Eight-month project to update and rebuild a previous 100-plus page document on how to build a municipal fiber-optic broadband network, geared towards rural and small-town areas of Michigan. The client was Merit Network, a Michigan ISP for universities and other public entities that manages a 4,000-mile fiber-optic network of its own.
This involved intensive editing, rewriting and new writing, while reorganizing and boiling the content down to a more manageable 63 pages. I wrote roughly the first half from scratch, adding new information to report on the state of the digital divide in Michigan, through interviews with subject-matter experts and community leaders as well as long hours of reviewing related materials.
I also found the graphic designer for this project and led the painstaking coordination of putting the final piece together. This occurred through about a dozen revisions, in addition to changes based on reviews from various staff members on the client side.
To be clear, I’m no broadband expert, just as I’m no IPv6 expert. I had only consumer-level knowledge of this topic before beginning this project. Using tried-and-true interviewing techniques, I’m able to go from zero to expert-level article in two days. I’ve done this for arcane legal, engineering, healthcare, financial, and technology subject matter. I have been exercising these skills since I was a teenager: first as a copywriter and proofreader, then as a business journalist, then as a broadcast news producer, and then full circle back to copywriting again.
Profile for the 100 Influential Women recognition program, Crain’s Detroit Business, 2016
I was the lead editor and project manager for the 2015 edition of the newspaper’s flagship awards program. My job was to evaluate hundreds of submissions, narrow them down, vet them, recommend winners, and produce an editorial package of the 40 selected honorees. For the vetting, I either interviewed candidates personally or someone from my team of writers did and reported back. After a painstaking review process involving the newspaper’s top leadership, the honorees were selected, and then my team produced the final editorial package. I edited all profiles and managed the scheduling of all the associated photography. I was also deeply involved in the marketing of the awards program and the event that went with it.