My New Job at FOX 13 News

About a month ago, I started my new job as the Web Content Producer for FOX 13 News. It has been a lot of fun so far and I love going to work everyday, which is a big improvement from my last job.

For my job at FOX, I work on the station's Web site, fox13now.com. I write articles, edit videos from the newscasts, create new pages for the site, market the site on social networks, make interactive content, and more. It is a lot of fun and I learn something new everyday.

Recently, my senior Web producer, Dave, and I launched a Facebook Faceoff page for our station's campaign to create more awareness of FOX 13 on Facebook. So far, the campaign has been a huge success. All of the anchors and reporters for our morning show, Good Day Utah, are competing to get the most friends on Facebook. Each week, two have been eliminated and now our morning female anchor, Kerri Cronk, and our features reporter, Big Budah, are left. So far, Budah has over 10,000 fans and Kerri has just over 3,000. We at FOX 13 are giving away five $50 restaurant gift certificates to random people who are friends of the winning anchor each week.

A Freelance Gig That Brings Out My Inner Geek

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine hooked me up with a cool new freelance gig writing blog posts for a national technology blog. The name of the blog itself is definitely something that I never thought I would write for. The blog is called Geek.com and for the blog I will write short blurbs on news about the technology industry and link to other news sources or blogs. So far, the freelancing gig is fun and with all the hype today about the inauguration of President Obama, I found a lot of news stories about a new undertaking on the White House's Website. WhiteHouse.gov now has a more multimedia focus. Read my post titled "Whitehouse.gov updates with video and blog" to find out more about this story.

Utah Business Now on Facebook and MySpace

One of the cool things about my job is that there are so many connections. I feel like I understand how a magazine business works more than I ever did before and with Utah Business magazine there are connections you would not get anywhere else. I have already met several CEO's of huge companies in Utah like Josh James, the CEO of Omniture, as well as many others.

For my job as an assistant editor, one of the things I am working on is to help Utah Business magazine have a social media presence. A few weeks ago, I created a Utah Business Facebook group and already it has 80 members. I also just made a MySpace Utah Business group. Please join any of the groups, especially the MySpace one. I am also planning on putting all of our videos for the magazine on YouTube as well as changing some of the RSS Feeds to provide the best news and information on the site.

Image Source: Facebook.com

Life as an Assistant Editor - Website, Blogs & Podcasts

My job as an assistant editor at Utah Business magazine is pretty rad. Having my own office is a plus and I get to do what I love and get paid for it. It's pretty sweet. I primarily work on the Website, utahbusiness.com. I publish five daily stories (one written by me, four PR or newswire) for UtahBusiness.com and then four stories (three PR or newswire local and one national from CNET) for the Wasatch Digital iQ Website. It's neat to be in the know about what is going on with local business and technology news everyday. I also do several other tasks for the Website, including updating the events calendar, publishing stories written by business professionals on our blog (UB Blog), putting each magazine issue online, publishing about 1 to 2 podcasts a week, and also doing a little bit of site maintenance. It's fun...sometimes tedious...but that's typical for journalism jobs.

Creating podcasts for the Website has actually been fun. I just started a weekly podcast called UB Radio, which is a podcast that reviews the week's top headlines, lists announcements from Utah Business and then features an interview with one or two top business leaders in Utah. Click on the UB Radio link in this post to see my first UB Radio podcast. The UB Radio podcasts will be published on the Utah Business Website every Friday.

This Friday for the next upcoming podcast, I will be interviewing one of the finalists for the 2009 iQ Awards, an awards program that honors the best achievements in technology in the state of Utah. I'm pretty excited for it. It should be interesting!

Rockin' The New Year!

For Christmas this year, my family and I got a Nintendo Wii and Guitar Hero World Tour. So I have been rockin' out lately in a video game sense. I'm not really that good though It's kinda tough and I'm not really a gamer by any means.

My sister also got the James Bond Quantum of Solace game. It is fun, but is pretty hard. And it really makes me dizzy sometimes. Seriously, how do all of you Halo people do it? I have no idea.

So 2009 is here. It's hard to believe this year has come already. Surprisingly, the community center across the street from my parent's house in Daybreak (South Jordan) was open and I was able to work out. It was pretty crowded. I guess everyone had a new years resolution to be more fit. I saw people there that I have never seen in my life and I would know...I go just about everyday now.

I thought of some new years resolutions myself. I have not really come up with any solid ones yet. One of them is to keep a consistent work out schedule. In the past, I have been busy with school and have sort of slacked on my fitness goals. But no way, my friends, will this happen in 2009. I want to start running again and get involved in races and half marathons. The training is going to be tough though, but it would be fun. Anyone up for running?

The Summer Internship That Keeps on Giving

This past summer, I was an intern for PC Magazine, writing articles for 2 technology blogs. It was a lot of fun, and recently, I found out that my highest read blog post of the summer had an even larger audience than I thought.

I discovered through my friend and the other intern at PC Mag, that my blog post on a Sixth Grader winning a Google Doodle contest was the third highest read blog post on Appscout.com, a blog about Websites, and cool new applications, for 2008. Carol, my senior editor there told me this summer that it had about 25,000 hits. I guess now it got more.

Here is the new Appscout Blog post about my 3rd place status:

The Article that Got All The Hits

Real Life Now Begins

Dude, it's been forever since I wrote last. Things for me have been going well. I finally graduated from BYU! I'm waiting for my diploma to be mailed and hopefully it will come soon. In the meantime, I have already started my new job as assistant editor for Utah Business magazine. It so far has been a great job. I manage the online content, including stories, videos, podcasts, blogs, and more.

Christmas this year was awesome too. My family got a Nintendo Wii and Guitar Hero. I got a bunch of clothes for work and a new phone, thank goodness. Let me just say that Razr phones suck and I will never buy another one ever. I have an EnV 2. It's been a lot of fun and texting on it is way easier than any phone I have ever had.

I am right now staying with my parents in South Jordan until I find a new place to live. I am looking at apartments and saving some money in the meantime. I am also looking into getting a credit card, some furniture, and a bed. Real life has now begun. There are no more furnished apartments anymore. That luxury died when I left Provo. It is such a relief to be done with school though. I don't have to worry about another assignment or test for my entire life. Although, I might go to grad school later on in life so that may not be true. We shall see.