Leading storytelling teams in video, text, and more. Formerly The Messenger’s College Football Editor and Managing Editor at Secret Base, Vox Media’s home for original sports video programming.
My career thus far has given me the opportunity to collaborate with several different teams and talented creators, working on a variety of platforms and formats. Across those experiences, I’ve relied on a core principle: Every story should give something new and unexpected to those coming in with preexisting knowledge and interest, be accessible and valuable to audiences unfamiliar with the topic, and stick in the minds of both long after it ends.
VIDEO
In 2018, I led a strategic reset of Vox Media’s sports video department. We shifted away from prioritizing volume of output to focusing on creating evergreen content that stood out from the competition.
That shift proved incredibly successful. In our first year:
our YouTube view count jumped by over 300%
our subscribers nearly tripled
our revenue increased fivefold
Today, viewers average over ten minutes spent on these videos, with many episodes continuing to grow in popularity months and years after publication.
Here’s a sampling of what my video team made:
We explored the complex relationships between competitors, both inside and beyond the arena.
We unspooled memorable highlights in sports history to give our audience context and background that’s often lost in the heat of the moment.
We dissected the declines of once-great dynasties, identifying the mistakes, conflicts, and strokes of bad luck that toppled a champion.
And we used numbers and data to celebrate the outliers that make sports delightfully unpredictable.
WRITING
My writing experience spans several formats, from this reported feature in 2014 where I visited South Dakota and explored one of the most-played college football rivalry games to a review of NCAA survey findings on athlete well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are a few other pieces of work I’m particularly proud of:
My numerical evaluation of the Ted Cruz Sports Curse
A history of the short showdown between the NCAA and the University of Pennsylvania over sports broadcast rights
A Q&A conducted with a colleague after a federal judge ruled against Baylor University’s attempt to keep internal investigation documents from sexual assault victims suing the school
A statistical celebration of one of the most dominant Grand Slam finals in tennis history
EDITING
As an editor, I strive to help writers think about their work structurally and tactically. What is this piece trying to do for the audience overall? Are the subparts working towards that goal (or not)? How can we take complex subjects and make them not just digestible but enjoyable? There’s a lot of reward in figuring those answers out with a writer.
These are a handful of pieces I’ve had the opportunity to edit or co-edit in recent years:
A look at the glaring flaws in the NCAA’s coaching diversity data collection, which make any progress the Association claims in this area hard to trust.
How one school’s strategy to avoid its contractual obligations to a fired coach could inspire others with money problems to do the same.
Where Southern University’s Human Jukebox sits in the HBCU marching band world, the political history of Louisiana, and the soul of anyone who hears them play.
OTHER PROJECTS
I’ve written a newsletter about the strange history of college football called Buried Treasure in partnership with Homefield Apparel. I recently started a Substack called Assigned, where I write about sports topics with direction from paid subscribers, including stories like the connection between Madison Square Garden and the War of 1812.
I created a podcast called We’re Not All Like This, in which I interview people from different sports fanbases to understand how these groups think/feel/cope with the ups and downs of rooting for a specific team.
I previously oversaw Vox Media’s college football newsletter, The Read Option, which had over 20,000 subscribers.
For the last eight years, I’ve been a cohost (and occasional producer) of the Shutdown Fullcast, a very silly show that’s theoretically about college football but mostly tends to be about everything else. I’ve also helped organize five live shows for the podcast.
In 2017, I played golf pong with Justin Timberlake at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. (He was much better than I was, though he had the crowd support and I didn’t so who can say how much that swayed things.)
And on New Year’s Day 2018, I dressed up as the Bloomin’ Onion for the Outback Bowl in Tampa. Why did I put on a fried appetizer costume? Honestly, it just seemed fun (and it was).
ONE LEGAL NOTE
Though I’m no longer an active member of the bar, from 2008 until 2014 I was an attorney in New York City, with most of my work focusing on internal investigations. I spent two years with the City’s Department of Investigation, where I assisted with corruption, fraud, and misconduct investigations related to the Department of Buildings, Department of Corrections, and several city contractors. Prior to that, I was a litigation associate at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, where I had the opportunity to work with corporate clients like Johnson & Johnson and pursue capital appeals work with the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.