RESUME / CV — Download in PDF

JOURNALISM

Current

EU Editor-in-chief, Asylum, AOL

As the channel manager and editor-in-chief for Asylum, AOL’s online magazine tailored to modern men, I have recruited and managed a team of 15 editors and writers in four countries, and taken ultimate responsibility for the content and performance of our sites in France (fr.asylum.com), Germany (de.asylum.com) and the UK (asylum.co.uk), which collectively have more than 750,000 unique visitors per month.

In this role I have overseen the production of around 100 weekly articles, galleries, videos and blog posts in three languages, run our editorial team and hired new talent, managed our budget and taken a leading role in developing our long-term content plans.

I have also acted as a consultant for our advertising team and worked closely with public relations to secure major national newspaper coverage for our content.

This has demanded a watertight understanding of branding and the hugely competitive online magazine market, a flair for originality in writing and design, a deep knowledge of web trends and multi-media reporting, efficient organisation and management skills and, above all, a keen eye for detail.

Promoting Asylum via emerging social media has also been a critical aspect of my role. By uniting my enthusiasm for social networking with a skeptical and analytical approach I have developed a market-leading strategy for our sites. This has involved a combination of design and layout changes, refinements to our editorial process and improvements to our reporting methods, all of which have made tangible benefits to our bottom line (meaning audience figures and revenue). I have also forged a new SEO strategy for Asylum, and secured multiple major traffic-share deals with our largest competitors including AskMen.com and Adult Swim.

Together these innovations have resulted in a 150 percent increase in Asylum’s audience since our launch in June 2008. We now have more than 750,000 unique monthly visitors across Europe (Dec 2009, Comscore). Most of this growth has come from outside sources like Digg, Stumbleupon and organic search. I was responsible for reporting on these core metrics on a weekly basis, and presenting those results each fortnight to the executive team based in AOL’s New York headquarters.

Previous

UK Editor, Asylum, AOL (May 2008-July 2009)

As editor of Asylum.co.uk I was in charge of the management of all daily news and features content. This involved putting together a rolling long-term content plan, as well as turning around breaking stories on newspaper-style deadlines. In this role I honed my online production skills and worked to get the best out of video, images and AOL’s proprietary CMS. My role also involved taking charge of the day-to-day direction of Asylum UK’s online promotion strategy.

Assistant Editor, Asylum, AOL (Jan-April 2008)

As one of two assistant editors working on Asylum’s US edition my duties included writing and producing content, sub-editing and social media promotion.

Reporter, Metro International, New York (Jan 2007-Jan 2008)

As a daily news reporter working from Metro International’s Manhattan office I produced breaking news for a readership of more than half a million New Yorkers, and the millions more reading Metro internationally. While focused on transportation as a regular ‘beat’ I also covered topics ranging from local culture, social issues, the United Nations and the 2008 U.S. election. I also developed and built an improved prototype website for the newspaper, and presented it to the senior editorial team.

The Brooklyn Rail — Freelance features reporter (Dec 2007-Feb 2008)

Freelance news and politics reporter.

BBC News Interactive — Internship (summer 2005)

Worked across foreign and domestic news desks. Produced content for the web, television and mobile news services.

Cambridge Music Podcast — Founder (Jan 2005-March 2006)

Produced and presented the UK’s first major independent music podcast.

EDUCATION

MA Journalism –- New York University, USA. (Dec 2007)

Writing, reporting, media ethics and legal training, plus varied online media projects and work with audio, video and photography.

BA History –- Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK. (June 2006)

Studies included the history of racial segregation in America and medieval English politics.

CREATIVE WRITING

CineCam screenplay prize (2004)

Awarded for ‘Pursued By Inanimate Objects’, a film-noir script about a man who is relentlessly chased by a fleet of plastic fish.

President of Cambridge Writers Guide (2005)

Included launching reading nights, workshops and helping aspiring writers among the student community with co-president Helen Mort.

SKILLS

Illustration and photography

Technical expertise with: Photoshop/Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Text Wrangler, CSSEdit, Audacity, Final Cut Pro, CSS, PHP, standards-compliant HTML (W3C)