Melissa Lattman Email & Phone Number

Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida Area

• Researched and reported on municipal government and life styles in Gulf Coast communities.• Provided readers with relevant, concise and clear local government coverage of municipalities with populations from 1,000 to 47,000, which included networking in several Pinellas beach communities and Pinellas Park.• Cultivated community sources and pitched stories to editors.

Pinellas, Manatee, Sarasota

• Responsible for the daily editorial content including breaking news, features, crime reports, community development and business news.• Met and surpassed online traffic goals through search engine optimization strategies with headlines, story descriptions, tags and embedded links• Provided real-time reporting by posting news stories, videos and photographs in the field. • Prioritized stories based on timeliness, newsworthiness and community engagement topics.• Completed 10-week citizens’ academy to foster and develop community relationships within Central Pinellas• Boosted reader engagement across nine Patch sites in West Florida, to one of the highest in the Southeast, using reader-participation contests, social media and community engagement. • Built brand awareness and fostered community relationships through personalized correspondence, face-to-face meetings and marketing events • Provided customer support and assisted community members in Pinellas, Manatee and Sarasota counties with utilizing the website and improving the reader’s experience.• Stepped up as the leader among the community editors in Florida, which streamlined communications and promoted best practices for community engagement across the 23 Florida Patch sites• Helped define and refine the Community Editor role for West Florida, the Southeast region and Patch as a whole to make the role manageable, successful and fun.

• Reported, wrote stories and took photographs for the paper’s print and online editions including elections, city hall, community features and events.• Enhanced local government coverage through multi-media tools and online database knowledge gained at Poynter Institute’s Investigating Local Government on a Budget seminar.

• Covered issues facing coastal communities, attended municipal- and school- related events and meetings for the Exeter News-Letter and Portsmouth Herald including investigative reporting, breaking news, spot news, features, government and business news.• Reported on regional and national news including presidential primary visits to New Hampshire and an outbreak of equine encephalitis.

Helped the company grow organically from a two-person organization to a 30-person team. Responsibilities included creating and overseeing program management, accounting and human resources.Interfaced with executive management to coordinate, write, and document national computer network upgrades and enhancements, including networks dealing with infrastructure, security systems, telecommunications, confidential customer applications and information.Planned and oversaw catered events for executives, staff and customers.

Taught math and english in a team environment. Created interdisciplinary units and adapted lessons for special needs students.

M.A., Journalism

B.A., German, Political Science

M.A., Education, Reading