> Directly supervised a web producer and two videojournalists

Washington D.C. Metro Area

> Helped reporters procure records and analyze data, statistics and document dumps> Scanned paper records gleaned through FOIA and public records requests and turned them into databases for analysis by myself and my colleages> Used software including MS Access and MySQL to perform data analysis; used Google Refine (now called Open Refine) for data cleaning> Scraped websites and scraped data from PDFs for the same purpose, including a scraping project that presented an estimated total cost of proposed federal tariff bill exemptions and another database of disclosure data on lobbyists registered with the D.C. local government> Cleaned data gleaned through FOIA and other means for myself and my colleagues> Implemented first use of charticles at the Examiner to tell stories> Created interactive maps, charts, Flash presentations and Document Cloud annotations to better tell my colleagues' stories through data visualization and alternative storytelling methods> Helped develop my colleagues' pieces into multi-element packages for best presentation; did most of the web production for my colleagues' major stories and series> Used software including Google Docs, Tableau Public, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop to create both static and interactive data visualizations> Created social media presence for the newspaper's watchdog team to increase exposure of our stories

Houston, Texas Area

> Founded a small nonprofit news operation with two friends from The Tennessean which eventually grew to a six-person newsroom with an Austin bureau> Produced original enterprise and watchdog journalism, writing and editing stories> Supervised accountability coverage of the Houston school system (the nation’s seventh-largest system) and edited my colleagues' work, including a series on insider contracts going to school board members' friends> Helped break story that school district was planning to give a $600,000 no-bid contract to a school board member's friend, after which the contract idea quietly died> Used databases and computer records to find stories> Served as in-house expert on using freedom of information laws> Produced GIS maps, including mapping wreck data to show wreck "hot spots" in Houston and San Antonio; produced interactive Google Maps, including a map mashup on Texas legislators' ethics disclosures that won a national award> Created interactive social network charts to show connections between players in insider-deals in local government> Led creation, formation of our social media presence and helped build up our Twitter following to 3k+> Frequent host and cohost of a monthly webinar on using open government laws> Host of bi-monthly podcast on government transparency issues> Counseled journalists, citizen-journalists and others across Texas about using freedom of information laws to access public information> Used software including MS Excel, MS Access and MySQL to perform data analysis> Used software including ArcGIS and Quantum GIS for mapping

Greater Nashville Area, Tn

> Supervised a team of five reporters covering local, state, federal government and coordinated with our Gannett News Service correspondent in Washington> Oversaw newspaper's 2005 investigation that led to huge changes in the Tennessee Highway Patrol> Oversaw newspaper's investigation into sexual harassment in state government, which led to changes in how the state deals with harassment cases> Helped break story that led to the state legislature granting public access to searchable database of legislative votes> Was the first person in the newsroom on Twitter> Used GIS mapping to show "hot spots" of home foreclosures and car thefts in the Nashville area (using ArcGIS software); created interactive Google Maps for stories. > Helped coordinate breaking coverage of the 2005 Operation Tennessee Waltz bribery sting arrests.> Introduced "Make Your Voice Heard" breakout boxes as a regular feature in news stories, helping connect readers with people in positions to make a difference on those issues

Greater Nashville Area, Tn

> Supervised a team of reporters covering the suburbs and rural areas outside Nashville, generating both enterprise and breaking news coverage> Supervised three reporters embedded with the Army's 101st Airborne Division (two did stints in Iraq and one in Afghanistan)> Oversaw lengthy probe into cronyism, sweetheart deals in a suburban city government> Edited the newspaper's lead news-side feature writer> Served as newsroom liaison for seven small dailies and non-dailies in the Nashville suburbs and was responsible for preparing their content for publication in the Tennessean Local section. Led a series of training sessions for those newspapers on writing. > Coordinated efforts to collect local election results on Election Night, including working with our newsroom systems/IT staff to develop the first-ever system by which live partial returns were input into a database by a team of reporters to publish continuously updated results online at Tennessean.com.> Developed area of Tennessean.com and newsroom Intranet dedicated to the state's open government laws, tips and advice on using the laws, and a sample state open records request letter> Pushed for access to records showing how much a local suburban government paid to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of an elderly man shot to death by police who had raided the wrong house; the newspaper successfully sued to get access to the settlement amount.

Greater Nashville Area, Tn

> Helped supervise the Local News department after-hours and on weekends and worked with the state editor to supervise reporters covering the suburban and rural areas outside Nashville> Edited major breaking news at night and on weekends and took lead on numerous major Sunday 1a packages> Helped coordinate copy flow with copy desk to meet production deadlines> Created the "Cop Shift Handbook," a booklet of instructions, tips, phone lists and code sheets for newsroom staffers doing their occasional rotation on night and weekend cop shifts; copies were distributed to the entire newsroom. Led a series of training sessions for all Local News staffers in best-practices for covering cop shifts. > Devised and undertook project to update newspaper's respository of "advance obituaries" for prominent Nashvillians> Researched and created an entire area of the newsroom's Intranet dedicated to the newspaper's history

Greater Nashville Area, Tn

> Covered a suburban county for the newspaper, writing news and feature stories for both the main newspaper and a weekly zoned edition> Helped plan and coordinate the weekly zoned edition with the state editor and zones editor> Shootings, fatal wrecks, school board meetings, features about people who fix up old tabletop radios, and dead country music stars whose families wanted to exhume their remains, cremate them and move out of state -- you know, the usual fare for a county reporter in Middle Tennessee.> Taught self basic HTML and CSS and began creating websites for myself and organizations like the local chapter of SPJ> Was chosen to be part of the team who produced an "extra" edition for the inaugural home game of the Nashville Predators NHL team

Education record

Attended as a non-degree-seeking student

Ba, History, Concentration In American History

Activities and Societies: Vanderbilt Hustler, WRVU, McTyeire International House