The next subchapter

Things are changing around for me at work. Maybe to an even bigger extent than the move I made two years ago.

Starting this Monday, I take on a role as editor of my paper’s prep sports site, ADVarsitySports.com.

Freedom is current rolling out redesigns of its Varsity prep sports sites in its various markets. My paper’s site has been one of the more popular Varsity sites in the chain, so we’re at the front of getting the upgrade.

If you want to see what it looks like, the Orange County Register has their new Varsity site up already because, well, they’re OC.

But this new Varsity will require a little more work on organization end as far as uploading stories, and is a little more demanding on interactive content. So the decision was made to move me over into the editor role and handle the site’s story uploading.

It’s going to be an interesting change. I’ll be working the late shift full-time now, which I do have mixed feelings about. I will still handle a few of the news-side duties I had before, as far as updating databases and (hopefully) building interactive graphics, but it looks like I won’t be filming news videos anymore, just based on the timeframe.

But at the same time, there’s a lot of things that are good about this, which in the newspaper industry is becoming a rarer and rarer thing. I get to work with a sports staff that’s excited about and really into doing things for both print and online. The schedule and responsibilities allow me a little more room to experiment than I had before. Plus, I now have pretty much “buck stops here” responsibility for a news website, which is maybe the most exciting thing about this to me. Not that I’m running the whole show, I’ve still got supervisors and their expectations, but I’ll get to make a lot of decision-making content-wise and what goes where. And I get to sleep in if I want!

Oh, I’ll still be keeping an eye on the news side of the interactive world. I’ll still be doing my Tableau experimentation and other things. But this should, hopefully, be a lot of fun.